By Amichay Findling, Israel & Overseas Programs Manager
Nova Festival Survivor Maya Izoutcheev will share her story with the Ann Arbor area community at the commemoration on 10/16.
On Thursday, October 16, in commemoration of the October 7 massacre, the Ann Arbor area Jewish community will gather to remember the horror of that day two years ago — not with empty words, but with testimony, reflective music, and art aimed at remembrance. This year’s commemoration will feature Maya Izoutcheev, a survivor of the Nova Festival massacre, whose story is wrenching, vivid, and full of courage.
The program will be held at the JCC of Greater Ann Arbor at 6:30pm and is a collaboration between the Jewish Federation, the Jewish Community Center, Hebrew Day School, many local congregations, and additional community organizations. The event is open to all. Security will be provided.
Maya Izoutcheev was at the Nova Music Festival, a gathering on 10/7/23 that was intended to celebrate peace. What she witnessed that day was anything but peaceful. In the chaos of indiscriminate violence, Maya lost friends, saw people she knew fall, and endured moments that no person should ever experience. She has shared publicly how the terror was immediate and unpredictable — and how surviving does not erase the scars or sense of disbelief. She has said that she now knows how her world shifted forever in an instant. Her survival is not a simple tale of escape; it is a story of trauma, loss, endurance, and of trying to live again in the aftermath.
Maya will bring the immediacy of her story to Ann Arbor so that the community has the opportunity to do more than mourn together: attendees will learn and gain a deeper understanding of what was lost and how to move through it. Forgetting or distancing oneself can be easier, but, while remembering traumatic events is painful, it can be necessary to healing.
The evening will include local cantors and musicians whose music carries memory, with songs and melodies that reflect both grief and resolve. Rabbis from Ann Arbor’s congregations will offer reflections not just on the broader meaning of October 7 in Israel and what it has meant for Jews worldwide, but also on how this attack has affected the local community: the fear, the solidarity, the coming together, as well as the new threats and deepened political divides.
Part of the event will be a community art project, led by Marie Pattipati, Arts & Culture Director at the Ann Arbor JCC. All participants will have space to contribute — a hands-on therapeutic art project, expressing what words cannot. The project will serve as a collective memorial: not just framed or hung, but built together by many hands and voices, each act of creation an act of remembering. Local artists will also present their work that reflects on Maya’s story of October 7 during the event.
During the event, Maya will share her experience of October 7. When she speaks, she will carry not only her own story but the stories of those who did not survive, of those who are still struggling, and of all those whose lives, in Israel and elsewhere, have been touched by October 7. Her story demands that witnesses see, that community holds onto truth, and that memory is not passive.
For a deeper dive into Maya’s story and opportunity for more intimate connection, the Jewish Federation will coordinate conversations with Maya in various Ann Arbor community institutions in the weekend around the event.
Advance registration will be required at JLive.app. Visit JLive, Ann Arbor’s newest hub for events in the Jewish community, or subscribe to Federation’s email newsletters at JewishAnnArbor.org for more details.