Joy and grief have always lived side by side in Jewish life. In moments of profound darkness, our task is not simply to search for light, but to create it by gathering in community, supporting one another and turning our shared responsibility into action.

I am looking forward to the Chagigei Tishrei assembly at Talmud Torah this afternoon. With the school bursting at the seams because of record enrolment, there is particular joy in seeing children and teachers bring the holidays to life.

When I look around the room at newcomers and familiar faces of parents, grandparents, students, and educators, I see more than a celebration. I see community in action: people coming together across generations, strengthening Jewish life and creating a place where everyone belongs.

As we head into Simchat Torah, we are commanded to celebrate. Yet we cannot enter this holiday without remembering Simchat Torah 2023 and the events of October 7, and recognizing how profoundly they changed our Jewish world.

This October 7, I am thinking about the Canadian families whose loved ones were victims that day, especially those who came to Edmonton and entrusted us with their stories. We were privileged to bear witness.

I am thinking of Adi Vital Kaploun z”l, whose children witnessed her murder and were held and paraded by a Hamas terrorist while her booby-trapped body remained in their safe room. Her fierce heroism saved her children's lives. I am thinking of Irene, whose fiancé, Netta z”l, saved her life by leaping onto a grenade, and of her bravery in telling us her story on the first day she returned to Kfar Aza and later at Beth Israel with our youth and a visiting delegation of teens from Montreal. I am remembering Tiferet Lapidot z”l, whose aunt and parents came to the Alberta Legislature to share what a remarkable woman she was, full of light, and what happened to her at the Nova Festival. These names and stories remind us that remembrance is not abstract. It is a shared responsibility.

That responsibility calls us not only to remember, but also to gather, listen and act.

This coming week, Federation will bring our community together to remember with respect and to understand how this moment has affected young Israelis and communities in our partnership region in northern Israel. Our two shinshinim will join the conversation, together with their supervisor from the Jewish Agency, who will be visiting from Israel. There is still time to register.

People in Israel are grappling with how to remember and how to move forward, and we have wrestled with what an appropriate gathering here should hold. Together, we will turn remembrance into connection. We will collect messages for the returning children of Kfar Aza, Be'eri, and Kiryat Shmona, and prepare a guestbook of messages for President Isaac Herzog.

These gestures are small but meaningful expressions of a larger commitment: Federation helps our community translate care into action and sustain relationships across distance.

Last night, we brought together people people preparing to travel to Israel this fall on two separate missions, the Momentum moms' mission and a coast-to-coast Canadian mission, along with Michal and Nir, who are visiting from Metullah, and Alma and Ofri, our shinshinim. We heard about the experience of being displaced for close to two years, what returning home looks like and what awaits our travellers in Israel.

The conversation showed why Etzba HaGalil is truly an extension of our community. Federation strengthens that partnership by connecting people, directing strategic philanthropy and responding to what the region tells us it needs.

That work is reflected in stronger mental-health supports, schools, community-building initiatives and programs. It reflects a solidarity expressed not only in words, but through long-term investment shaped by the people who know their communities best.

As I got to know Alma and Ofri, I told them about our visit last year to Har Vagai High School, where we joined students in a run supporting the remaining hostages. Looking around the room that day, I was struck by the resilience of these young people. Whether displaced from their communities or remaining in the region, they had endured missiles, bombs and constant runs to shelters. I remarked to a colleague that, if I were stranded on a desert island, these were the young people I would want beside me.

Later, when I showed Alma photographs of the assembly before the run, she pointed to the very place where she had been standing. In that instant, an institutional partnership became personal. The distance between Edmonton and northern Israel seemed to disappear.

So many of us carry family stories and personal connections to people deeply affected by that day. How we remember, support one another and extend our responsibility beyond borders are expressions of what it means to be Am Yisrael, one Jewish people.

This is the work of Federation: bringing people together, strengthening the relationships that hold us and turning our shared values into collective action.

This week, I had the privilege of welcoming our staff team into my sukkah. Together, we found joy not by looking away from the darkness, but by recognizing what we are building within it: a strong, connected, and caring Jewish Edmonton.

That is the light we create when we act together.

Shabbat Shalom,

Stacey