Telling the Story of How We Navigate Sorrow and Joy Simultaneously

When I left my position as a producer at CNN and HBO nearly two decades ago, I wondered if I had made the greatest professional mistake of my life. After a career interviewing celebrities on red carpets and producing content that defined pop culture, I chose to align my career with my deepening spiritual journey. HBO offered everything to keep me – a four-day workweek to accommodate my shabbos observance, the fancy title of Executive Producer (at the age of 25!), and the professional capital I had spent 15 years building. Walking away meant abandoning a resume that included working with entertainment’s biggest names.

I asked myself: Had I wasted 15 years of my life developing skills that would never serve me, either professionally or for a higher purpose?

October 7, 2023, answered that question with devastating clarity.

In the aftermath of that horrific day, I discovered that my entire career had been preparation for this moment in history. I have had a few defining moments since Oct. 7, the AISH “Global Day” and “Global Hour” livestreams, multiple missions down South in the days just following the outbreak of the war, and two feature-length documentaries. At AISH, we continue to document one of the most pivotal chapters in modern Jewish history through our latest film, After October: Stories of Loss, Survival, and Unbreakable Faith.

This isn’t just another documentary. For me, it represents the completion of a circle, the moment when skills honed in one world found their true purpose in another. What began five years ago as a more behind-the-scenes role for me at AISH has culminated in what I consider the most meaningful position of my professional life.

Our approach with After October differs fundamentally from other post-October 7 documentaries. While many productions rightfully document the horrors and can leave viewers in a state of depression and despair, we made a conscious choice to follow a different path. Rabbi Steven Burg, CEO of AISH, reminds us that “there’s nothing stronger than the broken heart of a Jew.” A broken heart still beats, if we’ve survived, we have to thrive, and it’s our responsibility at AISH not just to educate but to empower.

We’ve been entrusted with raw, never-before-seen, exclusive footage from personal family archives that tells a fuller story than what appears in news headlines. The feature-length format allows us to explore depths impossible in shorter media. But most importantly, we’ve committed to showcasing stories that, while acknowledging unbearable pain, ultimately demonstrate resilience, faith, and an unbreakable spirit that has characterized Jewish survival throughout history.

What have I learned from these stories? Perhaps the most profound lesson concerns how we navigate joy and sorrow simultaneously. Many struggle with this emotional complexity — how to celebrate life’s milestones when empty chairs surround holiday tables, when hostages remain captive, when soldiers still fight and fall? The families most deeply affected by October 7 offer us profound guidance.

They give us permission to hold both realities at once, to acknowledge devastating loss while embracing life’s continuing joys as testament to their loved ones’ legacies. This is not compartmentalization but integration, a uniquely Jewish approach to trauma that has sustained us through millennia of persecution.

From the Bible through pogroms, inquisitions, and the Holocaust, our people have documented survival. These historical records provide the blueprint for how we move forward. As we create this modern documentation through film, we contribute to that eternal conversation between generations, showing those who come after us how faith sustained us during our darkest hours.

This project transcends professional achievement. When I interview these families, I’m not employing techniques refined on red carpets with celebrities. I’m meeting them on a soul level, with an open heart and a huge box of tissues. I view this as sacred work, ensuring these stories become part of our collective memory and spiritual inheritance.

I once worried my early career was wasted. Now I understand it was preparation. Every interview skill, every production technique, every storytelling device I mastered in those years now serves a purpose I could never have imagined. The path wasn’t wasted, it was waiting for this moment.

The greatest privilege of my life is using skills developed in one world to serve the eternal truths of another. In doing so, I’ve discovered that nothing is wasted when it ultimately serves a purpose. Nothing is lost when it finds its true home.

This film stands as my answer to a question I asked myself years ago: What was it all for? Now I know. It was for this, to help tell the stories that matter most, to document not just what breaks us but what makes us unbreakable.

After October isn’t just a film; it’s a testimony to the Jewish capacity to transform grief into purpose. It shows that while circumstances may break our hearts, our spirit remains whole. It demonstrates that even in our most vulnerable moments, we can still be witnesses to something greater than ourselves.

We created this documentary not just to document history but to sustain hope. These stories remind us that we have overcome tragedies before, and we will again. These stories show our persistence in the face of adversity. They show that in the face of tragedy, we come together to build instead of break down. They show our enemies that we have maintained not only our faith in God, but in the good of humanity, and each other, and that is the most important message of all.

Jamie Geller is the Chief Communications Officer and Global Spokesperson for Aish, following a distinguished career as an award-winning producer and marketing executive with HBO, CNN, and Food Network. She is also an 8-time bestselling author. Jamie has produced several documentaries with AISH with After October being the most recent.