More than 3,000 people were at the Tribe of Nova electronic music festival on the morning of Oct. 7, when Hamas militants stormed into Israel. Since then, the Tribe of Nova Community has organized a wide range of services and support for survivors, offering diverse therapeutic methods like ice baths, horse riding, surfing, art, travel, and many others. A woman weeps at the Nova Healing Concert in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Thursday, June 27, 2024.
“Someone asked me if I can dance again, and in the beginning I said no,” she said. At a memorial in January for one of her friends, she tried to dance, had a panic attack, and then tried again. “I was crying and dancing at the same time,” she said. Survivors began to gather to deal with the trauma they had experienced together. On the first day, 500 showed up. That number doubled the following day. After three months, they shifted to weekly Community Day events and encouraged survivors to return to their regular lives and jobs.
Sivan Cohen, 30, said ahead of the event Thursday that she would be “dancing for two.” Her partner of six years, Yaniv Sarudi, 26, was killed while trying to drive a car filled with nine festivalgoers to safety. Cohen was shot in the leg and, at first, she wasn’t sure if she would ever walk again, much less dance.
“The only way to really commemorate these people is through living what they lived, which is dancing. That’s what they came there to do,” Eyal Porat said as he entered the festival.