Stronger together

For women who have lost a son, daughter, husband to terrorism, the NGO OneFamily gives a rare opportunity.

By SARAH LEVIN
Grieving mothers and wives on a trip to Europe provided by the nonprofit OneFamily meet with the deputy mayor in Antwerp’s City Hall. (photo credit: SARAH LEVIN)
Grieving mothers and wives on a trip to Europe provided by the nonprofit OneFamily meet with the deputy mayor in Antwerp’s City Hall.
(photo credit: SARAH LEVIN)
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed spirit.” (Psalms 34:19)
“For this child I pray, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord. And he worshiped the Lord there.” (I Samuel 1: 27-28)
 Living in Israel, every hour, every newscast of death reminds us of our vulnerability and the possibility of thinking it could have been me. But when it is “me” – the person who has lost a son, a daughter, a husband – sometimes you just need to get away from it all and find a bit of respite, and that’s just what 25 bereaved women did.
This is a story of 25 inspiring bereaved mothers who found love, a fresh meaning to life and, most importantly, the courage to face the world with a smile.
Their tears ebb and flow less with each passing day. Hearts feel lighter, long-lost smiles and laughter have become an everyday occurrence. And courage that was long forgotten, found.
Terrorism paralyzes the senses, obscuring happiness and joy in a victim’s life, but, in February, OneFamily (OF), a nongovernmental organization that since 2001 has been the principal support for bereaved and wounded terrorist victims, treated two dozen bereaved mothers, and one bereaved wife, to a European journey of a lifetime.
These strangers, with a common denominator of pain and the deep sorrow of living in and with the all-encompassing trauma of having their beloved mercilessly killed in an unimaginably cruel terrorist attack, shed their trepidation and anxiety about traveling to Europe – despite an atmosphere in the media of anti-Israel sentiments and anti-Semitic attacks – and took off on an eightday adventure to Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Bruges, Knokke and Brussels. The goal was to awaken their dormant joy of living, to give them a new lease on life and to arouse within them the ability to face the future with clarity and optimism.
YONATAN AMIT, OneFamily psychologist, deliberates upon this special group of women, saying, “When a person loses a child, there is a void, an empty space in his life that cannot be filled.
He will, forever, be tortured by the thought of what could have become of his son or daughter. The longing and missing of the child manifests, growing with time, and doesn’t fade away like a memory. Anything this person does since the lost of their child is tarnished with the colors of grief. It’s difficult to pull together enough energy to deal with the day-to-day hardships. When bereaved parents leave their painful day-to-day life on a vacation, it gives them energy to continue living life with their grief and loss.”
Grieving parents and spouses will never 100 percent heal their deep, emotional wounds, but OF’s trip abroad lends an opportunity to remember their forgotten strength and start living with their deep sense of loss in a more productive way.
“It doesn’t heal their wounds but rather gives them new energy to continue living with their loss,” Amit says.
For casting off the shackles of daily stress, there’s nothing like a vacation, and upon returning, it seems that Amit is right.
Since it’s inception, OneFamily has regularly organized trips to Jewish communities abroad for bereaved children, bereaved young adults as well as wounded soldiers. In 2014, OF founder, Chantal Belzberg, organized a trip abroad for bereaved Mothers, focusing on women from Jerusalem. She found the experience to be a great success and wanted to replicate it, but change the demographic.
For this year’s trip, all of the bereaved women came from communities in the South.
OF divides the country into four regions, each having its own regional director. There are indeed many more women in each region than they can take. Many women, however, can’t come because they work, their children are too young, they won’t travel without their husbands, or for some other reason. That narrows down the list considerably. Then there are considerations of the group dynamic. It’s important to choose a group that will interact well together. Obviously, those who need the break the most, who are under the most pressure, the slowest to recover, take precedence.
Organizing all of the host families and sponsors for the various group events and special occasions was quite a task. How did it happen? Belzberg was born and grew up in Antwerp, Belgium, and many families in her home city and in France.
With the help of herself, two cousins in Belgium, Shifra Zultzbacher and Yehudit Sanderovitch – who took care of all of the logistics on the ground in Antwerp – French native Oriella Bliach, a volunteer for OF and Israel southern regional director Pini Rabonovich, the trip was a success.
