It started 26 days after her son was kidnapped from the Nova music festival. Rachel Goldberg-Polin tore a strip of masking tape, wrote a number on it, and pressed it to her chest. The next day she wrote “27,” then “28,” then “29.” She said later she was inspired by her childhood memories from 1979, when 52 Americans were taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Every evening, ABC News began its coverage with a running count of how many days they had been in captivity.It became a way to bear witness—an act of protest, an insistence to all who saw it: “My child is still gone, you may not turn away.”My wife Jacqueline met Rachel on the street one day in our neighborhood in Jerusalem in 2009. They struck up a conversation and, Rachel being Rachel, we were invited that Friday night for Shabbat dinner. Our families became friends. Hersh [...]

This past Tuesday, the Jewish world marked a heartbreaking milestone: two years since that terrible day that changed all of our lives. It was also the first day of the joyous holiday of Sukkot, which made for a powerful juxtaposition. We gathered in our sukkah, in the heart of our campus, trying to hold on to an almost impossible balance—the joy of the festival alongside the grief of remembrance for what has become one of the saddest days in our calendar, and certainly the saddest in most of our lifetimes. After our service—which included the reading of verses from our Torah, Hallel, and poems and songs of sorrow commemorating 10/7—I went home and watched the livestream of the remembrance ceremony held at Ganei Yehoshua in Tel Aviv, with more than 30,000 people in attendance. It was exquisitely done. There were songs from some of Israel’s most beloved contemporary performers, alongside voices [...]