Second Nova Healing Concert Unites in Tel Aviv

Some 30,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park on Aug. 14 for the second annual Nova Healing Concert, an evening of music, remembrance, and resilience marking nearly two years since Hamas’s massacre at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023.

Organized by the Nova Tribe Community Association — a collective created to support survivors and bereaved families — the event seeks to transform grief into a shared space of healing. The inaugural concert was held in June 2024.

This year’s concert had originally been scheduled for June 26 but was postponed due to Israel’s war with Iran. The gathering sought to transform grief into a shared space of remembrance and resilience.

Israeli artists, including Infected Mushroom, Yuval Raphael, and Captain Hook, headlined the stage, while survivors and families of victims filled the crowd. For many, the night was a delicate balance between sorrow and hope.

Omer Wenkert, a Nova survivor who was kidnapped to Gaza and held hostage for 505 days before his release in February as part of a ceasefire deal, addressed the crowd with a mix of gratitude and determination.

“I feel like I represent… a small picture of victory. But still small, still partial,” he said. “I call for unity — that we, as a people, begin to pick up the broken pieces and rise from them. To lift what lies within us. As a people, we will stand strong against any threat, internal or external, and as a people, we will heal this wound.”

Fifty hostages remain in Gaza, including 15 members of the Nova community, but only 20 of the 50 are believed to be alive.

Nimrod Arnin, a bereaved brother and Nova survivor who is also one of the founders of the Nova Tribe, emphasized the community’s ongoing work to support survivors, released hostages, and bereaved families.

“For 678 days, time has stood still,” he said, recalling the massacre at the festival that claimed 378 lives. “The memory refuses to fade. And life goes on. Sometimes it feels fragile, sometimes it feels like we are victorious… and even when the darkness seems absolute, we remember one sentence that is not simply words, but a promise: We will dance again.”

Arnin’s speech was followed by a moment of silence for those who lost their lives on Oct. 7.

Among the bereaved was Ayala Puder from Zichron Yaakov, whose daughter Maya, an acting student at Tel Aviv’s Yoram Loewenstein Acting School, was killed at the music festival. Since the attack, Ayala has not returned to her work as an interior designer, focusing instead on remembrance and healing.

“It’s unreal that we’re almost two years after Oct. 7,” she said. “In my mind, I know it’s been two years. But sometimes I wake up and I’m still on Oct. 7.”

“Being here today is part of the healing journey that we started a week after Oct. 7,” Puder explained. “Almost immediately after, I decided that the best thing for me and my family was to be in a healing process.”

She noted that the Nova Tribe’s slogan, “We will dance again,” does not always resonate with grieving families. But “maybe I will dance again, sometime — maybe even tonight,” she said, knowing that’s what her daughter would have wanted.

For others, the event was about preserving the spirit of those lost. Omri Rahoum, whose family lost four members in the massacre — including his sister Nitzan Rahoum, her fiancé Lidor Levi, his uncle Avi Sasi, and Nitzan’s unborn baby — reflected on the lives his relatives led before the attack. Many of his family members had been at the festival because a cousin, Omri Sasi, co-founded the event.

He stressed that it was important for people to look past the tragic event and remember the victims as whole, vibrant individuals: “I think that this concert is coming to say: ‘No, there was so much more.’ They were such happy people. There was so much joy, acceptance, and love for music.”

That spirit of resilience was echoed throughout the evening. Joy Cohen, another survivor, said that events like this are essential to healing.

“It makes me feel very hopeful,” she said. “Everyone who has gone through the worst of the worst can come together and share light.”

While grief remains palpable, the Nova Healing Concert offered a glimpse of unity, defiance, and love through music — a refusal to let tragedy define the lives it touched.

“Don’t stop dancing,” Wenkert urged the crowd. And as the music swelled, some 30,000 people responded by doing just that.