THE WOMEN represented a tapestry of the trauma of Israelis; sons and daughters killed while serving in the IDF, senseless terrorist attacks or rocket attacks; loss felt during one of Israel’s wars – the Second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Pillar of Defense and Operation Protective Edge.
All the ladies echo what my new friend Tzila Rahamim says, “My spirits are high from the trip. It gave me strength to come back to life. I was sad.
There I met people who understood me, who loved me.”
Rahamim lost her son Gadi on November 15, 2002. Serving in the Border Police, Gadi was with 11 other officers securing a group of Jews on their way back from the Tomb of the Patriarchs on Friday night when they were ambushed.
For Tzila, the trip was a week of “happiness.”
“I went to another world. I said to myself, ‘Tzila, I have to be strong and find the strength to carry on being happy.’ I found courage.”
The journey was a roller-coaster of emotions, where laughs and cries rolled side by side.
Michal Turgemann, whose son, Yair, was killed by sniper fire during his army service on October 20, 2004, says, “I wanted to forget. I wanted to laugh. I just wanted to be with the ladies, enjoying ourselves. It gave me more strength to come back and to continue. I forgot everything, saw new things in Paris, the Eiffel Tower, the Mona Lisa; in Holland, all the windmills; and in Antwerp, the synagogue Shabbat prayers were amazing.... There are no words to describe how much better I feel.”
Although there are others, like Aviva Raziel, who lost her daughter Michal in the Sbarro Pizzeria terrorist attack on August 9, 2001, who make it look easy to enjoy life. She is always smiling, but, beneath it all, she keeps her emotions in check. Raziel is a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Hadassah-University Medical Center on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus, she would remark that she’s sensitive to suffering and illness and has worked hard to not let tragedy invade her every day life.
Yet when Raziel needed to break down – while visiting Israel Ambassador to France Yossi Gol she learned that a close friend of hers had died – all of the women came to her aid to offer comfort.
“The day I got the message about my friends death, I found the group identified with me,” Raziel says. “Everyone knew the right thing to say, we were one together with the other, and then another.
I didn’t have to explain anything, they just understood. That was a surprise for me. I hadn’t been with a group like that before.
The crying and remembering wasn’t for me. However, their powerful love and understanding was amazing. That’s what I say when asked about the trip.”
OneFamily founder Belzberg, sums up the meaning of journey in a nutshell. “I have seen firsthand the impact that a trip overseas has on a group of bereaved mothers. When they are far removed from their homes filled with memories and free from the place where their tragedy occurred, they are able to breathe a sigh of relief, stand taller and look forward with optimism.
“Being in new places and seeing new views distracts them from the emotional burdens they constantly carry,” she says. “Being with other mothers on the trip, who have suffered the same loss, provides an opportunity for them to develop new deep and understanding friendships and support systems that are one of the keys to an emotionally healthy Mom.”
WHILE THE women embraced their opportunity for fun and travel – exploring the diamond district of Antwerp, buying expensive European gifts for grandchildren and loved ones – for Aliza Amsalem, every day was a struggle. Amsalem’s son, Itzik, was killed when a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck the balcony he was standing on in Kiryat Malachi on November 15, 2012. He was 24.
She sobbed all day, every day, at every turn of the journey.
One day, when several of the women saw that Amsalem once again was in tears, they brought her a blond wig to try on from donations they had received. Everyone started exchanging wigs and giving each other makeovers, and before you knew it, the red-haired ladies were glamorously transformed into luxurious blondes, and visa versa.
Amsalem couldn’t stop laughing at her reflection as a blond.
The moment was uplifting.
It’s hard to focus on just one aspect of the trip that encompassed everything it came to mean. There were just too many elements that came together to make it a memorable and meaningful experience.
When the women traveled to Paris – admiring the Champ de Mars, mingling among the lovers under the Eiffel Tower, basking in the greatness of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa – the group hit a somber note when visiting the Hyper Cacher supermarket, where four Jewish men were murdered in the January terrorist attacks that shook France to its core.
Wounded collectively by their heartbreak, the women were especially choked up by the sight of thousands of flowers and candles scattered around the parking lot of the grocery store.
