October 7 Was Three Years Ago. For Some, It Is Still Happening. | 10@9 | 2026.10.07

Good morning. Today is Wednesday, October 7th, 2026. About 1200 holy and pure people were murdered three years ago, 251 taken hostage, captive, too many of whom were later murdered. And we cannot even imagine, even at this date, even hearing so many of the stories we cannot imagine what they suffered. Plus, on that day, hundreds more brave men and women of the IDF fell in battle defending the people on the state of Israel, and that continues today. Plus, over 30,000 seriously wounded Israelis, for many of them their lives changed forever. Plus Jews all over the world, including Montreal, suffering the trauma of anti-Semitism, the trauma of Israel's vulnerability, the trauma of much of the world celebrating the cruelty and atrocities inflicted on us and doing so even today. Today, October 7th, 2026, we are all mourners. We are all survivors. Over the past three years, we have experienced what for most of us, certainly for me, has been the worst in our lives and over the past three years. We have seen and we see today incredible strength and resilience and beauty and nobility and rebuilding. I've shared many examples of this over the years. For today, I offer these two stories. This is a story I heard two years ago from Breweria Efun. You may remember that one of the hostages captured on October 7th, 2023 was Emily Hand. She was eight years old. She was released after 50 days of terror and trauma and pain. And so about two years ago, Emily's older sister Natalie shared a little bit of what Emily went through in Hamas captivity and how she changed, how she came home different as a result. And one thing that she said was particularly striking, not just because of the horror of what Emily endured, but also because of the tremendous beauty that we see. Natalie said that since Emily came home before every meal, before Emily eats anything, she looks at the people around her and asks if they are hungry, and offers them her food. Emily learned to do that in captivity. When she and the other hostages she was held with were barely given any food, any time they got anything to eat, the adults would first give from their own portion to the kids, Emily and the others, and to the elderly who were with them. Emily learned from the adults with her, and when she came home, she would offer her own food also before eating anything herself. Our people have these spaces between their hearts in which is to be found a piece of heaven, a piece of God, a form of pure kindness and good. May God bring Emily and all the others complete healing. Nisim Luke is the father of Shani Luke. She was taken captive on October 7th. She was then murdered in captivity by Hamas, and her body was only returned to Israel eight months later. And that's when there was a funeral for Shani Luke. Shani Luke is one of those who was most well known by the public due to the graphic, horrifying photo of her being dragged by terrorists in Tegazzo. It was on the front page of every newspaper on October 8th, 2023. Nisim Luke recalled that on the day of her funeral, again, about eight months later, just as he was about to speak, a young girl came up to him. She appeared to be maybe 20 years old. And this girl said to Nisim privately just before Nisim was about to deliver his eulogy for his daughter. She said to Nisim that she lives in Tel Aviv. And she said that one day I gave up. I gave up on life. Life for me was so bleak. There was so much sorrow. I was lying on the floor where I was living in Tel Aviv. And I didn't want to live anymore. And suddenly an angel came to me and told me, take my hand, reflect in my light, and I will share with you my strength. And that angel was Shani Luke. We are an angelic people. We raise each other up. We inspire each other with our beauty and our resilience and our compassion and our strength and our love. And we are somehow able, as we have done this throughout our history, and we continue doing it today to mourn and to celebrate at the same time. But allow me to add one cautionary note to what I've shared with you and to what we will experience today. And this is from an essay I read by Shira Lanquinsheps. Because I have spoken now and we will speak today about October 7, 2023 in the past tense. It was three years ago. That is how anniversaries work. We mark time because we need some way to hold it, to organize it. And so today, many of us will, like candles, tell stories, return to photographs, say the names of the dead, count the years, and try to understand the difference, the distance between who we were then and who we are now. That is normal. But trauma does not move neatly with the calendar. You remember for years, one of the most urgent sentences we spoke was, bring them home, bring the captives home. And thank God that happened. Yes. But home is not a finish line. You can cross the border and still carry the tunnel with you. I think sometimes we want survival stories to be cleaner than they are. We want the person to come home and then we want the healing. I've had the privilege to personally witness that the healing takes a long time. On my visits to Israel, on my visits to the hospitals, on my visits to the rehabilitation centers, for many people, October 7th is still happening now today, either in the permanent wounds, which will not heal or the post trauma, where the brain sees and experiences the trauma in the present. It doesn't move into the memory. That's what post trauma does. For that person, the trauma is happening now. It is happening in bodies that still react before the mind knows why. Now today, it happens in soldiers who came home changed. In survivors who return to families who love them desperately and are still learning how to love the person who came back, and they will continue to try to do that. It's happening now in people who are building beautiful lives that do not erase what happened to them. We mark this anniversary of the horrific nightmarish horrors of October 7th, 2023. But part of our remembering October 7th is also understanding that for the people who live through it most directly, memory is not something they visit in the past once a year. It lives with them in the present. May God bless them and us to get the help they need for Rufus Lema, for complete healing, for Rufu Asha Nefesh, a healing of the soul and the psyche and the emotions, as well as Rufu Asha Guf, a complete healing of the body and the limbs and the organs for them and for all of us. My friends, I wish you a meaningful day today, and I look forward to seeing you soon in person.