This week, we continue to feel a deep sense of relief and joy as the living hostages have finally returned home to Israel. For months, we have prayed, hoped, and worked for this moment; though we still await the return of the remaining bodies and we grieve for those who will never come home, we can finally exhale, and appreciate the joy of freedom and of families reunited.

I had the unique privilege of witnessing this moment of joy and sorrow together. On the morning the hostages came home, I was with a group of Nova survivors who were in Boston for the Nova Exhibition. These young people — who endured the horrors of October 7 — gathered to mark the moment.

Together, we walked to the wall of posters at the exhibit bearing the faces of the hostages. One by one, the survivors placed “home” stickers over the photos of those who had returned. It was a profound act — a combination of grief and gratitude, of heartbreak and healing. Their friends were home at last, yet so many will never come home. I felt as though I was witnessing a catharsis: the unspoken acknowledgment that even in tragedy, our People find ways to affirm life.

Over the past few weeks, thousands of people from across Greater Boston have visited the Nova Exhibition to learn, to bear witness, and to connect. I am deeply grateful to everyone who helped bring this exhibit to our community. It was not an easy experience to walk through — the images, the stories, the sounds — but it was an essential one.

Perhaps most inspiring to me has been the courage and resilience of the Nova community itself. These survivors, these young people, who have every reason to retreat from the world, instead choose to bring light into it. They continue to live by their values — love, creativity, joy, and hope. Their motto is simple and profound: “We will dance again.”

As I think about the ways these young people are rebuilding their lives, I am struck by the recurring motif of building in the opening chapters of the Torah, which we began reading again last week.

To save his family and humanity from the flood, Noah builds an ark — a protective structure that walls the survivors off from a world literally being washed away.

Just a few chapters later, a new generation builds the Tower of Babel, a project that does not find favor in the eyes of God. While the problem with the Tower is ambiguous, there is something deeply wrong: with the tower itself, the builders’ motives, their methods, or all of the above.

Later, God calls Abraham, who will become a different kind of builder. Abraham will build a family and, ultimately, a People, who will be charged with the sacred responsibility to “be a blessing” — to build a world in which the Divine can dwell, and to teach their children to do the same.

Thus, the Jewish People were born. And wherever in the world we find ourselves, in the best of times and the worst, generation after generation, we build. Not arks to wall ourselves off, nor towers to glorify our own names. We build institutions to strengthen and serve, to educate and engage. But our greatest, most enduring structures are communities — people, relationships, values, teachings — that have stood the test of time.

In every generation, the Jewish People have had the resilience and the spiritual fortitude to “dance again.” This is our time to build: a safe and strong, resilient, joyful community; a vibrant Jewish future; and a better world.