Introduction
Jewish identity, Israel, and antisemitism
Jews around the world, and in North America specifically, where there are relatively large Jewish communities, have become concerned with an increase in antisemitism in recent years (Wright et al., Reference Wright, Volodarsky, Hecht and Saxe2022). While extreme acts of violence or discrimination against Jews are seen as unequivocally antisemitic, other forms of antisemitism can often be elusive and difficult to define (Waxman et al., Reference Waxman, Schraub and Hosein2021). Further complicating the matter, antisemitism is often intertwined with anti-Zionism, involving the delegitimization of the existence of Israel, or identifying all Jews with Israeli policies and placing blame on them for it (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, 2016). Thus, antisemitism can be difficult to detect, and it is often unclear how to respond to it (Waxman et al., Reference Waxman, Schraub and Hosein2021). Yet, antisemitism is a deeply worrying phenomenon, with destructive potential that can reach beyond Jewish communities in the societies where it occurs, as it can, in turn, increase other forms of prejudice and hatred, such as Islamophobia, or racism (Gerteis & Rotem, Reference Gerteis and Rotem2022).
The October 7 terror attack by Hamas was the deadliest in Israel’s history, resulting in an ongoing war, bringing an unprecedented scale of casualties and destruction on both sides (Tiruneh et al., Reference Tiruneh, Lipsky and Twig2024). Furthermore, there has been an overall rise in expressions of antisemitism since October 7, 2023, and many Jewish people in Canada and the United States feel less safe (Stein et al., Reference Stein, Perry and Levit2024; Anti-defamation League, 2023). In the case of Jewish older adults living in North America, there may be compounding stressors, as they might have been exposed to different forms of antisemitism in the past, such as that based on more ‘traditional’ antisemitic tropes (Wright et al., Reference Wright, Volodarsky, Hecht and Saxe2022) or even in their most extreme form, as in the case of Holocaust survivors. Additionally, older adults may face unique challenges such as loneliness, functional decline, and reduced social support, which can amplify the impact of stress (e.g., Lee et al., Reference Lee, Lee, Hwang, Chung, Park, Shin, Lee, Lim, Urtnasan and Kim2024a). The aim of the current exploratory study was, then, to better understand the experiences of Canadian Jewish older adults following the October 7 attack and to explore if and how the current rise in antisemitism is affecting them.
Minority stress
Exposure to antisemitism, or any form of hatred, prejudice, and exclusion aimed at a certain group, can lead to experiences of distress known as minority stress, which has been shown to have deleterious effects on physical and mental health (Gutman et al., Reference Gutman, Karbakhsh and Stewart2023). A heightened vigilance towards possible discrimination, along with actual exposure to stigma and discrimination, have been shown to be significant stressors for Black, or African American people (Zvolensky et al., Reference Zvolensky, Clausen, Thai, Redmond and Garey2024), and people who identify as LGBTQ+ (Thoma et al., Reference Thoma, Biernesser and Win2024). Some older adults might be uniquely susceptible to minority stress (Shenkman et al., Reference Shenkman, Ifrah and Shmotkin2024). Recent studies exploring the negative impact of hate that has been directed towards members of the Asian American community during the COVID-19 outbreak have shown its significant impact on the mental and physical health of those exposed to it (i.e., Lozano et al., Reference Lozano, Rueger, Lam, Louie, Southworth, Maene, Mo, Randal and Kim2022), but also indirectly affecting Asian older adults who were worried about such exposure, (Li et al., Reference Li, Kang and Nguyen2024). The group most affected by these concerns were older adults who lived in underprivileged conditions, underscoring the complex ways that a minority status can be a source of multiple stressors and vulnerability (Lee et al., Reference Lee, Vergara-Lopez, Jennings, Nugent, Parade, Tyrka and Stroud2024b). It has been suggested that those who are at the intersection of historically marginalized identities are particularly susceptible to minority stress. Previous studies have shown that being exposed to minority stressors that stem from more than one source (e.g., LGBTQ+ people who are also Jewish) further increases the risk for negative outcomes (Calabrese et al., Reference Calabrese, Meyer, Overstreet, Haile and Hansen2015).
One of the notable groups of individuals who have sustained the most extreme and prolonged minority stress, and are now in the late stages of old age, are Holocaust survivors. Studies have shown the prolonged physical and mental effects of the Holocaust that endure into old age (Greenblatt Kimron et al., Reference Greenblatt Kimron, Marai, Lorber and Cohen2019). Thus, such extreme forms of stress and trauma can have a lasting impact on Holocaust survivors throughout their lifespan, particularly when those with cumulative trauma are exposed to current stressors (Hantman & Solomon, Reference Hantman and Solomon2007). Revealing a complex pattern of vulnerability and distress, Holocaust survivors exhibit elevated psychological distress and post-traumatic symptoms but also demonstrate resilience and capacity for social adjustment (Shmotkin et al., Reference Shmotkin, Blumstein and Modan2003). Expected losses associated with the aging process, such as physical and cognitive decline, the death of significant others, and the survivors’ imminent death, may reactivate and exacerbate previous trauma (Greenblatt-Kimron & Cohen, Reference Greenblatt-Kimron and Cohen2020). These findings can be explained by the notion of accumulated stress, which posits that the risk for adverse outcomes increases directly with chronic or repeated exposure to stressors, through the physical and mental long-term burden of stress (Agorastos & Chrousos, Reference Agorastos and Chrousos2022). These effects also extend to the following generations, as offspring of Holocaust survivors, for example, have been shown to be sensitized to and even traumatized by exposure to the minority stress of antisemitism (Cox & Marlowe, Reference Cox and Marlowe2024).
The Dual Process Model (DPM; Stroebe & Schut, Reference Stroebe and Schut2010) can also provide a useful framework for understanding how antisemitism functions not only as an act of discrimination but also as a psychosocial stressor that demands ongoing coping. The model posits that when coping with loss, people oscillate between loss-oriented coping focused on grief processes, and restoration-oriented coping focused on adapting to life changes and re-establishing one’s routine (Stroebe & Schut, Reference Stroebe and Schut2010). Thus, the experience of antisemitism among Jewish older adults can be conceptualized as a form of ongoing psychosocial loss. For many, antisemitic incidents may reactivate historical trauma and evoke a sense of grief for eroded safety and belonging – characteristic of loss-oriented coping. Simultaneously, these individuals may engage in restoration-oriented responses such as modifying social behavior, withdrawing from public spaces, or seeking support within cultural or religious communities.
Of note, studies have revealed that exposure to minority stress may also be associated with resilience (Dejanipont et al., Reference Dejanipont, Wang and Jenkins2023), usually conceptualized around the notion of social connectedness or social support, even when individuals might be a part of a marginalized minority (Lee et al., Reference Lee, Vergara-Lopez, Jennings, Nugent, Parade, Tyrka and Stroud2024b). Another potential source of resilience is based on the inoculation hypothesis, which suggests that previous exposure to adverse life events can, under some circumstances, lead to more resilience in the face of current adversity among older adults (e.g., Palgi et al., Reference Palgi, Gelkopf and Berger2015). While accumulated stress theory emphasizes heightened risk with increasing stress, the inoculation hypothesis highlights that stress does not merely have an additive, negative effect, but rather, if one is exposed to moderate levels of stress, it can foster resilience as it promotes the development of adaptive coping strategies to future stressors (Dejanipont et al., Reference Dejanipont, Wang and Jenkins2023). Thus, one’s lived experiences, along with social connectedness and support, are some of the conditions for such an inoculation effect in the face of minority stressors.
Canadian Jews
Canada is home to a growing Jewish population, including many Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Canada after World War II (Brym et al., Reference Brym, Neuman, Lenton, Dashefsky and Sheskin2020). It is predicted to become the third-largest Jewish population in the world, after Israel and the United States (Sundberg et al., Reference Sundberg, Mitchell and Levinson2023). Furthermore, Canadian Jews, not unlike American Jews, see antisemitism as a significant and widespread problem (Brym et al., Reference Brym, Neuman, Lenton, Dashefsky and Sheskin2020). To date, research has yet to assess the effect of exposure to antisemitism following the October 7 attack among Jewish older adults living in the Diaspora. The present work therefore sought to conduct an exploratory study of the impact of rising antisemitism among older adults belonging to the Jewish community in Vancouver, BC, Canada. These included interviews with people from the Jewish community who were Holocaust survivors, offspring of Holocaust survivors, and people who belonged to the LGBTQ+ community, in order to account for those who are at the intersection of aging, being Jewish, and having experienced previous stressors or even traumas. Including LGBTQ+ individuals in a study of Jewish older adults in Canada is essential to capturing the full complexity of aging experiences within this population, as sexual orientation is an important dimension of inequality and must be considered alongside factors such as religion, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status (Tobin et al., Reference Tobin, Gutiérrez, Farmer, Erving and Hargrove2023). As we sought to collect information about the lived experiences of participants, we relied on a qualitative approach. Interviews were not only conducted with older adults, but also with service providers who work directly with older adults of the Jewish community in Greater Vancouver and have significant knowledge of their experiences.
Method
Participants and procedure
The study was approved by the research ethics review boards at the authors’ respective institutions (# 2023–230 L/bs at Ruppin Academic Center and 30002536 at SFU). Data collection began in the summer of 2024, a few months after the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war, and lasted for 6 weeks. Our inclusion criteria for the older adult group were people aged 65 and older, who belong to the Jewish community in the greater Vancouver area, who speak English, and who were willing to be interviewed for the study. In addition to these broad criteria, we were also looking specifically to include some participants who were Holocaust survivors and participants who identified as LGBTQ+. For the service providers, inclusion criteria were people who work with Jewish older adults, whether as administrators or leaders in institutions related to the Jewish community in the Vancouver area (such as synagogues, for example), or health care professionals who work in assisted living or long-term care facilities with largely Jewish populations.
Participants in each group were recruited by convenience sampling through diverse acquaintances in the local Jewish community and also through snowball methods (participants who connected the researchers with other potential participants). Recruitment continued to the point of content saturation. In total, 15 older adults and 11 service providers were interviewed. The older adults ranged in age from 65 to 92; 60 per cent were women. The age range of the service providers was 33–67, with 72 per cent women. All rated being Jewish as very important to them, which is quite typical of Jewish communities in Canada, which tend to be more traditional (Brym et al., Reference Brym, Neuman, Lenton, Dashefsky and Sheskin2020). See Table 1 for further details.
Sociodemographic and descriptive characteristics of the two study groups
a Single, divorced, separated, or widowed.
b Married, engaged, living together, or in a romantic relationship.
