Some 40 Yeshiva University students woke up bright and early on a Sunday morning during midterm period to load onto two coach buses—one for the women’s campus and the other from the men’s campus—to spend eight hours riding roundtrip to Washington, D.C., to attend the “Stand Together” pro-Israel rally at the Nationals Park baseball stadium.

Vered Gottlieb, a senior from Edison, N.J., told JNS that “it was a debate” for her whether to attend the rally due to pending midterms the following day and later on in the week.

“It was important to go to this rally to show our brothers and sisters in Israel that we stand together with them and we care about them,” she said, “and to remind those in office that we care about Israel and it’s important to us that they continue to support policies that will help Israel.”

The midterm period at the university runs from Oct. 30 to Nov. 18.

Rebecca Kalmar, a senior from Milwaukee, told JNS that attending the rally was “a no-brainer.”

“In the face of increasing global antisemitism and the suffering of a country at war, it’s so important to show the Israeli people and the world at large that Israel has a strong supportive base committed to standing for what’s right,” she said.

Naomi Rose, a senior from Brooklyn, N.Y., told JNS that it’s important “to show our support for Israel, especially at times when there are so many protesters against us and so many people calling for the destruction of our homeland.”

“We are here,” she said. “We are not going away.”

Sunday’s rally, organized by the Jewish Federations of North America and Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations andpart of the Federations’ General Assembly, drew an estimated 2,500 people.

That was far fewer than the 290,000 who attended the “March for Israel” on the National Mall on Nov. 14, 2023.

Yeshiva’s 40-strong delegation was also smaller than in the prior year, when the university canceled undergraduate and high school classes and some 2,500 students, faculty and administration attended the event in D.C.

“It’s an unfortunate scenario,” Jonathan Krombach, a senior from Los Angeles, told JNS, adding that students who love and support Israel “realized that tests and other commitments that they had were interfering.”

“It’s not so realistic to be able to drop everything on a dime and go to a rally,” he said.

“After Oct. 7, it was the first time where people actually had the ability to express what was going on in such a deep, meaningful way,” he said, on the bus ride to Washington. “Now, over a year later, the need to express that and the need to put everything else in your life on hold doesn’t have as much strength.”

“When the fear of the continued existence of your people is no longer as fresh or as searing in your mind, your previous priorities start to resurface,” he added.

Uriel Sussman, a senior from Valley Stream, N.Y., who represents Yeshiva College on the university’s student council, told JNS that he learned on Oct. 21 that Federations had invited Yeshiva to attend the rally.

The first email from the university inviting students to register for the event came on Nov. 5. Sussman told JNS that the Orthodox Union “did a lot of work encouraging” Yeshiva to attend and sponsored the school’s two buses.

“It wasn’t really clear that there was a lot of student interest at the beginning,” Sussman said. “Since we decided so late, the main challenge was getting people to sign up.”

He added that Yeshiva student government representatives sent out messages to students trying to gauge their interest. The night before the rally, 75 students were registered to attend, according to Sussman. But by the next morning, some 40 showed up.

Yeshiva’s decision to attend ultimately “came down to realizing the importance of YU’s place in the community,” which “in many ways really does look to YU to lead the way,” Sussman said.

At the rally in Washington, Julie Platt, chair of the JFNA board of trustees, told JNS that she wishes a rally wasn’t necessary this year.

“I wish our hostages were home. I wish the war was over,” she said. “But it’s not and we can’t be fatigued in our ability to stand up together.”

“We need to know that we are not alone but that we have each other as well,” she said.

On the bus ride back to New York, Rebecca Kalmar, the senior from Milwaukee, told JNS that she was somewhat disappointed.

“I already knew that turnout would likely be low and that not too much had been done to advertise the event,” she said. “But it was still disheartening to see how few people came and how quick people were to leave the stands when it started to drizzle.”