Nearly one year after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel that left 1,200 Israelis dead, multiple memorial projects—from a peacemaking prize and scholarships to musical compositions, books and documentaries, are commemorating the lives of the Israeli-Canadians killed in the attacks.
Projects remembering Adi Vital-Kaploun, 33—a young mother and scholar who was murdered at her home on Kibbutz Holit while saving the lives of her young sons, Negev and Eshel—illustrate her legacy of courage, generosity, and selflessness.
Vital-Kaploun, who shot one terrorist before she was killed, also saved her father who was sheltering elsewhere on the kibbutz, when she warned him not to come to her aid. Vital-Kaploun’s murderers abducted her sons and another kibbutz resident, before releasing them on the Gaza border.
The two young boys made their way back to safety and were later reunited with their father, who thought they had died.
Memorial projects in Ottawa, where Adi’s mother, Jacqui Rivers Vital, lived for many years, include the Adi Vital-Kaploun JCC Sports Camp Scholarship Fund, created earlier this year by the Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation.
“The most important thing is not to forget her,” Vital told The CJN from Israel.
“She’s not just a number… she had a lot to give.”
Vital-Kaploun graduated with highest honours from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Master’s program in desert studies, solar energy and environmental physics.
Professor Muhammad Bashouti, a leading researcher with whom she worked closely, said: “Adi was the brightest student I ever worked with.” He is naming his new research lab after her and will dedicate it on Oct. 7.
An endowed fellowship in Vital-Kaploun’s name has also been established through the university’s Canadian fundraising arm.
“Adi was an incredible, humble, giving, loving, precious, and accomplished person who died a hero— protecting her children and her father until her last breath,” wrote BGU Canada CEO Andrea Freedman.
Vital says her daughter would have wanted to give others the opportunities she had to attend sports camps and post-secondary studies.
“She was a leader, but in her quiet way,” says Vital. “She could relate to anyone.”
“Opening doors for other people,” is what her daughter would want, she said.
Meanwhile, donations to the family via the platform JGive support Negev and Eshel.
“Everything we do is to help them, because she is not here to help them,” says Vital.
Artistic tributes to Vital-Kaploun include multiple original musical compositions based on a poem she wrote that is now inscribed on her gravestone. One special necklace project bears Vital-Kaploun’s engraved image; in time, Vital says, her grandsons will receive theirs to keep their mother close to them.
A fundraising T-shirt featuring a lioness design serendipitously ended up being printed at Irving Rivers, a shop in Ottawa’s Byward Market owned by Adi Vital-Kaploun’s aunt.
Jacqui Vital says at least three requests to use her daughter’s name have come via the worldwide Simchat Torah Project, which invites synagogues to create and display new Torah covers with the names of those killed on Oct. 7.
The new cover for the Torah at Toronto’s Congregation Shaarei Shomayim will honour Yonadav Levenstein, 23, an Israeli-Canadian whose grandparents are members of the synagogue. Levenstein, who lived in Ma’ale Adumim, died fighting with the IDF in northern Gaza in November.
A new award that recognizes peacemakers is just one of the legacies of Vivian Silver, 74, originally from Winnipeg, who co-founded the Israeli women’s peace organization Women Wage Peace. Silver was killed at her home on Kibbutz Be’eri.
The Vivian Silver Impact Award, founded by Silver’s family together with the New Israel Fund, will have its inaugural event in November in Israel, around Silver’s yahrzeit, and will award $15,000 (USD) each to one Jewish woman and one Palestinian woman working in cross-border peace building and shared society or advancing women’s leadership in non-governmental organizations.
The award “holds commemoration and creates legacy and heritage, but through the promotion of the work, and the continuation of the work,” Yonatan Zeigen, one of Silver’s sons, told The CJN.
“She was a pretty prominent woman, a leader all the time, the manager… but she never sucked the energy out of the room. She was always very humble,” says Zeigen.
“It seems fitting [if we] commemorate her by praising ideals in her name.”
Zeigen, who lives in Israel, has been approached to approve other legacy projects, including a children’s book that is part of a historical series focusing on Israeli women leaders by author Avirama Golan. A Canadian-Israeli documentary production is underway, while an Arab-Jewish organization for social change, AJEEC-NISPED where Silver served as a co-director is dedicating a new building in Israel to her. Her name also graced the 2024 summer clothing line of Israeli fashion house Comme Il Faut.
