Three years on: Grief, resilience and joy
Fighting antisemitism, day in and day out, 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 the decisions are not based on a misplaced fear. The record makes that painfully clear.
Last year, 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, D.C. An elderly woman burned to death in a park 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. And yet, despite the pain and persecution, we always have held our heads high. Through it all, we’ve sustained ourselves with the hope that something sweeter lay around the corner.
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 last October 7 were Hamas’ hostages are now getting married, launching their careers and embracing life. 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.
JONATHAN GREENBLATT is CEO and National Director of the ADL (Anti-Defamation League).
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