2 years after the synagogue attack in Halle, Germany, young Jews gather to turn mourning into activism

BERLIN (JTA) — Last year, as Rabbi Rebecca Blady approached the first anniversary of the Yom Kippur attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany, she knew she wanted to commemorate it on her own terms.

Blady runs Base Hillel Deutschland, an organization for young Jews in Berlin, and was praying in the Halle synagogue on Yom Kippur in 2019 when a gunman attempted to break down the door. The gunman then went on to kill two people nearby, and is now serving a life sentence in prison.

Rather than suffice with the state-organized memorial on the attack’s secular anniversary of Oct. 9, Blady decided to p...