By Orna and Eldad Adar
(JTA) — Eleven months ago, Hamas murdered our daughter while she was dancing and celebrating life at a music festival in Re’im, Israel.
At 6:50 a.m. on Oct. 7, Gili messaged us that something was going on. She told us not to worry. More texts. Gunshots. She was hiding, warning friends to stay away from the area. At 9:14, she wrote: “Until now I wasn’t afraid. Now I’m scared.” By 9:35, we later learned, the terrorists found her. Within five minutes, they murdered Gili and nearly 30 other young people at point-blank range — a fraction of the 364 people who were killed at the festival.
After Gili’s death, we have found new roles ourselves.
We are gardeners, tending to the flowers on her grave and watering the seeds of her memory.
We are archivists, collecting thousands of photos and videos of our daughter; compiling hundreds, often unsolicited testimonials about the ways she shaped people’s lives.
We are messengers, talking about Gili with whomever will listen: Gili, with a conquering smile and an infectious laugh, “Guppy” to her campers, who took the coffee kit in her backpack to the mountains, the desert, the sea, who gave her heart to everyone from children with special needs to the store cashier.
More than anything, we miss Gili. The faint thrum of our constant grief can balloon in pitch and intensity when we least expect it. Waiting at a traffic light. Or at the supermarket, where our tears condense like the dew on the carton of milk we just removed from the refrigerator. When we’re awake or asleep, in every activity and every moment, we miss our girl. There is no life after Gili. Our only path into the future is with Gili.
And so we share Gili with others. They share her with us. We find her in unexpected places — the group of girls who got a common tattoo in her honor; the memories of a stranger she met on a Colombian beach. And we make pilgrimages to the places she loved the most, which brought us 6,000 miles over the ocean this summer to the United States to visit summer two camps, Tel Yehudah and Ben Frankel, that Gili called home.
Gili’s warmth melted barriers of language and distance until young campers felt part of one community. Gili never believed in a blank-check relationship with Israel, the kind that says always support and never question. She did, however, see the bonds between American and Israeli Jews as inviolable and fragile: ties that cannot be denied yet must be nurtured with joy, music, dance, food and more.
Today, as some young American Jews drift away from Israel, we ask them to remember that Israel is also Gili. It is Gili dancing at the Nova music festival, living a normal life in her early 20s, trying to figure out what career path she’ll pursue. Young American Jews should remember that they don’t have to choose between loving Israel and criticizing it: they can have a complex relationship that includes both.
Many times, forward is a bog, and we sink with each small step. Every day when we visit Gili’s grave, we see our charismatic girl inscribed across a headstone, a juxtaposition that feels like a contradiction. What does our daughter, always so full of life, have to do with a grave?
We search for life ourselves. We go to the theater and sports events. Months after an unimaginable rupture, we remain enveloped in an endless stream of love. Gili’s friends come to light the eighth candle of Hanukkah. Kids at Ben Frankel approach and ask if they can hug us.
There will never, ever, be an end to the grief. But there is, there must be, a continuity to the joy.
Five years ago, Gili and her friends built a giant Star of David out of wooden planks as a parting gift to Camp Tel Yehudah. To the right, in one photo, stands Gili, sporting denim shorts, a black long sleeve, sunglasses, and as usual, a smile. Pummeled by rain and snow, the structure was expected to remain intact for less than a year. Half a decade later, the Star of David stands tall.
Who would have thought Gili would be gone instead?
Like us, Gili’s friends want to share her light with others. We humbly ask, for our daughter, that you search for a sliver of joy wherever you can find it right now and share it with whoever you can.
Orna and Eldad Adar are the parents of two girls, Adi Adar and Gili Adar z”l. They live in Lapid, Israel.