All participants provided verbal informed consent prior to participation. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interviews were conducted face-to-face, except for one interview with an older adult participant who, for reasons of convenience, requested an interview over Zoom. Interviews lasted 60 minutes on average. Participants were initially asked background and sociodemographic questions. In the open-ended interviews, older adults were asked whether they had any experiences with antisemitism prior to and/or following the October 7 attack, and participants were also asked to reflect about these challenges, how they affected them, and what were their coping mechanisms. Participants who identified as LGBTQ+ were also asked similar questions regarding experiences related to their identity as a sexual minority and how these might intersect with their experiences since October 7. Participants who were Holocaust survivors, or offspring of Holocaust survivors, were asked questions that pertained to their (or their parents’) experiences related to the Holocaust. They were also asked how these experiences might intersect with their experiences since October 7. In the service providers group, participants were asked to describe their organization and the kind of services they provide to Jewish older adults and any feedback they had received from these individuals. They were also asked to reflect on their own experiences as members of the Jewish community.
Analysis
We employed a bottom-up approach to the data, relying on open coding (Burnard, Reference Burnard1991). The authors and a member of the research team who is trained in qualitative data analysis independently read and reviewed each of the transcribed interviews several times, highlighting and coding pronounced preliminary themes. Next, texts were divided according to smaller units of meaning that were assigned to them following the analysis (i.e., they were not conceived a-priori; Burnard, Reference Burnard1991). These were further broken down into more descriptive themes.
Preliminary themes were then discussed among the team members. Through dialogue and consensus-building, a set of three comprehensive descriptive themes representative of the data that emerged consistently was identified and agreed upon. These served as a framework for further analysis, and we grouped related codes under these themes. Several potential directions of interpretation stemmed from the data, including the notion that the social atmosphere in Canada had changed dramatically since the October 7 attack, and that these changes had become woven into many parts of life, influencing our participants in more ways than could have been anticipated. The most consistent ways appeared to converge around three central themes – those of Jewish identity, balancing the need for safety with the need for community, and coping with heightened distress due to previous adversity. We employed selective coding to create a coherent storyline of the findings by focusing on these three themes (Holton, Reference Holton2007).
Researcher reflexivity statement
As academics specializing in the well-being of older adults, who are Jewish-Israeli and Jewish-Canadian, respectively, we approached this study with personal and professional proximity to its subject matter. The events of October 7 and their aftermath have impacted us, not only as researchers but as individuals with ties to the region, the culture, and the people affected, many of whom were older adults. Thus, we personally feel greatly distressed for the Israeli victims and hostages, as well as for the many Palestinian victims of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We do not identify with or represent the current Israeli government, yet we recognize that our identities and emotional connection to Israel inevitably shape how we engage with this research. Throughout the study, we have made concerted efforts to hold space for the complexity and diversity of experiences among Jewish older adults in Canada, to help ensure that the analysis remained grounded in participants’ voices rather than our own interpretations.
Findings
As indicated above, three main themes emerged from the interviews with older adults and service providers. In the following section, we provide more detail regarding the meaning of these themes, as well as relevant quotes to demonstrate each one. To preserve their privacy, the names of participants have been changed, and their personal information has been de-identified.
A bolstered sense of Jewish identity
Connection with Israel
The first facet of this theme was that almost all felt a deep connection with Israel as part of their identity and felt personally and deeply affected by the October 7 attack. Sarah, a service provider who manages an adult day center, described the impact on her clients: ‘Everyone is affected by it. Everyone has relatives in Israel, or knows someone who has’. She went on to describe how there has been an ongoing worry regarding the hostages, who were still being held by Hamas: ‘They talk all the time about “our hostages” – they ask “When will they bring our hostages back already?”’ These sentiments were reflected by almost all the participants we interviewed. Several referred to Israel as an important source of their feeling of safety as Jews. As one participant, Nathan, put it: ‘Israel is a source of our survival…October 7 is a wake-up call for Jewish people all around the world’. They recognized this as a complex connection with another country, that is not their own. Another participant, David, noted that: ‘It is my country, but it’s not my country. We don’t vote there. We don’t have a say. We don’t pay taxes there’. Jacqueline, another participant, shared: ‘I’m so grateful. I will always feel that way. Thank God there is an Israel. Do I agree with the way that Israel’s government is behaving? No. But I’m grateful there’s an Israel. And I think that if you didn’t grow up that close to the Holocaust, or you didn’t grow up that close to the violence that happens in antisemitism on a daily basis, then maybe it just doesn’t have the same meaning’.
Feelings of isolation and distance from Non-Jewish neighbors
Another facet, related to the change in atmosphere in Canada towards Israel and towards Jews, was that many felt isolated, or at a certain distance, between themselves and non-Jewish people in their communities. For instance, many were taken aback by the fact that only a few acquaintances outside of the Jewish community showed support following the attack and the war. Richard, an older adult participant, said: ‘Yes, we have allies. They’re relatively few and some are nowhere to be seen at this moment in time. Where are they? They should have been there instantly’. Another participant, Greta, who has relatives in Israel, said: ‘After the 7th of October only two people, three people, asked me, is your family okay? Are you okay? I hardly had anybody talk about it. It’s like it doesn’t exist’. Some even faced aggressive criticism regarding Israel’s part in the war and felt ostracized for being Jewish, regardless of their political orientation. Naomi, a service provider who works with older adults, described: ‘Since the Hamas attack, there are more. It’s the first time in the several years I’ve been here that people are…Seniors are freely discussing the antisemitism they experience on the streets’. She went on to share her own experience: ‘It comes up all the time because, you know…I mean, I had it happen to me… But, you know…I’m resilient, and I can do that. I don’t carry these other triggers that other people do. It’s been hard for people’. Although this was clearly a source of stress, most were not surprised by these responses and integrated them into their previous lived experiences. As Jacqueline reflected: ‘Yeah, everything old is new again…going through the seventies, the Yom Kippur war, the 1982 war…Kind of feels like, oh, here we go again, you know, and there are no safe places. Every time Israel is in the spotlight in a negative way at all, all Jews are immediately suspect…We’ve seen this through time…Whether it’s true or not, we’re the easiest target’.
