"I hope you brought oxygen," said Ellie Henkind Katz when I called for directions on the way to her home in the Jerusalem suburb of Shoeva.
Oxygen? I had no idea what she was talking about.
Learn how to buy your home in Israel with confidence“You’ll need it when you see where we live,” she explained.
Indeed, the home she shares with her husband of 50 years, sculptor Michael Katz, is breathtaking.
The vast multi-level property with expansive gardens is filled with Michael’s clever and exquisite works of metal and ceramic, often incorporating water elements. Many of the sculptures depict animals, some based on biblical stories – cattle, geese, salmon, foxes, fowl, lions, turtles, and more. Frolicking in and around these inanimate creatures are animate ones: chickens, ducks, peacocks, fish, a dog, and a flock of white doves.
For Ellie’s 40th birthday, in homage to her maiden name (Henkind), Michael designed and constructed the Kind Hen house on the grounds. This is where she receives private psychotherapy patients. Shaped like a laying hen, the structure is fun to look at from the outside, and cozy and peaceful inside. Rather than a couch, clients relax in a hammock.
“In my two clinics, one at Retorno [International Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Addiction in Givat Shemesh] and one here in the Kind Hen, the patients lie down and swing while we talk. I call it tipul b’nidnood [treatment while swinging],” Ellie said.
She met Michael, a native of Israel, at a party in New York in 1975. At the time, Michael was completing a fine arts degree at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Ellie was completing her PhD in psycholinguistics at NYU and Rockefeller University. Two nights later, Michael had Shabbat dinner at the Henkinds’ home in Scarsdale, New York. Ellie’s father decided that Michael was a perfect fit for Ellie.
She agreed. When Michael told her that he intended to go back to Israel, Ellie simply said, “I’ll follow you.”
Three weeks after they met, they were married by a judge in Brooklyn Heights. Less than a year later, they made aliyah.
Finding your way professionally in Israel as an olah
ELLIE HAD been to Israel several times and had relatives here. She was not daunted by the prospect of finding her way professionally in a new land, even though she barely knew the language.
“Within the first two weeks, I was helping someone teach a master’s class in nonverbal communication at Hebrew University. And when I was starting out [as a clinical therapist], a nearby moshav hired me as its only psychologist. For over 10 years, every problem, whether between neighbors or between a husband and wife, was referred to me. It was a gift to have so many different therapeutic challenges.”
The Katzes’ son Shimon was born in September 1977, followed by Adam, Rain, and Heidi. Ellie and Michael now have more than a dozen grandchildren.
“Six weeks after my first child was born, I began a 22-year career teaching psychology at Hebrew University’s School of Occupational Therapy,” said Ellie.
How did she manage in Hebrew? “I faked it,” she admitted cheerfully.
In those early years, she would write out her lectures in English and give them to a friend to translate. After delivering the translated lectures in Hebrew, an assistant helped her answer students’ questions. Eventually, she attained fluency with the help of a private tutor – none other than Dola, the daughter of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the reviver of modern Hebrew.
The Katzes’ house, situated on top of a hill in Shoeva, was built by the British about 100 years ago, with the strategic aim of protecting the water pump (shoeva) leading to Jerusalem.
Michael designed functional art elements in the village and served as its voluntary head for years. He doubled the size of the house in which he and Ellie raised their children, and created just about everything inside – from dinner plates to furniture to decorative art. He often gives free guided tours of his lovingly constructed house and gardens.
Michael’s professional commissions range from jewelry and sculptures to monuments and silver Judaica. For decades, he produced thousands of pins annually for the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism. Many of his works are installed in American homes and synagogues.
Ellie, who wrote a “Psychology of Everyday Living” column for The Jerusalem Post, has been treating recovering addicts at Retorno for almost 23 years. The Foreign Ministry sent her to Beijing and Istanbul 26 years ago to teach psychologists and psychiatrists her methodology.
Her published books include When Sane People Do Insane Things: A Self-Help Guide; Love and Kisses from My Padded Cell (later renamed Enslaved) about her work at Retorno; the autobiographical My Last Summer as a Fat Girl; and a novel, Alterations. Soon to be published is her second novel, Finding Phoebe, about a teenage girl with a stutter.
When I asked Ellie to identify one of her greatest accomplishments, she replied, “I have meditated every day for 53 years. I figured out a way to meditate and speak at the same time. I do therapy inspired from a certain state of consciousness, with my eyes closed, speaking through the meditation. I love that; I feel like I’m guided by God.”
Michael noted that Ellie has taken on more Jewish practices over the past 15 years. She meets weekly with her beloved friend and mentor, Rabbanit Yehudis Golshevsky, and studies everything from Halacha to the hidden meanings found in prayer and Torah.
“I feel Hashem [God] in everything I do,” said Ellie, who is living gracefully with Parkinson’s disease.
When she started reciting the “Asher Yatzar” prayer after using the bathroom, she added, it was “one of the most life-changing experiences I’ve had. I’m so connected to gratitude for the [bodily] system working. It’s so delicately balanced that it shouldn’t work 99% of the time, but it does! It’s glorious. I’ve never heard of another religion that celebrates the miracle that is this activity.”
In their little piece of paradise just west of Jerusalem, Ellie and Michael are still very obviously in love after half a century of marriage.
“He brings me breakfast in bed,” Ellie said. “We go to sleep holding hands every night.”■
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