Even in southern Gaza, a kitchen and community space at a camp in a humanitarian zone now bears Silver’s name on a banner, thanks to an NGO called Clean Shelter and other agencies.
Zeigen says it was moving to know that Palestinians in Gaza wanted to honour his mother. Silver had been a longtime volunteer with Israeli organization Road to Recovery, driving sick patients from Gaza to Israeli hospitals for appointments and back, often several times weekly.
“[The community kitchen banner] is a great symbol of our ability to look beyond [violence]… of the ability to [reconcile] and heal together across the divide,” says Zeigen.
The term “Vivianism,” signifying a principled status of equality for all, and working toward reconciliation and cooperation in Arab-Jewish peace and shared society efforts, appeared in The Forward after her death, in an article by Bradley Burston, who called Silver a “one-of-a-kind visionary.”
Zeigen sees his mother’s name carrying a message that’s resonating with “peace-seeking people,” including Israelis and Palestinians who knew her.
“Her name is being utilized as a vessel for the message from people who want to live in a world … [of] the values she embodied: the pursuit of equity, equality, peace… activism, civil participation, and bold leadership.”
In Winnipeg, a concert by the Sarah Sommer Chai Folk Ensemble will include a musical composition in Silver’s memory. The Nov. 9 concert is being held on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Then there’s the commemorative chapbook of poems by Judih Weinstein Haggai, 70, who was from Toronto and held Canadian and American citizenship.
The haiku poet and teacher of meditation and mindfulness for both Arab and Jewish children in southern Israel had been thought to be held hostage, but it was later learned she was killed in the Oct. 7 attack near her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz along with her husband, Gadi. They were taken to Gaza, and their bodies have not yet been returned for burial in Israel.
The chapbook project was organized by a group of English-speaking poets, Voices Israel, some of whose members have composed new poems using parts of Judih Weinstein Haggai’s work.
Weinstein Haggai taught meditation and mindfulness techniques to children in safe rooms to help them through trauma, her brother, Larry Weinstein, told The CJN in December 2023. She taught kids of all backgrounds, he noted.
“She had classes for Palestinian and Israeli children together because she believed in cooperation. She was somebody who believed in peace.”
Netta Epstein, 21, threw himself on a grenade to save his fiancée, Irene Shavit, when the attack reached their home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Epstein was a passionate soccer player who had been a goalkeeper on Hapoel Beer Sheva’s youth team, and was a fan of the clubs Beitar Jerusalem in Israel, Liverpool in the U.K., and Borussia Dortmund in Germany.
The German club invited Epstein’s family to a game in Germany earlier this year. Some 81,000 attendees were shown Epstein’s image on a huge screen, according to a report in Israel Hayom.
Alexandre Look, 33, who died protecting others at a bomb shelter during the massacre at the Nova music festival, was part of the close-knit Jewish community in Côte Saint-Luc on the island of Montreal.
A new green space in his name, the Alexandre Look Place, will be located between the Bialik school Look attended and the nearby Chabad, and will feature a commemorative plaque recognizing those lost on Oct. 7.
Montreal’s Federation CJA also hosted a matching donation fundraiser after Look’s death for a bomb shelter in Israel in his memory. (That fundraiser, and a previous emergency fund for the family, both met and exceeded fundraising goals.)
Look, a “larger than life” character who had been travelling before he landed and decided to stay in Israel, spoke seven languages impeccably, his mother, Raquel Ohnona, told the Montreal Gazette in 2023.
The family of Ben Mizrachi, 22, of Vancouver, who was also killed at the Nova festival, learned of his heroism in the days after the attack. Mizrachi used the medical training he had received in the Israel Defence Forces to tend to the wounded.
In December 2023, the Mizrachi family worked with the Jewish National Fund Pacific Region to establish a fund, then a memorial space in Mizrachi’s name in Kvutzat Yavneh, the kibbutz where he lived and is buried.
“The Mizrachi family wishes to ensure that Ben’s memory lives on in a place that was close to his heart,” the fund description read.
That’s in addition to honours for Mizrachi at Vancouver’s King David High School, where he graduated in 2018.
On Oct. 7, 2024, King David will unveil a plaque to mark Mizrachi’s life and impact at the school. The plaque and the ceremony were organized with the Mizrachi family, a spokesperson for the school confirmed.