Many participants described encounters with others around them whom they felt were misinformed about the situation in Israel, and a sense that outside of the Jewish community, many people did not grasp the complexity of the issue. Nathan described: ‘The non-Jews that I have spoken with, I find many of them very, very misinformed, not informed. And I enter into conversation with them, and I try to, you know, to inform them and correct them when they’re wrong, but that sort of leads to unpleasant conversation and maybe arguments and stuff like that’. Another participant, Michael, referred to some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators: ‘They’re ignorant, you know. I mean, the iconic thing is “from the river to the sea”, and they don’t know what river and what sea. If you ask them, they have no idea. And that annoys me’. Greta also shared her frustration regarding demonstrators who appeared uninformed about the issue: ‘That’s the worst thing. It’s all these people who don’t know what they are doing, but they decided that this is what they have to do’. Many of them described feeling driven to engage in dialogues, in an attempt to educate and explain. Anna said: ‘I’ve probably become slightly more vocal…and spending more time probably pontificating, especially with my non-Jewish friends’. Michael described: ‘I’ve been doing a tremendous amount of corresponding with people, trying to persuade people who I thought had the wrong idea, educate them’.
Many recounted their frustration at the recently oft-heard notion that Jewish people were now considered a part of the white majority. This created a significant dissonance with their lived experiences, having been exposed to antisemitic attitudes and discrimination in their past, as Anna described: ‘Yeah, growing up in Vancouver, you know for a long time they had the “charter” – properties, the golf clubs, where the charter was written that no Jews were allowed, no Chinese were allowed, no Aboriginals were allowed. And that recently just got changed. Within the last what, 10/15/20 years? Yeah. So pretty recently’. Some of them shared that they had heard Jewish people described not only as white, but as modern-day colonialists, causing frustration and even outrage, as Richard shared: ‘That’s why our opponents are so effective. They have a statement that’s big. We’re “colonial settlers”’. Rachel, a service provider, said: ‘This is how it’s been marketed to us, that there’s the oppressor and there’s the oppressed. There’s no room for nuanced thinking or for the fact that not all Jews are white. Oh, my God, what a crazy point, that all Jews are colonizing white folks’! It appeared that the complex reality that started with the October 7 attack, now involved for many Jewish older adults whom we spoke with a more pronounced Jewish identity, that is constantly being cued and enhanced by the discourse since the outbreak of the war.
Tension between the need for safety and the need for connection and community
Concern and fear for safety as Jews in the face of antisemitism
The service providers we spoke with indicated that the Jewish spaces they were working in were now being monitored by police and security, due to repeated threats against the Jewish community. In one synagogue, there was an incident of an arson attack. Almost everyone described being acutely aware and concerned by a rise in antisemitism. This obviously caused apprehension, and many participants told us that they hid or minimized anything that might disclose their Jewish identity. David, for example, described: ‘yeah, I’m cautious. And when my wife and I are walking, we quite often will listen to the Times of Israel, the podcast, and when we walk along, if we’re coming towards a large group of people, we sort of shut it down’. Most people described instances of microaggressions, or what Michael described as ‘a polite, Canadian form of it – an undercurrent of antisemitism’. Dalia shared: ‘There’s so much antisemitism throughout the world. That’s the wake-up call for the Jews in the Diaspora. Yeah, we thought it was over with World War, with the Nazis. But under the surface, there’s always antisemitism’. For many, the massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations, which included chants and signs against Israel, were experienced as intimidating, offensive, and often antisemitic. Nathan, for example, described: ‘Yesterday, driving in downtown Vancouver, I saw a poster on a public sign, there was a sticker somebody put on there, quite big, saying Zionism equals racism equals Genocide, or something like that. Anyway, negative…I wanted to get out of my car and rip that off…So there is antisemitism, no question’. Although usually not directed personally against any of the participants, they felt affronted by these expressions, even when their own political stance was not aligned with that of the current Israeli government. Although these anti-Israeli and antisemitic expressions often occur in spaces occupied by younger persons, such as academia, many participants felt disturbed by them, also out of concern for their children or grandchildren who were studying in Canadian universities. One participant, Susan, described being upset by her granddaughter’s experiences with antisemitism: ‘my younger granddaughter who is a first-year student, other students came and took off Mezuzos on the (Jewish) students’ doors that were there…that was very upsetting’.
