On August 23, 2024, Mika Majzner and Elad Dubnov got married in Be’eri, the first wedding in the kibbutz synagogue since the October 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities that ravaged the community and the rest of the Gaza border region.

The ceremony marked the couple’s second wedding. The couple had gotten married nearly two years earlier on a farm near Be’eri, where Mika was born and raised before moving to Tal Shahar in central Israel. The wedding was conducted by a member of Harabanut Hahilonit, literally “the secular rabbinate,” an organization that serves the secular public by performing Jewish ceremonies — which are not recognized by the State of Israel.

“Our original wedding was on October 7, 2022, and a year later, we woke up to our anniversary with the world imploding on us,” Majzner told The Times of Israel by phone recently.

Majzner said that despite coming from a secular family, she had felt an affinity to God and religion even before October 7. But she opposed the ultra Orthodox-controlled Chief Rabbinate, which in Israel is the only institution officially allowed to perform and register Jewish weddings.

After tragedy struck, the couple decided to get married again — “I was not willing to have my wedding anniversary to be forever on the worst day of my life,” Majzner said — but this time they decided to go through the Rabbinate, a reflection of a religious awakening experienced in the wake of the death and destruction of that day.

Two years after the Hamas attack that left some 1,200 Israelis dead, 251 kidnapped, and thousands wounded, data suggests that the massacre and ensuing war have impacted many Israelis’ relationship with Judaism, God, and spirituality in general. Often, as in the case of Majzner, the events have drawn people closer to religion and spirituality.

“I believe there are people who, as a result of the tragedy, distanced themselves from religion, and there are those who got closer to religion, or to God,” Majzner noted. “I personally feel that this has brought me closer to God.”

According to data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics last month, approximately 43 percent of Jewish adults in Israel describe themselves as secular, while 23% call themselves religious, which in Israel generally means Orthodox. A little less than half of those in the religious camp say they are Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox.

Another 22% of the total Jewish population self-describes as traditional but not so religious, while 12% call themselves traditional and to some degree religious.

Earlier this year, the religious rights group Hiddush, which advocates for the separation of religion and state, polled a representative sample of 800 Jewish Israelis ages 18 and older on whether “the October 7 massacre and the fighting on all fronts that followed affected your belief in God.”

A full quarter of respondents answered that the attack and its aftermath had strengthened their faith, compared to 7% that said it weakened their faith. At the same time, 55% reported no impact on belief, while some 13% responded they did not have an opinion on the matter. Pollsters set the margin of error at 3.5%.

A separate study conducted by scholars from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem of some 1,200 students found that in the first six months after October 7 just over half of the respondents (50.9%) reported a change in either religiosity, spirituality, or both.

While religiosity and spirituality often overlap, the former generally refers to the adherence to more organized and formal practices,........

© The Times of Israel