Before Rosh Hashanah, a project called Bring Them Light uploaded a video to Instagram that is so devastatingly powerful I watched it over and over for hours, crying continuously.
The video is a montage of Nova, IDF, kibbutz and hostage victims — dancing, singing, smiling, alive. Accompanied by “Stand by Me” and the Hebrew song “Keren Shemesh” (“Sunbeam”), the video seeks to “rehumanize the fallen” by showing the world their beautiful souls.
Founded by Lihie Gilhar in November 2023, Bring Them Light seeks to preserve not just the memory of those we lost, but their faces, their names and their life stories.
“This project does not focus on how they died. It honors how they lived,” says Gilhar. It began with a single impulse: “the murdered should not be reduced to anonymous casualty lists. Each person was a universe of light, joy, and love — and that humanity needed to be preserved.”
“This project does not focus on how they died. It honors how they lived … the murdered should not be reduced to anonymous casualty lists. Each person was a universe of light, joy and love — and that humanity needed to be preserved.” – Lihie Gilhar
“What binds us as a people is not only blood, nor history, nor land. It is the sacred, unbreakable thread of memory,” are the first words seen on the website.
“It’s a promise to not forget”
A clinical psychologist, Gilhar speaks with each bereaved family, listens to their stories, collects photos, videos, music and memories, and crafts these heartfelt digital tributes, which are then translated into both Hebrew and English and shared only with the families’ full approval.
To date, she has told 295 stories. “Each one is a soul reclaimed from erasure.”
But Bring Them Light is not just about grief and memorialization. “It’s about legacy,” Gilhar said. “It transforms trauma into memory, memory into meaning — and remembrance into action.” What began as a temporary installation at Habima Square in Tel Aviv has expanded into a digital archive (the website and Instagram) and a billboard in Times Square — a 15-second video collage of victims — with one purpose: to keep the light alive.
“A light that cannot be dimmed”
The website warns “The truth has become fragmented … The facts are scattered. And on social media, the story is not being told right. Even during this ongoing war, Oct. 7 is already vanishing from the conversation. We keep hearing: Yes, Oct. 7 was terrible, but …
“But politics. But context. But everything except the truth. There is no ‘but.’
“On Oct. 7 there were massacres, rapes, burnings, kidnappings. Children murdered. Parents slaughtered in front of their children. Lives destroyed in the most brutal ways. This is not a footnote. This is where it all began. This is the rupture. The wound that will never fully heal. And yet — silence grows.
“We cannot be silent. For the victims. For their families. For history.”
“Their stories live forever”
I asked my favorite doorman if I could show him a video. Smart and soulful, he and I have talked about nearly every subject — but we never talked about the war. He watched the video for just a few seconds and then gave me back my phone. “All I see all over social media are children’s body parts,” he said.
Stunned, I managed to respond: “You know most of that is fake, right?” He shrugged.
I walked out onto the streets of New York City trying to emotionally grapple with something I knew intellectually: most non-Jewish people who stare at my tiny Star of David necklace think I’m evil.
Yes, Islamists excel at lying; the Quran even encourages it — taqiyya. Second to violence, propaganda is their forte. Leftist and far right “media” outlets compound the problem by presenting the lies as facts (Shalom, New York Times). But I truly never expected intelligent people to believe the lies.
Of course, it has little to do with intelligence. These very same people would never believe whatever ISIS or al-Qaida says. But when Jews are the sole victims, blood libels go viral. Believing blood libels about Jews goes back to the Middle Ages. The truth is, antisemitism is a failure of decency, humanity and character.
Which is precisely why Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim millennial socialist who just pledged to abandon the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism; supports the BDS movement against Israel; still defends “Globalize the Intifada” and whose Columbia University “professor” father praised Hitler, will soon be mayor of this dying city.
I will never forgive those who choose to believe Hamas’ blood libels because we know exactly what it leads to. My great-grandparents didn’t flee the evils of Russia more than 100 years ago for me to become the scapegoat of narcissistic millennials.
“Their names echo; their faces shine”
But the point of this incredible video is to carry the light of these beautiful souls into the world. And I will try to do so every way I can, mostly through teaching my 16-year-old son and his friends the truth every single day. And through them, we can hopefully stop Gen-Z from turning into the millennial teachers they despise.
Because building the character that would never engage in blood libels begins in the home, as Martin Luther King Jr. well knew.
The video ends with this beautiful quote: “We remember with love what hate tried to erase.” It is our sacred promise to do so.
Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine.
