October 14, 2025
Dear JYC Global Family,
Yesterday, as the world watched the long-awaited release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the fragile beginning of a ceasefire in Gaza, our hearts were full — with relief, with grief, and with cautious hope. We share the tears of the families embracing loved ones once lost to uncertainty. We ache with the families facing the devastation that remains. We know that for every life returned, countless others are still searching for safety, for dignity, for home.
It is a moment of deep emotion and fragile beginnings — a reminder that peace is not a headline, but a human process. Healing, for all, will take courage, compassion, and time.
This was a hard week for our singers to serve as global ambassadors thousands of miles from home. When we began preparations for our travel to the first global congress on the social impact of music nearly a year ago, none of us could have imagined what this moment would bring. And yet, being together in Toronto during such a pivotal moment became profoundly meaningful — a powerful reminder of why JYC exists. To hold space for both pain and hope in the same breath. To show what is possible when Israelis and Palestinians choose to listen, to create, and to lead together.
Our participation in the Glenn Gould Foundation’s Promise of Music Festival – the first global congress on the social impact of music – became a living example of what our mission looks like in action. Indeed, light, truth, and connection can emanate from Jerusalem, if we choose to invest their sources.
In a world defined by division and hatred, our singers brought to Toronto their voices from East and West Jerusalem and showed that peace is not just an idea but a practice — one that can be heard, seen, and felt. Through our songs and stories, we demonstrated how music can move hearts and minds, inspiring both human connection and real change toward a more equitable and just shared future.
We were honored to share the stage with hundreds of extraordinary musical changemakers from around the world, including:
Micah represented JYC in the Festival panel, “Building Bridges to a Better Future,” where these practitioners and others shared how they each had been able to connect their work to broader changes in society, culture, and policy.
Our special invitation to participate in this festival affirmed JYC’s role as a global leader in musical peacebuilding, and was both an honor and a reminder of how essential our work is — and how deeply it resonates far beyond Jerusalem.
Now that our singers have safely landed back home, we bring with us the inspiration of all those we met — artists using music as a force for good against extraordinary odds — and return to the urgent work of healing our own communities. This experience reaffirmed what we have always known: that music is not only our medium but a crucial container for global and local change.
This week illuminated why our work must continue.
Because even in times of war, we meet.
Even in heartbreak, we sing.
Even when the world feels unbridgeable, we build the bridge anyway.
Our singers are not naïve. They know the cost of war intimately. But they also know something else — that harmony is not the absence of dissonance, but the willingness to listen through it. Each song we sing together is an act of resilience against despair and a declaration that a shared future is not only imaginable but necessary.
As our singers returned home to Jerusalem yesterday — on the same historic day as the return of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees — their voices carried with them the harmonies shared in Toronto: harmonies of understanding, hope, and love.
May those harmonies echo across borders and into the hearts of all who believe that peace begins with listening.
In hope and harmony,
Micah, Amer, Jackie, and the Jerusalem Youth Chorus