InterVarsity students hosted a “Remembering Israel” service this week to unify campus in prayer and mourning for the suffering in Israel.

Seniors Kaeleigh Di Cello, Abigail Snyder, and Elizabeth Sible hosted the event in Christ Chapel.

“It started with us wanting to get campus to come together and educate about what’s happening and then mourn and pray together,” Snyder said.

A lot of attention went into organizing the liturgy of the event, according to Di Cello.

“We wanted it to be very scripture-saturated,” Di Cello said. “We very purposefully picked the songs to reflect the scripture we were reading and to reflect the mourning state that Israel and the Jewish people are in right now. We are mourning but also with the hope that God is completely sovereign and in control of the nations.”

Ushers handed out pamphlets at the beginning of the service, each containing a prayer card for one of the roughly 242 hostages currently missing. Passages, an organization which takes Hillsdale students to the Holy Land each year, provided the information on the cards. 

“Praying specifically for the hostages was something we wanted to emphasize,which is why we put the prayer cards in the bulletins,” Di Cello said. “What happened on Oct. 7 was horrifying, and it’s not over yet. So, we’re just continuing to pray for the terror that is being inflicted on the Israeli hostages and the Palestinians who are also trying to flee from Hamas.”

Sible said the vigil had a diverse audience. 

“It felt like it was a very intergenerational crowd from both the community and the student body as well,” Sible said. “It was encouraging to see how all generations care about Israel or at least were interested in coming, regardless of their level of interest in the conflict in Israel.”

Snyder has personal connections to Israel, which she said inspired her to start the conversation about remembering Israel and the tragedies which have occurred there over the past month.

“I have lived in Israel for over four summers, and I have friends over there and in the Israel Defense Forces and it just became clear that the situation was becoming worse,” Snyder said. 

Di Cello emphasized the importance of unifying in prayer when in times of crisis. 

“I think there’s kind of an awakening when big things happen and terrible things cause us to pray, and it’s an awakening that we should be praying like this all the time,” Di Cello said. “We want to be a praying campus, specifically for Israel and for the genocide that has taken place and make people aware and be praying for them in that regard.”

Snyder said she hopes Hillsdale students will continue praying for Israel and for God’s protection over his people.

“We want this service to be a beginning for people to be thinking about and talking about Israel, and know that Jews around the world, including here in the United States, are mourning and are feeling abandoned in many ways,” Snyder said. “We have a responsibility to come around them and support them and pray for them.”