ABOVE ALL, besides the awe-inspiring places, the personal contact with the hosts and families, where they were able to discuss their personal tragedies at various opportunities in their homes, was a highlight for all. The communication between them flowed very easily as all the hosts knew Hebrew.
In Antwerp, which has a financially strong, large Jewish community, 10 families kindly hosted the women in their kosher homes. Providing not only luxurious lodging, early morning breakfasts, sandwiches to stanch our hunger during the jampacked day and a hot meal awaiting us upon our late-night return, they played a major role in everyone’s overall morale towards life, themselves and a surprising change in the participants’ opinions of Diaspora Jews.
Belzberg said introducing these women to members of the Jewish community abroad is a critical component of the trip.
“Being embraced by Jewish families living in the Diaspora who show them endless love has an effect far beyond what you’d imagine,” she said. “Suddenly they realize that people around the world whom they’ve never met before care about them, want to hear stories about their child, and acknowledge the great sacrifice that they have made on behalf of the people of Israel.
“To the mothers it says your child has not been forgotten and did not die in vain, two fundamental revelations needed to reduce the pain of the loss,” Belzberg continued.
Lecturer on Jewish studies at the University of Antwerp and the groups tour guide for the week, Prof. Aaron Malinsky, noticed the miraculous change in everyone’s spirits and physical appearance, commenting, “You see it in the eyes. The trip really did them good.
They have a smile on their face now. It’s good for their health, psyche and soul. Their faces are radiant.”
Caroline Schneider, one of the Antwerp hosts, whose son served in the IDF’s Golani Brigade for three years, said, “It doesn’t matter how many smahot, happy occasions, they have, they can’t get over [their trauma]. I don’t really think I can imagine what these ladies have gone through but I can imagine how terrible it would be, so I want to do something. I wanted to help them and welcome them. I wanted to give them some joy, a little bit. I admire them, they are so strong. They have so much strength.”
Every host echoed these sentiments. Leah Hirsch, who was born in Jerusalem and has lived in Belgium for many years, said, “We wanted to celebrate them to show them a good time.” Hirsch is the founder of Beit Linda, a woman’s center in Antwerp focusing on development and self actualization. “We laughed and wept with them, we let them talk. I think we got more than we gave, but they say the opposite. We really felt heartened. We feel close to them, we are one nation, we are one body, we are one family.”
In one poignant moment, Avraham Fried’s song “Aleh Katan Sheli” (My Little Leaf) came over the stereo and merry faces turned to sobs.
The women shed tears in unison, singing from the pit of their souls and guts, the chorus line, “Gale winds and tempest storms happen, remember and be strengthened; I am with you, hold strong, my little leaf.”
At that moment, it was if their hearts and tears fell at once.
A few were too choked up to continue dancing, and stepped out to the backyard for a good cry.
Surrounded by purple wild flowers growing under the garden tree-bed, Tzila Rahamim shook her head, dangling her golden tassels around her oval face, obscuring my view, as she picked up a dead leaf in the garden, saying, “This is a fallen leaf. My son has fallen. He is like this leaf. Do you understand why we are crying?” Puppy-dog tears streaming down her expressive eyes, Rahamim said in a husky, crackling, barely audible voice, “Life is hard, Sarah.
Everyone is getting ready to go back home, and get ready for the holidays. Everyone will be sitting around their tables. Where’s my Gadi? Where is he? I cry all day. All day. It’s been 13 years already. I don’t want to go outside. I don’t want to leave the house.
“I came to release my heart, I came here to grieve. The pain. I hurt all the time. It hurts the kids that mom is in pain all the time.”
Suddenly a smile broke out over her torn face, and she continued, “This trip was for Gadi. He was with me all the time. I am changed because of this trip. I didn’t think it could happen, but I feel alive again, a little, even though I’m crying.”
For Yehudit Bias – whose son was killed in a suicide bombing in a game club in Rishon Lezion on May 7, 2002 – words could not describe the trip.
“Wow, every minute I was wowed,” she said. “I’m tired, my body hurt, and my heart is in pain. But now, because of this experience, I am able to push all that aside and feel the joy of every moment of life.”
Info@onefamilyfund.org/www.onefamilytogether.org.