“Ben was larger than life, with a big personality that matched his size. He was full of joy, had a smile for everyone, and was always there to help,” wrote Russ Klein, who was the head of school, in October 2023 after the news of Mizrachi’s death was announced.
In honour of Mizrachi and other victims of the Oct. 7 attacks, a memorial Yizkor service will be held at Congregation Schara Tzedeck, a modern Orthodox synagogue in Vancouver, which will also place Mizrachi’s name on its newly refurbished Torah and Torah cover.
One of the Simchat Torah Project scrolls connecting Canada to Israel will honour Tiferet Lapidot, 22, much of whose extended family lived in Regina and Calgary before several of them made aliyah.
Lapidot harrowingly called her mother’s cellphone from the Nova music festival, and said goodbye before the attackers found her hiding place.
Lapidot, who was days from her 23rd birthday when she was murdered at Nova, had initially made it out of the festival on a truck with others, but her best friend, Rinat, did not, and Lapidot returned to the festival site to help her.
“It wasn’t an option for her, not going off that truck and not being with another human being that might need some comfort or help,” said her uncle, Harel Lapidot.
Because her cellphone could be tracked to Gaza, for 10 days the family was uncertain of Tiferet’s condition, and location, until authorities confirmed her death.
On a visit to Toronto in the spring, Lapidot’s family received the Torah and the new Torah cover, and brought the cover to Jerusalem, where it awaits the refurbished Torah’s arrival from Canada in time for Simchat Torah.
A number of prayer services and shiurim (learning) sessions in Toronto were dedicated to Tiferet over the past year, along with one of the weekly Sunday rallies for Israel at Bathurst Street and Sheppard Avenue. Members of the Lapidot family attended the national rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 4, and met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly.
To honour Tiferet, who loved music and dance, the Torah cover will include the biblical quote from Ecclesiastes, including “a time to dance”, her uncle Harel Lapidot said.
Tributes from Israel include a new font named after Tiferet Lapidot, and a number of songs written for her, plus a video eulogy in Spanish by Israeli-Argentinian Rabino (Rabbi) Michael Rubinstein.
Her aunt Galit Goren said her niece left an impact “all around the world.”
“Everyone wanted to be with her,” said Goren. “We knew that she was something special.”
So did Toronto-based human rights advocate Rev. Majed El Shafie, founder of One Free World Initiative, whose forthcoming documentary, Dying to Live, will feature Tiferet’s story.
El Shafie and his team are racing to finish the documentary for release on Oct. 7.
Tiferet Lapidot worked with special needs and at-risk children in Israel and abroad, volunteering in South Africa with Warriors Without Borders, and during a trip to India.
Projects in Israel remembering and taking inspiration from her volunteer service include a newly formed group of about 20 girls inspired by her, calling themselves “L’Or Tiferet”(Walking in Tiferet’s Light in English, her uncle says), who volunteer at Soroka hospital in Beer Sheva, brightening the days of wounded soldiers, and the elderly.
The group also volunteers at a camp for children with special needs, in Ramat Golan, where Tiferet used to volunteer. The camp is now renamed for Tiferet.
“It’s the idea of kindness bringing happiness,” says Harel Lapidot.
A new water feature resembling a natural spring was dedicated to Lapidot in Tekoa, within the Gush Etzion settlement in the West Bank, along with benches bearing Lapidot’s name at one of the schools she attended in Israel.
An Instagram account, remember.tifi, is dedicated to Tiferet’s memory, with photos from her life, and a sand artwork tribute by artist Rachel Bender was shared in a Facebook video by The Israeli Cartoon Project.
While memorials, funds, and projects continue online and offline for the Canadian-Israelis and their families—including a website tribute by the Jewish Federations of Canada—the partygoers killed at the Nova music festival were recently remembered at the world’s most famous outdoor dance music party.
Another Canadian citizen, Shir Georgy, 22, was among those who died in the attack at Nova.
The 2024 Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert featured a special exhibition of the Nova festival installation, which started in Tel Aviv before it ran in New York and Los Angeles.
The Burning Man art installation edition, Nova Heaven (aka We Will Dance Again), joyfully memorialized each of the more than 360 festivalgoers who were killed when Hamas ambushed the music event early on Oct. 7.
With files from Sam Margolis