Dear JCC Family,

On October 7, we will mark three years since Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 people in Israel, the deadliest single day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Three years since families were torn apart, since 251 hostages were dragged into tunnels, since a wound opened in the heart of our people that has not closed and may never fully close. I do not need to recount the details to this community. Too many of us know someone who knows someone, and too many of us felt it in our own bodies before we understood it in our minds.

I have thought a lot about what to say to our community this year. In the first two years, our task was to grieve, to hold each other, to make sense of the senseless. That work is not finished; grief does not run on a calendar, but three years in, I want to talk about something else too: what we do with it.

Let me start with what has stung the most. Since October 7, many of us have felt a particular kind of disappointment, watching people we thought would understand say too little, too late, or nothing at all. We have watched public figures, cultural institutions, universities, and corporations respond loudly to nearly every form of hatred while responding to antisemitism with far less urgency, sometimes with silence. I have felt that gap myself, in conversations with neighbors, colleagues, and people I once counted as allies.

But three years into this, I keep coming back to a different question than “Why are they not showing up for us?” The question I would rather ask is: are we showing up for one another?

I have watched this community prove true again and again since October 7, 2023; the answer to those who want us erased is not to make ourselves smaller. It is to make ourselves louder and prouder, more visibly and joyfully Jewish than we have ever been, and to show up for each other without waiting for anyone else’s permission.

That might sound counterintuitive, because the assumed instinct in the face of hatred is often to duck, to take off the necklace, skip the event, keep your head down until it passes. I understand that instinct, and I have felt it too, but then I think about what those who planned October 7 wanted. They wanted us afraid, hidden, for Jewish life in the diaspora to shrink, and Jewish life in Israel to disappear. Every time we gather, be it at the J or elsewhere in the community for Shabbat, for a preschool sing-along, for pickleball, for a class, for nothing more urgent than meeting a friend, we hand them a defeat.

Visibility matters, but it is not enough by itself. Jewish communities have always been remarkably good at building institutions: schools, synagogues, Federations, camps, museums, and JCCs. We did not build these because we expected the wider culture to make room for Jewish life. We built them because community requires intention, and that lesson matters as much today as it ever has. We cannot force a public figure to speak out or manufacture empathy from an institution that does not feel it. What we can do, what the Aaron Family JCC of Dallas has always done, is build something strong enough that our sense of belonging does not depend on anyone else’s validation.

That is the deeper purpose behind everything that happens inside our walls. A child in our preschool is learning that Jewish values are part of everyday life. A teenage counselor at Camp Chai is finding peers who share the same questions and traditions. A senior in one of our programs is maintaining friendship, purpose, and connection. A parent dropping off a child is building a support network without even realizing it. Sometimes someone walks through our doors needing something no registration form can capture: the simple knowledge that they are not alone.

Every time you walk through the doors of the J or any other Jewish community space, you make a small investment in this community. A membership renewed, a volunteer shift, a Shabbat program, a conversation in the lobby that runs longer than you planned. These moments feel ordinary; they are far from it. They build the relationships that carry a community through hard years, and antisemitism thrives in isolation. When people feel connected instead of alone, they have others to process hard news with, to challenge misinformation with, and to stand beside when it counts.

So here is what I am asking of you, plainly. Do not shrink. Come to the J, or other Jewish space, this week. Bring your kids, wear the Star of David where people can see it, sign up for the class you have been putting off, join the committee. If your membership has lapsed, renew it before the anniversary arrives. Grieve what needs to be grieved; we will always make space for that too, but please do not let grief be the only reason you walk through the doors this year.

Bring a friend who has not been back in a while. Show up on October 7 itself and show up again the week after. We do not need everyone outside of the Jewish community, and our allies, to understand us. We do need you here, showing up for the person standing next to you.

They wanted us gone; prove them wrong. Walk through our doors, and keep walking through them, loudly, together.