By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
The ShinShinim and community volunteers placed the photos of hostages in the Nova Grove
This past fall, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, we planted 18 new trees in the front lawn of the Trager Family JCC’s Jewish Heritage Fund Campus.
It is named the Nova Grove in honor of the lives lost, taken hostage, and irrevocably changed during Hamas’ murderous spree at the Nova Music Festival, where young Israelis had gathered to celebrate life – but instead confronted terror and death. Some 370 attendees were killed, with 44 others taken to Gaza as hostages.
“It’s a small way to honor the terrible tragedy that happened in Israel,” says Tom Wissinger, Vice President of the Jewish Community of Louisville and Executive Director of the Trager Family JCC. Hamas’s murderous rampage at the festival “was a defining moment of October 7.”
“We had people who were at the Nova Festival come and speak to us in Louisville, which made it even more real to us over here,” Wissinger added. The Nova Grove installation includes contributions by our ShinShinim Kyla and Eden. As Israelis, events surrounding October 7 affected them profoundly, so they took the lead in arranging photographs in the Nova Grove and in large measure determining its overall tone.
“Working with the ShinShinim, for me, was a very meaningful act,” Wissinger says. “It’s a small act that has a large and profound meaning of love, respect and ideally, peace to come to the State of Israel and to the region.”
Planting trees is an important part of the Jewish tradition of honoring our lost loved ones. It is also a testament to our future resilience as a powerful way to remember a life now and leave a legacy that continues to grow into the future. The Nova Grove at the Trager Family JCC will be a permanent part of our campus to commemorate the attacks and remember the lives tragically cut short. It will also be a place where people can gather — as when the community came together recently to grieve the loss of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz.
As Celebrate! The Complete Jewish Holidays Handbook by Jason Aronson observes:
“Planting was also considered a way to create eternity. As the Talmud relates, a man named Honi once encountered a man planting a carob tree. “How long will it take to bear fruit?” he inquired. “About 70 years,” the man replied. “So you think you will live long enough to taste its fruits?” The man explained, “I have found ready-grown carob trees in the world. As my forefathers planted them for me, so I plant for my children.”
It’s no coincidence that the Nova Grove came into being near the holiday of Tu B’Shvat – often dubbed “the New Year for Trees” – celebrated each year on Feb. 13. As a core component of the current installation, next to the saplings 101 photos of hostages are staked into the ground.
Why 101 photos? Because until the ceasefire in Gaza that began on this past January 19, 101 men, women and children out of the original 250 hostages had spent more than a year in captivity. And though a number of those 101 hostages have been released during the ceasefire’s initial phase, many more remain consigned to the bleak darkness of Hamas’s tunnels.
Remembrance tugs at the soul. Indeed, as time goes by, we want to be sure people remember that there are innocent people still in Hamas captivity. The faces remind us that the people taken hostage are not just numbers or news updates – they are mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, friends, loved ones, and community members.
Reporting on the first anniversary of the attack on the Nova Festival, the Times of Israel included remarks from Nir Schlesinger, “whose father Asaf was killed on October 7 while leading the festival’s medical team.”
“There are no words in this world that can encompass what we went through and are still going through,” Schlesinger said. “You won’t be at my wedding… We won’t laugh together anymore about silly things, you won’t remind me to take care of my car, and we won’t talk enough.”
Trees speak when the human voice cannot.
“The life cycle of a tree closely mimics that of the human life cycle, and therefore planting a tree represents the idea of human life itself,” observes an entry on the website Shiva.com.
“When someone has experienced a loss during a shiva and throughout the mourning process, planting a tree is a very common way for friends and loved ones to show support…When one life ends, another one begins, and in this case, that life starts from the seeds of a tree. The tree becomes a tangible way for the memory of the deceased to live on forever.”
The daily reminder as people come into our parking lot and visit our building serves to keep them in our thoughts and continue to hope and pray for their safe return. Our plan is to display the photos at least through mid-March. When a hostage is deceased, they are marked with a dove. A hostage returned alive receives a yellow heart.
Future plans for the Nova Grove are still developing. Over the long-term we hope to have a path to guide visitors among the trees, and places where people can sit quietly and enjoy the simple beauty of nature, bound up in sustaining hope.
Or as the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks put it: To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair.