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Livnat Gilboa, an Israeli photographer, had been in the U.S. for only a month before Oct. 7.

She had moved from Israel to Los Gatos in 2023 to further her photojournalism career. The events of that terrible day and all that has followed could not have provided her with a more compelling photographic subject, one that blurred the objectivity of her lens.

“I experienced the past year in a very complex way, as I was not with my loved ones in Israel, nor acclimated to this new country and community,” Gilboa told J. “When I witnessed the response of this community, I felt compelled to be there, to document — but also to participate. It helped me to cope.”

Gilboa was not the only Israeli or American Jew living in the South Bay to wield her camera, write a poem or wet her paintbrushes in reaction to the Hamas attack on Israel, the ongoing hostage crisis and the ensuing war. So volunteering with the organization Jewish Silicon Valley, she helped curate a group show of their creative work as part of a commemorative anniversary event at the Addison-Penzak JCC in Los Gatos. 

The resulting exhibit, titled “October Rain” in reference to Israeli singer Eden Golan’s post-Oct. 7 lament, stems from the “recognition that the Jewish and Israeli communities need to come together and process the pain we experienced together, each in their own way,” Gilboa said, adding that the art produced during this difficult year was “crucial in the community’s resilience.”

“It underscores the profound realization that even when you are physically distant from Israel, it remains a part of you,” she said.

The exhibit, which she co-curated with fellow Israeli expat Lilach Wind, will be on view throughout October, complementing a day of commemorative activities at the APJCC on Oct. 7. About 35 artists and writers contributed to the display. Gilboa and Wind will lead two tours of the exhibit at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Oct. 7.

Maya Tripp, JSV life and culture director, said the idea for the art exhibit came from the community and felt like the right choice.

“I thought we should have some visual representation of what has been on everyone’s mind every day since October 7,” Tripp said. 

Like Gilboa, Miri Ekshtein Prager photographed the community both as a professional and as a participant in the demonstrations they organized, particularly the car convoys that drove through Bay Area cities bearing posters of the hostages in Gaza. One image shows a child and a woman in a rainbow rain jacket at an Oct. 22 rally for the hostages in San Jose.

“Our photos are not as impactful as the photos that came from Israel, but I hoped to show our engagement, our participation, in telling the story of what happened,” she said. 

Raised on a kibbutz in northern Israel, Ekshtein and her husband came to the U.S. in 2001. Based in Sunnyvale, she specializes in portraiture, chiefly of families and children. 

“For me, the experience of this past year was not only our pain for the families in Israel, but also the divide we feel over living our lives here, while the attacks and the bombings are continuing over there,” she said. “It’s a terrible conflict.”

What happened in Israel on Oct. 7 was such a shock to their community that many fell sick, as did she.

“There were a lot of autoimmune symptoms in the community. Many of us were also withdrawn, depressed and anxious,” Ekshtein said. “And this is still going on.”

Though at first she talked endlessly about Israel to everyone she ran into in her ethnically diverse neighborhood, she came to doubt that those outside the Jewish community had much knowledge of the complexity of the issues or could comprehend how Israelis feel. She pulled inward, asking herself: “Do the other immigrants around us feel the same? Does it suffocate them as it does us?”

“We couldn’t breathe,” she said.

Such feelings were particularly acute for Tal Goldstein, a Sunnyvale designer and mother of four who has lived in the United States for more than 20 years.

Only peace can protect us. These paintings are my writing on the wall.

Rachel Tirosh

After Oct. 7, it took three more days for the news to reach Goldstein that her cousin’s 32-year-old son, Ram “Nesher” Sela, who had been working at the Nova music festival in southern Israel, had been murdered in the Hamas attack. They shared a birthdate and were particularly close.

“The days after that were a blur for me. He was born into a war — the Gulf War — and he died in a war that we didn’t yet know was coming.”

Born in Nazareth, Goldstein graduated from Haifa University and then studied design in the U.S. She runs a high-end interior design company and submitted striking photos and two poems to the exhibit.

But for months after Oct. 7, she just stopped working. 

“Who could work?” she asked. “How could you even sleep? We are going about our daily lives, but even if we look normal, we are not. This conflict is affecting everyone.”

Goldstein threw her time and efforts into attending rallies and talking to groups about the hostages and about her cousin Ram. 

“Every day is a struggle. You hear some little piece of news about any of the hostages. … It can break you completely. In Israel every person is like your brother, your sister. It’s hard for other people to understand how we are all connected.”

Despite this sense of alienation, Goldstein persists in sharing facts and feelings alike.

“I still think it’s super important that we tell people about the reality of the more than 100 hostages still in Gaza,” she said. “I talk about it to my clients; I don’t care if I lose them. This is more important than work.”

South Bay artist Rachel Tirosh was traveling in France when she heard the news. “I felt that everything went black,” she said.

Returning home to her studio, she covered six earlier canvases with black acrylic paint, leaving only glimpses of the original colors beneath. Four of her new works will be on the walls of “October Rain.”

“More than trauma I felt profound sadness,” she said. Tirosh added to these new works some elements of mixed media representing the roofs of houses. “We were supposed to be protected. We know now that the people were not protected on Oct. 7, that we will never be fully protected. Only peace can protect us,” she said. “These paintings are my writing on the wall.”

The extreme violence of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza brought up deep childhood memories for Tirosh of the Six-Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the Gulf War in the early 1990s, after which she and her husband immigrated to Silicon Valley.

“You know what it is like in a war, even if you are not there,” she said.

Tirosh was planning her thesis project for a master of fine arts degree when the current war erupted. 

“I always thought my art would be about my personal journey. But Oct. 7 changed my course; it created a crisis of identity for me as both an Israeli and a Jewish American,” she said. “It showed me that I can live outside Israel, but I cannot live without Israel.”

“October Rain”

Oct. 1–31 at the Addison-Penzak JCC, 14855 Oka Road, Los Gatos. Free. Registration requested at [email protected]. For the full Oct. 7 schedule, see jvalley.org/event/marking-one-year.

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