Healing for the Healer
I’m a family therapist who’s supposed to be on vacation. The only problem — I can’t rest. Because Jewish families in Ethiopia haunt my dreams as I try to sleep here in the USA.
In Israel, the angels, hidden and known, work tirelessly. Among them, the unstoppable Ministering Angel P’nina Tamano-Shata with her Immigration and Absorption Team fighting for Aliya. Jewish Agency staffers like Shira Aman who sacrifice time with their own children to rescue the Jewish children of Ethiopia.
I wake, heart churning with thoughts of Dr. Masresha Dessie in Rehovot. He waits, having made Aliya without his family. Not seeing his three year old daughter Yan and wife Beza (“Redemption” in Amharic) for almost two years.
Dr. Dessie played a key role in building the drumbeat for the rescue of six year old Biniyam Tesfahun who will receive lifesaving heart surgery in Israel this week. Now his family and heart are the ones in need of attention.
The final flight of Operation Tzur Israel before the upcoming Israeli elections will bring 300 olim from Ethiopia. “Two seats only,” Dr. Dessie says, “that’s all I need.” I know that Israel needs future heart surgeons like Dr. Dessie, accountants like Beza and brilliant youth of Ethiopian descent like Yan to power the future of the Promised Land.
Dr. Dessie writes: “I am really exhausted…I am thinking how can we end this chaos….”
I think: “Can Israel’s family re-unification efforts do the right thing now so this doctor can do the work he’s so needed for? Or do we need to consider other solutions?
I ask Dr. Dessie if he’s considered doing his cardiology residency here in diaspora USA. “Wow,” he says, I haven’t ever thought of it!”
In the USA, it’s time for my daily virtual minyan and Torah study. The parsha, Vayakhel. The message? “He Gathered.” Dr. Dessie texts me on WhatApp: “Everything comes from His will; even the smallest!”
I think: “What faith.”
My wife Judy enters the room where I’ve been writing since 5 a.m. She kisses my face, smiling in the morning light. I imagine the same for Dr. Dessie and his precious Beza. A beaming Yan bounding in for her morning hug.
This morning, as clouds blanket the woods outside my house in Connecticut, I hear the clouds have begun to part in Jerusalem.
Note: A version of this post appears on Medium.
