Learning to ‘Dance Again’

Her long dark hair piled high on her head, Bar chugs a cold beer, her whole body moving with the energetic electronic trance music playing in the background. “I can’t go to crowded places anymore,” she tells me. “Only here. This is the only place I can dance.”

Bar, who doesn’t want to give her full name, is attending an evening gathering at a park in Tel Aviv for the survivors and families of the victims of the October 7 Hamas attack on the Nova Music Festival. Posters hang everywhere—“We will dance again,” “We will bring light to the darkness”—while young men with man buns and loose shorts, many shirtless in the unusually oppressive heat, and long-haired girls in cutoffs or miniskirts mill about, embracing or slapping each other on the back. 

 “[The ice bath] helps to deal with trauma by having the participant deal with an extreme situation. Instinctively, intuitively, our bodies understand where the trauma is locked in our bodies and our lives, and how to heal.”

The event is sponsored by The Tribe of Nova Foundation, an NGO established two months after the massacre to help those who have been affected by the Nova attack. The Tribe of Nova holds gatherings several times a year including community days, “wellness events” with yoga and other health activities, and skills workshops. In 2026, they plan to open a building in central Israel.

They are, Bar says, among the few social events she attends. “We all understand each other here.” As a survivor of the attack, Bar, 24, says she usually can’t talk about her experiences with anyone who wasn’t there. “I hid in thorny bushes,” she recalls. “ I heard people begging for their lives. I heard shots. I heard screams.”

Bar hasn’t been able to go back to studying for her law degree. Before October 7, she lived in her own apartment in Tel Aviv, but now she lives at her parents’ home and rarely leaves her room. She says she used to love to dance, especially to trance music. “I went to all the festivals, everywhere, even abroad,” she recalls. “When I was dancing, I felt alive. But now, the sounds come back to me, I feel the thorns that were digging into my body where I was hiding, I hear the terrorists laughing…I stare into the air a lot, wondering why I survived but none of my friends did.”

This event and those like them are “about survival but also about responsibility,” says Itay Hamer, head of outreach for the Tribe of Nova Foundation. “About pain, but also purpose. About the light we lost—and the light we’re now determined to rebuild.”

Hamer is also a survivor of the attack. “I came to the Nova festival to celebrate everything I believe in,” he says,“freedom, music, love and deep friendship.” He recalls dancing through the night. “At sunrise, as the sky lit up with color, it felt like nothing could go wrong…And then everything did.”

When the rockets hit, as people fled in all directions, Hamer stayed behind to help a girl having a panic attack and was separated from his friends. “That decision saved my life,” he says, ”but took me away from theirs. Six of my closest friends never made it out.” He hid in a police van, then in the woods, alone. “For four hours I lay in a bush as terrorists hunted us like animals. When two of them spotted me, they fired an RPG. I ran through the war zone for what felt like forever until I reached safety.” He adds: “It was in that darkness that the words of my grandfather—a Holocaust survivor—came to me: ‘We kept our stories to ourselves. You must do the opposite. Speak. Let the world know what happened to you.’”

The Tribe of Nova is the largest community of survivors and victims of the October 7 massacre, says Solly Laniado. A lawyer by profession, Laniado, 51, was brought into the NGO about a year ago as director. “There were nearly 5,000 people at the Nova concert on October 7,” he explains. “Some 360 of them were murdered by terrorists, and at least another 40 were taken as hostages into the Gaza Strip. Of the 48 hostages still in Gaza, 14 are from Nova. That is the largest group from any single place, and, in addition to the survivors, the victims left behind thousands of family members, friends, partners and children.

Tribe of Nova community day.

“Unlike the kibbutzim and the moshavim that were attacked, not everyone in our community knows everyone directly. We were established in one night,” Laniado says, adding that many people have told him this is the most important thing they have in their lives right now. “They can be themselves here, they can be hopeful, for a brief few hours, they can let go of their fears, their traumatic memories, their guilt.”

***

Before October 7, Nova music festivals had been going on in Israel for some 15 years, with a growing following of lovers of trance music and dance in nature. The registration for the October 7 festival was particularly successful, and the organizers were hopeful that they might even be able, for the first time, to turn a small profit.

