October 7, 2025
Dear JYC Global Family,
It has been two years since October 7, 2023, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. It has also been two years since the beginning of a war marked by unthinkable suffering: tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, millions more displaced, and entire communities engulfed in terror and famine.
Since then, nearly 100,000 lives have senselessly been lost — Israeli and Palestinian civilians, activists, journalists, aid workers, and children — and 46 hostages remain in captivity.
The violence has scarred families, torn through communities, and left many of us carrying fear, loss, and uncertainty. As peace talks continue to unfold, we are reminded that reconciliation cannot happen only in political halls — it must begin in human hearts.
To those who have lost loved ones, who have felt unsafe, or who have struggled to hold on to hope — we see you, we grieve with you, and we hold you close in our hearts.
In the immediate days after October 7, uncertainty engulfed JYC. We questioned whether we could continue. How could we ask our singers and their families to face each other in such a moment of raw pain and fear?
We canceled our fall 2023 tour, postponed rehearsals, and moved dialogue online. For a time, it was unclear whether we could keep going at all.
But keep going, we did. Not only have we kept going — but since that moment of rupture, we have deepened our commitment and grown in ways we never could have imagined.
What has followed since October is both a pause to mourn what has been lost, and a testament to what our singers have built since: resilience, courage, and harmony that refuses to be silenced. In spite of everything, still, we sing.
A Moment to Mourn
Even — and especially — in times of war, we gather. We live with unrelenting devastation: each of us knows someone killed, kidnapped, or displaced.
The Arabic and Hebrew songs in our ballad, An Ode to All We’ve Lost (created with our friend, Jacob Collier), give voice to our unspeakable grief.
The Arabic and Hebrew songs interwoven together carry our grief into song:
• في حزن وسع المدى – Fi Hizn Wisa’ ilMada: An Arabic setting of “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” from Les Misérables, iconic throughout the Arab world, reminding us of all the songs silenced in this war.
• בדידות (שלכת) – Bedidut (Shalechet): A Hebrew setting of the French classic “Je Suis Malade”, deeply rooted in Israeli culture, singing the pain of lives lost too soon, like leaves falling before their time.
Despite the unimaginable ache we carry, our singers still manage to hold fast to this truth: my pain does not cancel out yours. Only by binding our futures together can we break the cycle of violence and begin to build a just world for all.
A Resolve to Sing
Some communities rejected our story: Jewish spaces unwilling to hear about our Palestinian singers, Palestinian spaces unwilling to hear about our Israeli singers. We lost $500,000 in promised funding from USAID. We faced public shaming and personal threats from BDS. At times, it felt like the world did not want peace, did not want us to succeed, and that we were advocating for a hopeless cause.
And yet. Still, we sing.
Like the Cellist of Sarajevo, who created beauty as the world collapsed around him, we keep singing — not primarily to be heard, but to practice who we are and to compose a future we can all share. Where others lay down their instruments, they raise their voices.
After October 7, EVERY single singer came back. Families voted unanimously to keep going, recognizing that if there was ever a moment when this work mattered most, it was now.
Since then, we have not only survived — we have grown. In the past two years, we have:
- Increased singer enrollment by 50%, with an 87% retention rate
- Expanded our curriculum from a one-year to a four-year cycle
- Doubled rehearsals and weekly meetings
- Added weekly private voice lessons for every singer
- Tripled our Jerusalem staff, including more music teachers, facilitators, translators, and admin support, and expanded our US team.
These milestones reflect more than organizational growth; they are a collective choice to meet fear with courage and division with connection. Together, we transpose stories of pain into harmonies of hope — an antidote for ourselves and for the world.
A Solemn Day in Toronto; Still, Hope Rises
As peace talks continue to unfold between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, we offer another kind of conversation — not across negotiating tables, but across harmonies. Ours is dialogue made audible: trust, compassion, and courage, woven note by note into something the world desperately needs.
After two agonizing years, we know that hope cannot wait for peace — it must create it. For us, hope is mandatory.
We’ve carried that steadfast hope to Toronto for the Glenn Gould Foundation’s Promise of Music Festival, a global congress on the social impact of music. Just last night, for opening night — which fell on the eve of October 7 here in Canada — we led singing circles, sharing the songs of hope the world needs most right now.
And today, as you read this blog, to mark the gravity of the day, we are gathering in a Toronto garden — surrounded by nature — to reflect, journal, and hold space for one another. It is a remarkably difficult act any day, but especially today. Out of grief, we are building courage — and sharing it with the world. Still, we sing.
In just two days, on Thursday, October 9, we will stand together on stage, powerfully and defiantly, amplifying our stories and harmonies of hope. Our festival performance, Hope Rises [get tickets here], feels all the more meaningful in this moment when, for the first time in a long while, a fragile sense of hope has begun to emerge globally.
Then, the very next day — Friday, October 10 — we will be welcomed into the Danforth Multifaith Commons, to perform for the Danforth Jewish Circle and their coalition of interfaith partners— an audience of diverse voices living out the harmony we strive to build each day. There is still time to join them.
An Invitation: Add Your Voice to the Chorus
In times when it would be easier to fall silent, we choose to keep singing — and your support is the harmony that carries our song forward.
This is what peacebuilding looks like: not sudden or simple, but slow and steady. It takes shape in rehearsal rooms where young people — told to hate each other — choose instead to listen and sing together, cultivating authentic friendships. It grows through vulnerability shared in spaces where the world says they don’t belong.
As Dahlia, one of our alumni and now an intern, shares:
“JYC has shown me the power of true human connection beyond race, language, or religion and how rare that is to find today. Our backbone is built on friendships, dedication, and the shared hope for a better future.”
Your support sustains this harmony and this hope.
As peace talks unfold, may the courage our singers model in song guide all of us toward the just and lasting peace we seek.
✨ With steadfast resolve,
Micah, Amer, Jackie, and the Jerusalem Youth Chorus✨
Still, we sing.