Seeking out community and social support in spite of threat
Yet, it seemed that the significant concerns for their safety did not negate the strong need to connect with others in the Jewish community, even if it meant gathering in Jewish spaces that might be targeted for antisemitic hate crimes. This was described by Naomi: ‘In December we had a Hanukkah party for the seniors. And it was palpable that people needed to get together. It was like “I need to be in a space with other Jews and just get to exhale”. And so from that experience and the things that people told me, my reaction was, we need to do more events like this. We need to give people an opportunity to get together socially and just be Jewish, and safe’. This need for connecting with other people in the Jewish community was conceivably at odds with their personal concerns and fears for their safety as Jews. However, participants shared that gathering in Jewish spaces helped them to cope, as they sought solace and like-minded people who would understand their concerns. In fact, many described that since the war, their circle of friends had tightened, to include almost only Jewish friends, with whom they felt that they could freely talk about their concerns, as expressed by David: ‘I think our group has gotten smaller. I really do. I think our people, you know, the people we associate with, perhaps, and it’s a little bit smaller than it might have otherwise been’. Many participants described attending weekly pro-Israel rallies, in spite of exposing themselves to possible conflict with counter-protesters by conspicuously supporting Israel, as described by Anna: ‘I go to the rallies because I need to make a presence and show support’.
Another form of identifying and connecting with other Jewish people was expressed in the need voiced by many participants to volunteer in pro-Israel organizations. Anna, an older adult participant, said: ‘I just said to him (her relative), you know, we’re going to go and volunteer in Israel. He had done it last year. I think this is where we need to go this year. And we’re going to go back and do the same next year’. Bertha, another participant from the older adult group expressed a wish to volunteer in Israel, in spite of not being able to because of her physical condition: ‘Because I’m telling you, I feel this really needs help, and I can’t really go there and pick fruit and vegetables. I’m too old for that already…’ For some, the need to feel involved with Israel was expressed even further in a wish to immigrate there – or make Aliya, as it is referred to among Jewish people. Similar to Bertha, all of the participants who expressed the desire to move to Israel qualified it by saying that they felt too old or that it wasn’t feasible due to their family obligations. David, for example, said: ‘I said, you know, maybe we should get citizenship. And my wife correctly said, you know, we’ve got daughters here in Canada. We have grandchildren. There’s no way I’m making aliyah to Israel’.
Intersectionality: Previous traumas or vulnerabilities were linked with more concern and distress, alongside resilience
Having a holocaust background is reverberated in the October 7 attack and its aftermath
Participants who had experienced the Holocaust as young children felt that the terrorist attack was similar to, and reminiscent of, the Holocaust in its violence. They expressed a sense that they were retraumatized by current developments. Richard, a Holocaust survivor, mentioned, with tears in his eyes, how deeply horrified he was to learn that babies and young children had been murdered: ‘I changed in that when I began to find out the information of October 7, I couldn’t look at a baby’. Many of the first and second generations of survivors felt a deeply troubling sense that history was repeating itself. Greta, who often gives talks in schools about her experiences in the Holocaust, said: ‘I used to actually finish my talks (in schools) with “never again”. My recent talks are that I no longer can say never again…I think what bothers me more than the individuals are the demonstrations. That bothers me the most because the demonstrations, they are doing it en masse without knowing what they are doing. And that probably is the closest to what was in ‘33’. These reactions, which were highly emotionally charged, also extended to the reactions of participants who were children of Holocaust survivors. Many described feeling great discomfort and sadness at the thought of how their parents would have reacted to it. Anna, for example, shared: ‘I’m gonna start to cry, I think, that my parents aren’t alive today…you know, any survivor that I meet and I’ve spoken to…they all look at me and say they’re thankful that my parents aren’t alive. And for them, how difficult it is to see this because who would have imagined?’
LGBTQ+ Jewish older adults cope with a twofold sense of distress
Another group that acutely felt the interlinkage between the events on and since October 7 and their own particular experiences were those who belonged to the LGBTQ+ community. They shared how deeply disquieting it felt to belong to both of those minority groups, given the political climate that they were imbued in. Some described that LGBTQ+ organizations in Canada often adopt pro-Palestinian stances, and that they often encountered belligerent, negative, and even hateful comments about Israel, sometimes personally aimed towards them because of their Jewish backgrounds. Rachel, a service provider we spoke with, who works with Queer Jewish people like herself, noted that: ‘Overall, the Jewish Queer and Trans community is suffering and deeply hurt and desperately needs safer spaces’. Regina, an older adult who identified as Queer, shared: ‘I feel very lonely, very. Without a group. You know, my group is not my group anymore’. Jacqueline, another older adult who identified as Queer, described no longer being able to attend gatherings and protests by the LGBTQ+ movement she belonged to in the past: ‘I get way more blowback for being Jewish than I do for being Queer. Way more…the vitriol was astonishing. I no longer feel safe going back’.
Many of the LGBTQ+ participants we spoke with were themselves liberal in their political beliefs and did not necessarily identify with the Israeli government. They described experiencing difficulty attending events involving their Jewish congregations or communities as these often adopted an unequivocal pro-Israeli line, which they felt left them with no freedom to voice more complex or nuanced stances towards Israel. Thus, they felt like they did not belong in any of those groups and were given to experiences of loneliness and isolation. Rachel, for instance, described: ‘It doesn’t matter where the community falls on the political spectrum, they’re not feeling well about what’s going on. I’m worried about my physical safety, it’s crazy. It impacts every aspect of my life. There’s no break…So, no, this (her home) is the only safe space’. Jacqueline also described her experiences as a Queer Jewish woman: ‘I belong to different communities as a human being, I’m very intersectional…What I hear weekly is this angst between real anger, first of all, at Israel and the behavior of Israel in the last couple of months and a sense of loss, a sense of how do I even belong to a Jewish community? Because I feel strongly about this, but also I’m Queer, so how do I belong to the Queer community? It’s very difficult’.
