The Quiet Work

This week, two notable things happened that have stayed with me.

First, my daughter completed her basic training in the IDF. Watching her stand proudly among hundreds of new soldiers was a special moment.

Second, I received photos from the final day of therapy for the children down south who have been treated at our Mobile Animal Therapy Center.

At first glance, these two events seem unrelated.

One celebrated the start of a young soldier’s service to the people of Israel. The other marked the end of therapy for children recovering from the trauma of war and terror.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized these milestones are connected.

Our Mobile Animal Therapy Center was created after the October 7 attacks to help children heal from the trauma of war. Inside the truck is a welcoming activity room filled with small animals, alongside a private room where each child meets with a professional therapist.
The children who come here are ordinary boys and girls. who once led normal lives. They have brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. These children have experienced loss or witnessed horrors that no child should ever endure.

When we were recently introducing this project, I was told that people in the U.S. had largely moved on from the war. Trauma recovery, they said, isn’t popular.

Perhaps that’s true. But not everything that’s important is popular.

The day after my daughter’s graduation, she learned she would be serving in northern Israel, protecting Israeli communities. It wasn’t the assignment she had hoped for. “It will be boring,” she told me.

Yet protecting lives doesn’t have to be exciting to be meaningful.

Neither does healing them.

One day, many of these children who visit the animals for therapy will stand where my daughter stands today. They, too, will be called upon to fight and defend us. Before they can do that, they need the chance to heal, to laugh, to feel safe, and simply to be children.

That is exactly what your support makes possible.

Thanks to you, Hatzalah Yehuda v’Shomron is helping children rediscover the confidence and joy that war and terror took from them.

The work does not make headlines. It may not be deemed “exciting.”

But it is shaping the future of Israel – one child at a time.