Joseph Shenker, senior chair of Sullivan & Cromwell, was in Israel on Oct. 7, celebrating Simchat Torah, as he has done many times before. Shenker has a deep and long-running connection with Israel. That connection now finds outsized influence as he, and the rest of the world, watch the fallout of the Hamas attacks and the conflict that continues to batter the region. 

As Hamas unleashed a brutal attack on the civilian population of Israel bordering the Gaza strip, slaughtering people at a music festival, in towns and taking hostages back into Gaza, Shenker was in his Jerusalem synagogue’s bomb shelter, just on the backside of the president’s residence, as the events unfolded.