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Telling the Story of How We Navigate Sorrow and Joy Simultaneously
The personal belongings of festival-goers are seen at the site of an attack on the Nova Festival by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
When I left my position as a producer at CNN and HBO nearly two decades ago, I wondered if I had made the greatest professional mistake of my life. After a career interviewing celebrities on red carpets and producing content that defined pop culture, I chose to align my career with my deepening spiritual journey. HBO offered everything to keep me – a four-day workweek to accommodate my shabbos observance, the fancy title of Executive Producer (at the age of 25!), and the professional capital I had spent 15 years building. Walking away meant abandoning a resume that included working with entertainment’s biggest names.
I asked myself: Had I wasted 15 years of my life developing skills that would never serve me, either professionally or for a higher purpose?
October 7, 2023, answered that question with devastating clarity.
In the aftermath of that horrific day, I discovered that my entire career had been preparation for this moment in history. I have had a few defining moments since Oct. 7, the AISH “Global Day” and “Global Hour” livestreams, multiple missions down South in the days just following the outbreak of the war, and two feature-length documentaries. At AISH, we continue to document one of the most pivotal chapters in modern Jewish history through our latest film, After October: Stories of Loss, Survival, and Unbreakable Faith.
This isn’t just another documentary. For me, it represents the completion of a circle, the moment when skills honed in one world found their true purpose in another. What began five years ago as a more behind-the-scenes role for me at AISH has culminated in what I consider the most meaningful position of my professional life.
Our approach with After October differs fundamentally from other post-October 7 documentaries. While many productions rightfully document the horrors and can leave viewers in a state of depression and despair, we made a conscious choice to follow a different path. Rabbi Steven Burg, CEO of AISH, reminds us that “there’s nothing stronger than the broken heart of a Jew.” A broken heart still beats, if we’ve survived, we have to thrive, and it’s our responsibility at AISH not just to educate but to empower.
We’ve been entrusted with raw, never-before-seen, exclusive footage from personal family archives that tells a fuller story than what appears in news headlines. The feature-length format allows us to explore depths impossible in shorter media. But most importantly, we’ve committed to showcasing stories that, while acknowledging unbearable pain, ultimately demonstrate resilience, faith, and an unbreakable spirit that has characterized Jewish survival throughout history.
What have I learned from these stories? Perhaps the most profound lesson concerns how we navigate joy and sorrow simultaneously. Many struggle with this emotional complexity — how to celebrate life’s milestones when empty chairs surround holiday tables, when hostages remain captive, when soldiers still fight and fall? The families most deeply affected by October 7 offer us profound guidance.
They give us permission to hold both realities at once, to acknowledge devastating loss while embracing life’s continuing joys as testament to their loved ones’ legacies. This is not compartmentalization but integration, a uniquely Jewish approach to trauma that has sustained us through millennia of persecution.
From the Bible through pogroms, inquisitions, and the Holocaust, our people have documented survival. These historical records provide the blueprint for how we move forward. As we create this modern documentation through film, we contribute to that eternal conversation between generations, showing those who come after us how faith sustained us during our darkest hours.
This project transcends professional achievement. When I interview these families, I’m not employing techniques refined on red carpets with celebrities. I’m meeting them on a soul level, with an open heart and a huge box of tissues. I view this as sacred work, ensuring these stories become part of our collective memory and spiritual inheritance.
I once worried my early career was wasted. Now I understand it was preparation. Every interview skill, every production technique, every storytelling device I mastered in those years now serves a purpose I could never have imagined. The path wasn’t wasted, it was waiting for this moment.
The greatest privilege of my life is using skills developed in one world to serve the eternal truths of another. In doing so, I’ve discovered that nothing is wasted when it ultimately serves a purpose. Nothing is lost when it finds its true home.
This film stands as my answer to a question I asked myself years ago: What was it all for? Now I know. It was for this, to help tell the stories that matter most, to document not just what breaks us but what makes us unbreakable.
After October isn’t just a film; it’s a testimony to the Jewish capacity to transform grief into purpose. It shows that while circumstances may break our hearts, our spirit remains whole. It demonstrates that even in our most vulnerable moments, we can still be witnesses to something greater than ourselves.
We created this documentary not just to document history but to sustain hope. These stories remind us that we have overcome tragedies before, and we will again. These stories show our persistence in the face of adversity. They show that in the face of tragedy, we come together to build instead of break down. They show our enemies that we have maintained not only our faith in God, but in the good of humanity, and each other, and that is the most important message of all.
Jamie Geller is the Chief Communications Officer and Global Spokesperson for Aish, following a distinguished career as an award-winning producer and marketing executive with HBO, CNN, and Food Network. She is also an 8-time bestselling author. Jamie has produced several documentaries with AISH with After October being the most recent.
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Security Warning to Israelis Vacationing Abroad Ahead of holidays
A passenger arrives to a terminal at Ben Gurion international airport before Israel bans international flights, January 25, 2021. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – Ahead of the Jewish High Holidays, Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) published the latest threat assessment to Israelis abroad from terrorist groups to the public on Sunday, in order to increase the Israeli public’s awareness of the existing terrorist threats around the world and encourage individuals to take preventive action accordingly.
The NSC specified that the warning is an up-to-date reflection of the main trends in the activities of terrorist groups around the world and their impact on the level of threat posed to Israelis abroad during these times, but the travel warnings and restrictions themselves are not new.
