Hamas murdered our daughter. That's what she would tell American Jews now.

Eleven months ago, Hamas murdered our daughter while she was dancing and celebrating life at a music festival in Re'im, Israel.

At 6:50 a.m. on October 7, Gili texted us that something was going on. She told us not to worry. More text messages. Gunshots. She went into hiding and warned friends to stay away from the area. At 9:14 a.m. she texted, “Until now I wasn't scared. Now I'm scared.” By 9:35 a.m., we later learned, the terrorists had found her. Within five minutes, they murdered Gili and nearly 30 other young people at point blank range – a fraction of the 364 people killed at the festival.

The brutality with which Hamas murdered our “Good Life” Gili, our bright, beautiful girl, at just 24 years old, mirrors the viciousness of the recent executions of hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Alexander Lobanov, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi and Almog Sarusi. Five of these six beautiful souls were like Gili at the Nova music festival. Their families are all dealing with the worst news of their lives.

We received this news three days after Gili's last message, after we had frantically headed south to find her, after we had pleaded for more information on Facebook – “OUR GILI IS STILL MISSING” – and after the possibility of her stumbling through the front door and into our arms crumbled with each passing hour.

We spoke at Gili's eulogy, as the hostages' families did at theirs. And yet we were at a loss for words. There are no words. Now, when we watch videos of Gili, sometimes we laugh and sometimes we cry, and most of the time our joy and our sorrow are not like oil and water, they do not separate but mix together to create a new, strange taste of life.

As Gili would say, “Why one or the other when you can have both?”

Gili, for whom 24 hours in a day was never enough, took on so many roles. As an adventurer, she worked three jobs to save up for her dream trip to South America. As a listener, Gili sat for hours with each of the lonely soldiers – those without family in Israel – she worked with in the Israeli army.

After Gili’s death, we found new roles ourselves.

We are gardeners who care for the flowers on their grave and water the seeds of their memory.

We are archivists, collecting thousands of photos and videos of our daughter. We are compiling hundreds of often unsolicited testimonies that show how she shaped other people's lives.

We are messengers who talk about Gili to anyone who will listen: Gili, with a victorious smile and an infectious laugh, “Guppy” to her campers, who took the coffee set in her backpack to the mountains, the desert and the sea, who gave her heart to everyone, from children with special needs to the store cashier.

More than anything, we miss Gili. The quiet hum of our constant grief can rise in intensity and pitch when we least expect it. While waiting at a traffic light. Or at the supermarket, where our tears condense like the dew on the milk carton we just took out of the fridge. Whether we are awake or asleep, in every activity and in every moment, we miss our girl. There is no life after Gili. Our only way forward is with Gili.

And so we share Gili with others. They share her with us. We find her in unexpected places – in the group of girls who got a collective tattoo in her honor; in the memories of a stranger she met on a Colombian beach. And we make pilgrimages to the places she loved most, which took us 6,000 miles across the ocean to the United States this summer to visit two summer camps, Tel Yehudah and Ben Frankel, that called Gili home.

As we walked through Camp Tel Yehudah, a Young Judaea summer camp for young leaders in Barryville, New York, where she worked in 2019 and 2022, Gili was in her old room with the world map and desk she brought with her. There was Gili on the roof, watching the sunset even though that was (technically) forbidden. But more than anything, we felt Gili's presence in the young people at camp, who were taking in the message she now wanted to convey to American Jews.

One Saturday night, we saw 400 young Jewish-American campers dancing on the lawn to Israeli songs. They jumped. They sang along. Those who knew them there told us that Gili was always the first to get up and dance. Her confidence helped others overcome that initial, collective moment of awkwardness.

This dance lesson reflected two of the things that mattered most to Gili: close relationships between American and Israeli Jews and the joy of life.

At age 17, Gili first came to the United States in 2017 to share Israeli culture with American Jews at Camp Ben Frankel, an overnight summer camp in Illinois. When she stumbled over English, one of her friends said she would laugh and say, “You know, guys, I'm really smart and funny in Hebrew.” Gili channeled the same passion for cross-cultural connections when she worked with American loners in Israel.

Gili's warmth broke down language and distance barriers until the young campers felt part of a community. Gili never believed in a blank-check relationship with Israel that says you should always support and never ask questions. However, she viewed the bonds between American and Israeli Jews as sacrosanct and fragile: bonds that cannot be denied but still need to be nurtured with joy, music, dance, food and more.

As some young American Jews turn away from Israel today, we ask them to remember that Israel is also Gili. It is Gili who dances at the Nova music festival, lives a normal life in her early 20s, and tries to figure out what career path she will take. Young American Jews should remember that they do not have to choose between loving Israel and criticizing it: they can have a complex relationship with Israel that encompasses both.

The children dancing on the lawn that Saturday were beaming with joy. At her funeral, we made a promise to Gili and to ourselves: “We will not give in to sadness, we will sanctify joy. This is your will, Gili, our beloved.”

Forward is often a quagmire, and we sink with every little step. Every day when we visit Gili's grave, we see the inscription of our charismatic girl on a tombstone, a juxtaposition that feels like a contradiction. What does our daughter, always so full of life, have to do with a grave?

We try to look after her, even though she was the one who often took care of us – she stayed up until 3 a.m. when we were out late to make sure we were OK. We replace her memorial candle. We pick up fallen leaves. We look for buds, signs of life, on the trees we planted in her honor.

We search for life ourselves. We go to the theater and sporting events. Months after an unimaginable break, we are still surrounded by an endless stream of love. Gili's friends come to light the eighth Hanukkah candle. Ben Frankel's children come up to us and ask if they can hug us.

The sadness will never end. But the joy must endure.

Five years ago, Gili and her friends built a giant Star of David out of wooden boards as a parting gift for Camp Tel Yehudah. ​​In a photo at right, Gili stands in denim shorts, a black long-sleeved shirt, sunglasses and her usual smile. Although the structure was battered by rain and snow, it would remain intact for less than a year. Half a decade later, the Star of David stands tall and proud.

Who would have thought that Gili would be gone instead?

The two of us take a photo in front of the Star of David during our visit to Tel Yehudah. ​​We try to smile. One of us is wearing a T-shirt with Gili's favorite slogan: “Why one or the other when you can have both?” We cling to the wooden boards as if we were touching our daughter, and in a way we are, because in her 24 years Gili has created so much that she has survived.

And she continues to be the catalyst for so much good: A new research center in Gili's name at Israel's Geha Mental Health Center aims to prevent suicide and save lives. In the town of Lapid, a new walking path filled with trees and flowers will be planted in her name. At her old high school, a new garden with benches and tables will provide space for children to sit and talk, reflecting Gili's love of nature and willingness to listen.

A few months ago, Gili's friends made a sticker of her. They asked that our Gili, who they described not as a ray of light but as the sun itself, be taken to natural sites in Israel, to guesthouses in South America and East Asia, to write her on their guitar cases and to take her to any places she might have visited.

Gili's friends want to share their light with others as much as we do. We humbly ask that you please look for a spark of joy for our daughter wherever you can find it right now and share it with anyone you can.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.