Older immigrants from the former USSR and heightened vulnerability
The group who revealed possibly the most heightened vulnerability given current events were Jewish people who had immigrated to Canada in recent years from the former Soviet Union, experiencing the complexities of immigration later in life. We spoke with service providers who assisted this unique group of Jewish older adults. They described that those who received services from their organization were often very old, lived in poverty, and received financial and other assistance from them. The service providers were not able to disclose any personal information about them or involve them in the study, due to their frailty. Instead, we heard of their struggles through the service providers who assisted them. They described that they were very fearful, as many lived in neighborhoods with other immigrants, including Palestinians, who tended to loudly voice their support for the Palestinian cause. Often, these were perceived as threatening towards this group. The service providers described that since the events of October 7 2023, their service recipients were extremely frightened, and often did not leave their homes for days, other than to come to gatherings offered by the organization, which were guarded by armed security guards. One of them described their heightened vulnerability: ‘Because they came, you know, after Holocaust, after everything they’ve been through in Soviet Union, it was terrible. It was terrible. Antisemitism was terrible. And I know my parents went through all this too: Wouldn’t be able to be accepted to a university or a good job because of their last name. So they all have these previous traumas and experiences’. The service providers felt that indeed their care recipients were coping with actual threats and even shared those fears with them. To many of them, this resonated with previous experiences with antisemitism and traumas that they had faced in the former Soviet Union, as one of them described: ‘I just met a new client last week…He was held as a child, with German soldiers. For long period of time during the war, for a few years. And after October, all those memories started to just rise and he’s crying all the time. He’s broken. Absolutely. So, yeah, it’s really hard. They wanted a safe place, and now it’s not safe anymore, even in Canada’.
When we asked participants from these diverse groups about how they dealt with these events, resilient coping was evident, other than the immigrants from the former Soviet Union, for whom the service providers who shared their experiences mostly recounted negative emotional responses and a sense of vulnerability. The other participants, however, recounted several pathways that enabled a stronger outlook. One was a sense of robust coping abilities, given the fact that they had overcome such immense struggles in their past. Greta, who had survived the Holocaust with her parents as a 4-year-old child, said: ‘I’ve been coping all my life. I had the example of my parents. They were incredible’. Similarly, Michael spoke of his life motto: ‘I think there’s lessons that I learned. One is that I didn’t like being a defenseless victim of people who were armed and organized, where I had no weapons and no organization behind me. But I guess I cope by fighting back when I can. And I’ve never thought that just because you’re going to lose, it means you shouldn’t fight. If it’s a good fight, it’s worth fighting whether you win or lose, is my motto’. Anna, an offspring of Holocaust survivors, shared a similar sense of resilience following her parents’ struggles: ‘In terms of my being a child of survivors, what they imparted on me was the importance of surviving’. Lastly, participants who identified as LGBTQ+ shared a sense of perspective that helped them to cope with the current situation and feel an integrity with their identity in spite of it, as did Jacqueline: ‘Being an intersectional Jew intersecting with the Queer community and being a woman of a certain age, it’s tough. Not as tough as it is for the kids, because, like I said, I’ve seen it all before. I know we go through this cyclical thing every 30 years or so…People know. They know I’m Queer, and they know I’m Jewish, and I’m okay with that. I really am very comfortable with that’.
Discussion
The purpose of the present study was to understand how older adults of the Jewish community in Vancouver, Canada, were impacted by the October 7 attack in Israel and by the rise in antisemitism that has overshadowed reactions to the attack and to the Israel–Hamas war. Our findings show that all participants were deeply affected by the October 7 attack and the ensuing war. Furthermore, the public discourse surrounding the attack and the war, which they experienced as anti-Israeli and at times antisemitic, has permeated many aspects of their lives and upended their sense of safety and belonging. Some individuals were doubly impacted by these events, among them Holocaust survivors and their offspring; Jewish older adults who were LGBTQ+; and immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who came to Canada in later life. In the face of these stressors, an impressive ability for resilient coping was evident, alongside an integrated and proud sense of Jewish identity.
Being exposed to anti-Israeli rhetoric, and being reproached for the actions of the Israeli government because one is Jewish, as some of our participants described in their interviews, are experiences that meet the IHRA definition of antisemitic acts (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, 2016). Furthermore, many of them felt that they were seen as “White colonialists” or as oppressors, which felt to them like a minimization of their own lived histories as members of a minority group, and even a grim reversal of it. This echoes similar qualitative findings from a recent study among social work students and professionals in the US, and the authors suggest that such attitudes towards Jewish students can hamper their sense of well-being and safety (Cox & Marlowe, Reference Cox and Marlowe2024). In much the same way, the participants we interviewed described feeling less safe as Jews, and their concerns were exacerbated by worries for the safety of the younger generations in their families.
Although most of the people we interviewed did not describe having experienced explicit antisemitic acts towards themselves personally, many did describe a political and social climate that is steeped in the Israel–Hamas conflict, where they met examples of this involvement in everyday aspect of their lives, such as encountering anti-Israeli graffiti and banners in public spaces and hearing of or directly experiencing hateful speech towards Israel. According to the participants we interviewed, such occurrences were felt as threatening. This is in line with previous studies that have shown how acts of crime against a certain group can negatively affect the well-being of older members of that minority group, even if they were not directly exposed to them (i.e., Li et al., Reference Li, Kang and Nguyen2024).