The day after the massacre, while some fighting continued, and there was still confusion as to what was happening, Laniado says, the surviving members of the production company were already reaching out to survivors and attempting to compile verified lists of the dead and captured. By December 8, they had formed the Tribe of Nova, and within a year, they had raised almost $4.5 million, most of it from abroad, including a large amount from the UJA-Federation of New York. “The Jewish Diaspora was there for us from the start,” says Laniado. “Without them, we would not be able to do what we do.”

Tribe of Nova community day.

The organization does not provide benefits or health and mental health treatments, which are provided under Israel’s socialized medicine and national health systems. They do, however, facilitate connections with authorities and “try to fill in the gaps,” Laniado says.

He recalls a young man who survived the attack but whose wife was murdered at the Nova site. He came to the organization because he was unable to provide food for his children. “He didn’t need money,” Laniado explains. “But he couldn’t go into a store, he couldn’t stand the crowd, the lines. His children were hungry, and he was ashamed. We found a way to help him to readjust to society.”

Simo Sela, a kibbutznik from Neve Ur in the Jordan Valley, says that attending Tribe of Nova events is a way to commemorate his son, Ram. “He was part of the production team for years, and everyone knew him,” he says. Broad-shouldered and strong, with a bright, round face under a thick shock of white hair, Simo high-fives and slaps the backs of the young people as he walks through the crowd. But as he speaks, the tears come quickly.

Ram, he says, was “born during the first shots of the war with Iraq in 1991 and he was murdered by war 32 years later. At 9 a.m. on that cursed day, he called us and told us that he didn’t believe he would get out, said goodbye to his mother, to his sisters, to me. He called his wife, Lilach, they had been married for only a year and a half.

“I come here to be with people who understand what happened to Ram, who love music like he did, who loved him. I will do anything that I can so that Ram—his smile, his goodness—will never be forgotten. I think about him, I remember our happy times, I smile and I cry. He won’t be part of the music anymore, but I will be part of the music that he loved.” 

***

Mai, a big dog of indeterminate breed, greets the participants at the day-long gathering. “She senses the good energy here,” explains her handler. The organization offers survivors and their families who qualify the opportunity to adopt dogs as support pets. At a discreet distance from the happening, social workers have a station in case anyone needs them.

Elsewhere at the site, a small group is involved in yoga and breathing exercises, and children are involved in arts and crafts. A different group is offering ice bath treatments. This involves getting into tubs filled with ice water; some even dunk their whole bodies. Children offer them plastic duckies while a small crowd cheers and encourages the bathers. A young woman, Yaffa, steps into the frigid water but is afraid to sit down. A facilitator holds her hands. “Look at me, look at me,” he tells Yaffa. “You are amazing. You’ve been through a lot, you can do it. Breathe. Breathe. Look at me. Hold my hands.” Yaffa lies down in the water and then dunks. She gets out of the water, drying herself and smiling broadly, repeating, “I did it! I did it.” The crowd claps and cheers.

Tribe of Nova community day.

“The ice bath is good for everything in our bodies,’ explains Itamar, another facilitator. “It helps to deal with trauma by having the participant deal with an extreme situation. Instinctively, intuitively, our bodies understand where the trauma is locked in our bodies and our lives, and how to heal.”

After a few hours, excitement is building and the crowd collects in front of a stage. First, the newest members of the mentoring program receive their certificates, which they proudly show to the enthusiastic, clapping and whooping crowd. Laniado explains that 20 survivors have already completed the 25-session mentoring training, so that they can provide support to others.

And then the highlight: The Tribe of Nova has formed its own musical ensemble, singers and instrumentalists, made up of survivors and relatives. In preparation for their appearance at a concert that will take place a few days later in front of over 40,000 revelers, they take the stage for the first time.

Sela, a bit bashful, sings an Israeli favorite. Others perform music they have composed themselves, as part of their own rehabilitation. The appreciative crowd claps and sings with them—the songs have become part of their own community repertoire.

The evening ends with DJs who provide a few minutes of trance music. Some of the younger people dance, others hug each other goodbye. The crowd breaks up, the community disperses. Watching them leave the park alone or in small groups, I wonder how many of these young, beautiful victims, who had come to celebrate freedom, liberty and life on October 7 and instead experienced torture, cruelty and death, will be able to push on. How many will be able to find meaning in their lives?

All photos by Eetta Prince-Gibson.