“As the Gaza war continues and in parallel with the increasing threat of terrorism, the National Security Headquarters stated it has recognized a trend of worsening and increasing violent antisemitic incidents and escalating steps by anti-Israel groups, to the point of physically harming Israelis and Jews abroad. This is in light of, among other things, the anti-Israel narrative and the negative media campaign by pro-Palestinian elements — a trend that may encourage and motivate extremist elements to carry out terrorist activities against Israelis or Jews abroad,” the statement read.
“Therefore, the National Security Bureau is reinforcing its recommendation to the Israeli public to act with responsibility during this time when traveling abroad, to check the status of the National Security Bureau’s travel warnings (before purchasing tickets to the destination,) and to act in accordance with the travel warning recommendations and the level of risk in the country they are visiting,” it listed, adding that, as illustrated in the past year, these warnings are well-founded and reflect a tangible and valid threat potential.
The statement also emphasized the risk of sharing content on social media networks indicating current or past service in the Israeli security forces, as these posts increase the risk of being marked by various parties as a target. “Therefore, the National Security Council recommends that you do not upload to social networks, in any way, content that indicates service in the security forces, operational activity, or similar content, as well as real-time locations.”
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Israel Intensifies Gaza City Bombing as Rubio Arrives
Displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza due to an Israeli military operation, move southward after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, in the central Gaza Strip September 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Israeli forces destroyed at least 30 residential buildings in Gaza City and forced thousands of people from their homes, Palestinian officials said, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived on Sunday to discuss the future of the conflict.
Israel has said it plans to seize the city, where about a million Palestinians have been sheltering, as part of its declared aim of eliminating the terrorist group Hamas, and has intensified attacks on what it has called Hamas’ last bastion.
The group’s political leadership, which has engaged in on-and-off negotiations on a possible ceasefire and hostage release deal, was targeted by Israel in an airstrike in Doha on Tuesday in an attack that drew widespread condemnation.
Qatar will host an emergency Arab-Islamic summit on Monday to discuss the next moves. Rubio said Washington wanted to talk about how to free the 48 hostages – of whom 20 are believed to be still alive – still held by Hamas in Gaza and rebuild the coastal strip.
“What’s happened, has happened,” he said. “We’re gonna meet with them (the Israeli leadership). We’re gonna talk about what the future holds,” Rubio said before heading to Israel where he will stay until Tuesday.
ABRAHAM ACCORDS AT RISK
He was expected to visit the Western Wall Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem on Sunday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hold talks with him during the visit.
US officials described Tuesday’s strike on the territory of a close US ally as a unilateral escalation that did not serve American or Israeli interests. Rubio and US President Donald Trump both met Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Friday.
Netanyahu signed an agreement on Thursday to push ahead with a settlement expansion plan that would cut across West Bank land that the Palestinians seek for a state – a move the United Arab Emirates warned would undermine the US-brokered Abraham accords that normalized UAE relations with Israel.
Israel, which blocked all food from entering Gaza for 11 weeks earlier this year, has been allowing more aid into the enclave since late July to prevent further food shortages, though the United Nations says far more is needed.
It says it wants civilians to leave Gaza City before it sends more ground forces in. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have left but hundreds of thousands remain in the area. Hamas has called on people not to leave.
Israeli army forces have been operating inside at least four eastern suburbs for weeks, turning most of at least three of them into wastelands. It is closing in on the center and the western areas of the territory, where most of the displaced people are taking shelter.
Many are reluctant to leave, saying there is not enough space or safety in the south, where Israel has told them to go to what it has designated as a humanitarian zone.
Some say they cannot afford to leave while others say they were hoping the Arab leaders meeting on Monday in Qatar would pressure Israel to scrap its planned offensive.
“The bombardment intensified everywhere and we took down the tents, more than twenty families, we do not know where to go,” said Musbah Al-Kafarna, displaced in Gaza City.
Israel said it had completed five waves of air strikes on Gaza City over the past week, targeting more than 500 sites, including Hamas reconnaissance and sniper sites, buildings containing tunnel openings and weapons depots.
Local officials, who do not distinguish between militant and civilian casualties, say at least 40 people were killed by Israeli fire across the enclave, a least 28 in Gaza City alone.
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Turkey Warns of Escalation as Israel Expands Strikes Beyond Gaza
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a press conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (not seen) at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, May 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
i24 News – An Israeli strike targeting Hamas officials in Qatar has sparked unease among several Middle Eastern countries that host leaders of the group, with Turkey among the most alarmed.
Officials in Ankara are increasingly worried about how far Israel might go in pursuing those it holds responsible for the October 7 attacks.
Israel’s prime minister effectively acknowledged that the Qatar operation failed to eliminate the Hamas leadership, while stressing the broader point the strike was meant to make: “They enjoy no immunity,” the government said.
On X, Prime Minister Netanyahu went further, writing that “the elimination of Hamas leaders would put an end to the war.”
A senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up Ankara’s reaction: “The attack in Qatar showed that the Israeli government is ready to do anything.”
Legally and diplomatically, Turkey occupies a delicate position. As a NATO member, any military operation or targeted killing on its soil could inflame tensions within the alliance and challenge mutual security commitments.
Analysts caution, however, that Israel could opt for covert measures, operations carried out without public acknowledgement, a prospect that has increased anxiety in governments across the region.
Israeli officials remain defiant. In an interview with Ynet, Minister Ze’ev Elkin said: “As long as we have not stopped them, we will pursue them everywhere in the world and settle our accounts with them.” The episode underscores growing fears that efforts to hunt Hamas figures beyond Gaza could widen regional friction and complicate diplomatic relationships.