These experiences can be interpreted through the lens of minority stress theory, which posits that people from minority ethnic groups who are exposed to negative stigmas and exclusionary practices against them are at higher risk to their mental and physical health, which can continue into later life (Inventor et al., Reference Inventor, Paun and McIntosh2022). Exposure to these stressors is occurring at a critical time in our participants’ lives in terms of their late-life development. Drawing upon a life-stage developmental perspective, older adulthood represents an important period in life, where central tasks involve finding a delicate balance between a continued involvement with society and focusing on self-reflection and tapping into one’s wisdom to adjust to the challenges of this stage in life (Erikson & Erikson, Reference Erikson and Erikson1998). Having to cope with such adversities in their immediate environment might put this developmental process at risk and hinder their adjustment.
Importantly, many of the older adults we interviewed shared impressive abilities to mitigate the distress they were facing in significant ways. These mostly stemmed from what can be termed community-based resilience processes (Meyer, Reference Meyer2015), as many participants relayed to us their deepening connections with their Jewish communities and their close network of friends and family. This was also described by the service providers, who attested to the strong need of older adults to come together in Jewish settings where older adults could feel belonging and safety. Furthermore, participants in our study described existing within a public discourse that has become steeped in identity politics (i.e., ‘White oppressors’, ‘Jewish colonialists’). In this way, their own Jewish identity is always being cued and emphasized. In response, the individuals we interviewed described feeling driven to active involvement with the Jewish community and with supporting Israel, which may have been a significant source of resilience and a sense of meaningful involvement (Zhang et al., Reference Zhang, Barreto and Doyle2020).
Embracing one’s Jewish identity and actively engaging in acts of support towards Israel as our participants did were important modes of coping with their sense of exclusion and distress following the October 7 attack, the war, and the rise in antisemitism. Although they felt fear and concerns for their safety, this identification probably helped them boost resilience and sense of belonging, important aspects of psychological well-being in later life (Ryff & Singer, Reference Ryff, Singer, Palmersheim, Brim, Ryff and Kessler2004). In line with the Dual Process Model (Stroebe & Schut, Reference Stroebe and Schut2010), these may have been forms of restoration-oriented responses to the sense of psychosocial loss brought about by the rise in antisemitism. Thus, our participants’ coping can be seen through this theory as navigating a cycle of mourning of social exclusion while striving to rebuild identity, security, and community belonging. These modes of coping reflect recent findings among older Chinese Americans, who reported a complex approach of both preserving their heritage and culture, as well as concealing their cultural identity in the face of experiences of racial discrimination (Cho et al., Reference Cho, Gürsoy, Cheah, Zong and Ren2024). Furthermore, many participants described that they leaned on personal perspectives based on previous, similar experiences with antisemitism. This may have possibly deepened their ability to find meaning and make sense of a difficult reality (Shmotkin & Shrira, Reference Shmotkin and Shrira2013). This resilience in the face of current hardship while drawing from one’s previous stressful experiences lends credibility to the inoculation hypothesis, which suggests that previous exposure to adverse life events can, under some circumstances, lead to resilience in the face of current adversity among older adults (e.g., Palgi et al., Reference Palgi, Gelkopf and Berger2015). Our findings suggest that social connectedness and support are some of the conditions for such an inoculation effect in the face of minority stressors.
This mode of coping, however, may have also contributed to our participants’ own adherence to identity politics. This was indicated by a tendency expressed by most of our participants to view the current war and the responses to it in a ‘them’ versus ‘us’ form of thinking. In the face of what they experienced as a divisive and hateful discourse towards Israel, many responded by defending their culture and Israel, and, apart from a few, most did not express any criticism towards the Israeli government and its actions in Gaza during the war. Moreover, in the very intensive political discourse that was taking place in Canada while our interviews were conducted, it appeared that most forms of criticism towards Israel were interpreted by our participants as antisemitic, and not as potentially legitimate condemnations of its government’s actions against Palestinian citizens. It is possible that in such an atmosphere there was no room to question whether certain critiques of the Israeli government could be legitimate, or whether there should be a more nuanced discussion of the war. This can also be explained in light of post-traumatic psychic mechanisms. Often, when an individual or a group are faced with threatening and extreme stress, a psychological process known as dissociative splitting can occur (i.e., ‘them’ vs. ‘us’, or ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’), which can help to restore one’s sense of safety and to disengage from what might be perceived as overwhelming threats to one’s sense of self (Shalgi, Reference Shalgi2024). In the long term, however, splitting-based psychological functioning might come at the expense of more nuanced approaches to conflictual situations and an ability for empathy with members of other groups who are victimized (Volkan et al., Reference Volkan, Scholz and Fromm2023).
Another notable finding was that older adults who had been exposed to previous trauma, such as people who had survived the Holocaust, or offspring of survivors, described a sense of being retraumatized by the attack of October 7, 2023, and by the ubiquitous pro-Palestinian demonstrations. This is echoed in similar findings from recent research, which has shown, for example, that following the October 7 attacks in Israel, survivors with Holocaust-related PTSD symptoms showed more distress (Maytles et al., Reference Maytles, Bergman, Frenkel-Yosef and Shrira2025). It appears that such a reactivation of previous trauma is based on intrusive thoughts that form links between the focal potentially traumatic event with previous trauma (Shrira et al., Reference Shrira, Greenblatt-Kimron and Palgi2024). Those who were exceptionally vulnerable to feeling retraumatized and threatened by the current situation were Jewish older immigrants from the former Soviet Union. This is in line with previous studies, reflecting the vulnerability and potential social exclusion of older people from minority communities who also face language barriers due to having immigrated later in life (Nyqvist et al., Reference Nyqvist, Häkkinen, Renaud, Bouchard and Prys2021). Our findings indicate that previous experiences of exclusion and trauma can intersect with current vulnerability in significant ways, threatening the well-being and health of Jewish older adults in the face of current stressful experiences.
