From Trauma to Strength: Omer Refaeli’s Balance Gvulot
Last month, walking the halls of the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly, one thing was unmistakable: this was not a normal year, and these were not normal conversations.
The GA felt heavier. More urgent. Less theoretical. It wasn’t about abstract ideas of resilience—it was about survival. About rebuilding. About deciding, in real time, whether to fall or to rise.
One conversation I had last month has stayed with me ever since.
“When you survive something—when you go through a trauma—there are two options,” Omer Refaeli told me. “One is you fall down, and you’re done. The second is you rise up, and you want to make a difference.”
Omer wasn’t speaking in metaphors. He was describing his life.
“My students were murdered. And they were sending me messages.”
Omer Refaeli is a teacher from Israel’s Gaza envelope and the founder of Balance Gvulot, a resilience-based fitness studio in Kibbutz Gvulot. When we spoke last month, he described the days following October 7 with painful clarity.
“When we were evacuated to Eilat after October 7th, I was a teacher,” he said. “Actually, I’m still a teacher. But students of mine were murdered. And they were sending me messages.”
Families were displaced. Children had no schools, no kindergartens, no structure.
“My community was in pieces,” Omer said. “Everything was a mess.”
And then came the decision point.
“I decided, I gotta do something.”
“I went down to the store and bought resistance bands”
What he did next didn’t involve a strategic plan or a grant proposal.
“I went down to the store, bought resistance bands, and started doing training with teenagers at the hotel,” he told me. “And it went crazy.”
One group became two. Two became three. Then five.
“And I noticed—I’m not just saving them,” Omer said. “I’m also saving myself.”
The teens began waiting for him every morning.
“They were waiting for me to high-five me,” he said. “It was crazy.”
By the time he returned to his kibbutz, he knew.
“That’s what I want to do,” he said. “That’s my mission.”
Building strength in the middle of a mental-health crisis
Omer went on to open Balance Gvulot in Kibbutz Gvulot—designed, as he put it, to create “the right balance between community, resilience, and physical activity.”
“We work out together,” he said. “And we get stronger together—in spite of what happened.”
But as he emphasized last month, this work is about far more than fitness.
“There is a huge mental-health issue, especially in the Gaza envelope,” Omer said. “We call it the second wave.”
He didn’t soften the reality.
“People are committing suicide,” he said. “Kids are having trouble. Kids are peeing in bed.”
Then he spoke as a father.
“My daughter—she’s four—she can barely speak now,” he told me. “She’s had a big regression in her talking. And I don’t blame her. We’re trying to live, but there are still explosions above our heads.”
“We let all the emotions out—bad ones and good ones”
Inside Balance Gvulot, Omer intentionally created something Israel desperately needs right now: a safe space.
“In our studio, we let all the emotions out,” he said. “The bad ones and the good ones.”
He described a culture rooted in belonging.
“We work together as a team,” he explained. “Even when one is behind, we all help him.”
For Omer, physical training mirrors life.
“You have boundaries you need to respect,” he said. “You need to work in a team in order to succeed.”
The studio, he said, is “a microcosmos of the outside world—but it’s a safe place.”
“I wrote on the door: What gives you strength?”
One moment he shared last month has stayed with me.
“I wrote on the door, ‘What gives you strength?’” Omer said.
Each child answered.
“Some wrote their football team. Some wrote God. Some wrote something else.”
And when frustration sets in during a workout?
“I remind them of their strength,” he said. “I tell them to try again.”
The change is visible.
“I see them getting more energy,” he said. “Bringing their heads back up.”
“If we don’t do it now, nobody else will”
When I asked Omer about his hopes for the future, his answer was simple—and sobering.
“I want to help as many people as I can,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to educate these teenagers.”
Why now?
“They’re the next generation of Israel and the Jewish world,” he said. “If we don’t do it now, nobody else will.”
Then he added something that felt especially true in that moment.
“It’s a big responsibility,” he said. “But it’s also a big privilege.”
What the GA revealed
Last month’s JFNA General Assembly wasn’t just a gathering of leaders—it was a gathering of witnesses.
Stories like Omer Refaeli’s remind us that resilience doesn’t only come from policy, funding, or speeches. Sometimes it starts with resistance bands in a hotel lobby. Sometimes it begins with a high-five. And sometimes it starts by asking a traumatized child one simple question:
What gives you strength?
And then reminding them—again and again—until they remember it themselves.
