Three Years On: Grief, Resilience and Joy
Fighting antisemitism, day in and day out, and hearing directly from families affected by bigotry is not easy. Often, when I talk to people about my work, they ask me what gives me hope. But that’s not a hard question. I always come back to the same answer.
I say that we are a people of miracles. After everything the Jewish people have endured, we still show up for one another, still ask hard questions, and still search for a way forward. We are still here, arguing and worrying – and also thriving and creating. That should give us all hope.
And it’s what comes to mind as we mark the third anniversary of October 7, 2023.
While antisemitism may have receded from daily headlines, for many Jewish families and communities it has become a constant calculation in their daily lives. A parent decides each morning whether their son wears a baseball cap to cover his yarmulke on the way to school. A college student weighs whether a Star of David necklace is worth the look it might draw in a study group. A family thinks twice before mentioning an upcoming trip to Israel at a dinner party.
These are all decisions that Jewish people make just to get through an ordinary week, decisions that three years ago most of us didn’t think twice about. The unfortunate reality is that these decisions are not based on a misplaced fear. The record makes that painfully clear.
2025 was the deadliest year for antisemitic violence against Jews outside Israel in more than three decades, worse than any year since 1994. Fifteen people were murdered at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. Two people were killed outside of a synagogue in Manchester, England on Yom Kippur. A young couple was killed outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. An elderly woman died from injuries sustained in the firebombing of a peaceful gathering in Boulder, Colorado.
These were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors, and above all, they were people who should still be with us today.
Yet none of this tragedy feels entirely unfamiliar to our people. Jewish communities endured the unimaginable – conversions, enslavement, expulsions, inquisitions, pogroms, farhuds, and worse. Tragically, persecution is not unfamiliar to the Jewish people. Across centuries of expulsions, pogroms and violence, Jews have endured — not simply by surviving, but by continuing to build, create and believe in a better future.
Such hope is not a passive exercise. Our continuity is not preordained. Our survival is the result of a continuous process of choosing, again and again, to build a resilient Jewish life.
It’s lighting candles, gathering for holidays, sending our children to day school. It’s wrapping tefillin, buying Israel bonds, erecting a sukkah, or playing in a JCC basketball league. We make the choice, in ways large and small, to keep moving forward, from generation to generation.
Three years on from October 7, this resilience burns brightly, an unmistakable light that illuminates our world despite the palpable grief. Synagogues that once worried about shrinking attendance are packed again for holidays and simchas. Enrollment in Jewish camps continues to grow. Young people who were held hostage by Hamas after October 7 are now getting married, launching careers and reclaiming their lives.. Joy and hardship are living side by side.
Make no mistake: resilience is an active pursuit. It is not just withstanding the bad things the world throws at us. It’s about fighting back.
For instance, in California, a coalition of more than 70 organizations, including ADL, helped pass legislation that gives Jewish K-12 students greater protections against antisemitism in schools. We’re seeing momentum in Congress to pass the SACRED Act, a bipartisan bill that would create safe zones around every place of worship in the country to prevent agitators from targeting congregants as they enter or exit a building. Four states and New York City already have passed similar laws or enacted comparable local protections. We also launched a network of law firms to provide free legal assistance to victims of antisemitism, no matter who or where they are in the U.S.
Three years after 10/7, we are still mourning. But we also are rebuilding. We are fighting back. We are not allowing those who hate us to define us. And we are proclaiming loudly and without fear, Am Yisrael Chai.