Another group that described intersections between previous stressful experiences of discrimination and the current situation were LGBTQ+ participants, who doubly felt the brunt of anti-Israel sentiment within the LGBTQ+ community, but also struggled to connect within the Jewish community, which was described by them as conservative and unequivocally supportive of Israel, leaving them without a safe place to share more complicated feelings about the situation. It was clear, though, that they felt much more excluded and discriminated against as Jews in LGBTQ+ contexts. Earlier research has indeed revealed that belonging to more than one marginalized group can lead to detrimental health outcomes, as it can be a form of ‘double whammy’ for one’s ability to adapt to minority stress, especially in old age, which can compound adaptation through age-related challenges and losses (Shenkman et al., Reference Shenkman, Ifrah and Shmotkin2021). Challenges to one’s sense of identity have been noted in previous research in the context of intersectionality and minority stress theory, showing that conflicts between one’s sexual identity and ethnic or cultural identity are linked with significant distress (Shepherd et al., Reference Shepherd, Rentería, Capielo Rosario and Brochu2025). Importantly, even in the face of such challenges, LGBTQ+ participants related an ability to retain a strong, integrated sense of Jewish identity, pointing to the impressive resilience among this subgroup as well.
Narrative identity theory can provide a valuable framework for interpreting how the participants of the present study may have reconfigured meaning in the context of the Israel–Hamas war. Narrative identity refers to the internalized and evolving life story that individuals formulate to give their lives a sense of consistency, purpose, and coherence over time (McAdams, Reference McAdams2001). Stressful or traumatic events can disrupt one’s ongoing personal narrative, prompting a meaning-making process through which present experiences bring individuals to revisit and reinterpret past experiences (Freeman, Reference Freeman2010). Through this process of putting one’s experiences in context, adversity and suffering may be reinterpreted as resilience, and one’s identity can be seen as rooted in communal or larger social frameworks.
Lastly, the present study cannot be regarded without accounting for its limitations. The sample for this study was based on open-ended interviews with a relatively small sample of participants. Within this sample, only a small subset of participants identified as LGBTQ+, limiting our ability to reach broader conclusions about this group. Moreover, these individuals were reached through methods of convenience sampling and through snowball methods. The Jewish population in Vancouver, Canada, is unique and distinct from other Jewish communities in other parts of the world and maybe even from other provinces within Canada. Thus, extrapolating from our results should be done with caution, as the characteristics of our methods and sample may have biased our results and limited their generalizability. Lastly, we relied on a cross-sectional analysis and did not follow our participants over time, and therefore cannot form conclusions about their long-term experiences before or since the war. Importantly, however, ours was a preliminary study that approached a previously uncharted question – how have Jewish older adults in the Diaspora responded to the Israel–Hamas war and to the current social changes that have taken place since it broke out? Relying on qualitative methods can be advantageous to that end as they enable us to assess the full depth and uniqueness of our participants’ experiences and their perspective (McConnell et al., Reference McConnell, Janulis, Phillips, Truong and Birkett2018).
The present exploratory study suggests important outcomes that should be considered for future policy and research. Ours is one of the few studies, to our knowledge, to explore the effects of antisemitism among older adults. This contributes to extant knowledge, as it sheds light on its outcomes for people in later life, who are often a less vocal and less salient group in society (Baars, Reference Baars2025). Our findings suggest that the October 7 attack and the Israel–Hamas war, and perceived antisemitism and anti-Israeli rhetoric, have had profound effects on Jewish older adults living in Canada, and this must be recognized and given appropriate attention. Service providers should be encouraged to enquire among their Jewish older adult care recipients regarding their sense of safety and well-being, given the current atmosphere. Furthermore, in light of the importance of social support from within the Jewish community as it emerged in our interviews, it is important to facilitate any initiative that will empower Jewish and LGBTQ+ older adults to promote collaborative efforts providing peer support within their communities. These might include support groups, social gatherings, whether face-to-face or online, and other efforts that can enhance social resilience. On a societal level, it is of utmost importance to assure that older adults feel safe and unencumbered by fear within their communities. Implicit antisemitism, or criticism towards Israel that calls for its annihilation, might beget further antisemitic acts, and more should be done to eliminate it (Walker et al., Reference Walker, Cole, Friedman, Rom-Rymer, Steinberg and Warshaw2024). Thus, governments and communities need to promote a deeper commitment to fighting antisemitism and promoting equality and hate-free speech. Future research should focus on assisting vulnerable older adults, including tailoring intervention programs and policy changes that acknowledge the negative effects of antisemitism for older adults. Lastly, the present preliminary study raises questions that future, larger scale research should address regarding the effects of minority stress among Jewish and Jewish LGBTQ+ older adult populations in wider communities.
Financial support
This work was funded by The Minerva Center on Intersectionality in Aging, University of Haifa. Grant number 1820001171.
