When the audience of some 100 Israelis and guests from abroad were asked for a show of hands to indicate who served in the reserves since Oct. 7 or who had spouses or children and grandchildren who served, nearly everyone raised a hand.
All knew the importance of the recent event at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center (SZMC) – the dedication in the Helmsley Cancer Center building of the Silber Family Resilience Center, which has opened on the fifth floor to help reservists, first responders, and their families during the fierce and traumatic war.
A building will also be constructed adjacent to it by the Silber-Scheiner families in memory of the parents – all four Holocaust survivors – of Mark Silber and Barbara Scheinder-Silber. The couple’s son, psychiatrist Dr. David Silber, and his family, and all the Silber children were present at the moving event.
SZMC President Prof. Jonathan Halevy, noting the serenity produced in the building from the natural light pouring through all the floors, the natural wood, and the greenery, said he met with the family a few years ago about establishing such a facility. The Silbers were specifically looking for a mental health project, but at the time there was none being developed. So they waited until a mental health project came along. With the emotional fallout of the war, they recognized the urgency of their mission. “We hope to satisfy your expectations,” Halevy said.
SZMC CEO Prof. Ofer Merin added, “Today, we all know why this center is extremely necessary. Before I became the hospital’s CEO, I was head of the trauma unit for a decade. That’s the easier job – treating physical trauma. But the long physical and emotional recovery is much harder. Some 15,000 people – soldiers and civilians – were wounded and injured, but many more suffer from emotional trauma – hundreds of thousands of people, including their spouses and children. They all need support... even only short treatment that will change their lives.”
The Resilience Center’s professional team, headed by psychiatrist Dr. Jennie Goldstein, who is its medical director, includes therapists from various fields, such as psychotherapy, art therapy, yoga therapy, and psychiatry. They aim at promoting the patient’s mental resilience, reducing mental distress resulting from the consequences of service, strengthening the family and marital unit, and providing access to professional, high-quality treatment at no cost for those who are eligible under Defense Ministry policy.
They can get body-centered therapy for processing trauma through physical sensations; cognitive developmental therapy for changing negative thinking and behavior patterns through psychotherapy; rapid eye movement (EMDR) therapy for speedy processing of traumatic experiences and significant relief of behavioral-physical symptoms and improvement in the emotional state; yoga therapy; and BrainsWay, which uses deep magnetic stimulation (to affect areas of the brain related to depression, anxiety, PTSD, obsessive-compulsive behavior), and more. Treatment can be for couples, individuals, or parents.
“The new center is committed to providing a personal response and seeing patients from a holistic perspective,” Goldstein noted. Our goal is to encourage the families of those serving to use their inner strength to heal and rebuild healthy home dynamics, while feeling safe and supported by a broader network around them.”
Mark Silber said that when the war in Ukraine began, over 20% of the draft-eligible men left their country; but after Oct. 7, 2023, we had to charter extra planes to bring Israelis back from abroad. But it comes at a price. The same spirit of survival is evident in many of the survivors of the Oct. 7 events. Our greatest wish is that everyone who turns to the center will find a new path of resilience and hope.”
'A new path of resilience and hope'
SHIRA BIRNBAUM is the executive director of the Resilience Center, whose symbol is the SZMC icon and a butterfly on one side. She asked a panel of reservists and their spouses about their experiences.
Elisha Meidan – son of Rabbi Yaakov Meidan, co-head of the Har Etzion Hesder Yeshiva – lives in Kibbutz Keramim in the northern Negev with his wife and six children. He did over 300 days of reserve duty. When called up for another bout of military duty, he left in a hurry but went back to hug his family right before the ground invasion. He couldn’t tell them he was about to go into Gaza, so for him it felt like goodbye, but they didn’t realize that. Two weeks later, he lost his legs up to the knees in an explosion set off by Hamas terrorists. “I felt that I was about to die – that it was the last moment of my life, and I recited ‘Shema Yisrael.’ But I thought of my wife and each child.” Fortunately, he was saved after many weeks in the hospital.
Each of his children reacted differently. “It’s amazing how much power we all have. The youngest, four years old, was two when I was wounded. He would ask me every time he came to the hospital: ‘What happened to you? Why did your feet fall off?’” Meidan replied that they were exploded in the war – that the bigger stump was like the daddy, and the daddy stump was taking care of the smaller stump. That image calmed his son.
Miriam Amedi, head of the Reserve Women’s Forum, whose husband, singer and actor Idan Amedi, was seriously wounded in the war, was on maternity leave with her youngest child, who was four months old. Her four-year-old daughter had never seen her father wearing a uniform before. When he prepared to leave for war, Amedi told her that her father was going to do the job he had done before he was a performer. When her husband was called into reserve duty, Miriam “felt pride that he was part of a historical event for the Jewish people. He was wounded, but now he has been rehabilitated and decided to go back on reserve duty,” she said.
She added, “Today, after all we went through, it’s harder to fight over small things like leaving his shoes in the living room. If you can grow together, it will stay with you for life.”
Miriam said that when Idan was wounded, it was hard to tell her children what had happened. “I looked into my four-year-old daughter’s eyes and said: ‘You know, Daddy’s in the army, and he was wounded, but everything will be okay.’ She didn’t know what ‘wounded’ meant, so I said he fell down and hurt himself. Then she went to kindergarten and told her best friend that her Daddy ‘fell.’ The friend said that it meant he died. My daughter argued with her friend, insisting he was alive. She didn’t tell the kindergarten teacher or me. I learned only four months later about this exchange. I felt so bad that she had to hold this inside. For me, that was the hardest moment of the war.”
After Oct. 7, Eitan Kestenbaum returned home but was then called to fight in Lebanon. “Before I left for the base, our son ran to my car and refused to leave. He cried. I tried to explain, and he finally got out. When I returned, I called to him to get into the car so we could close the circle,” he recounted.
He added that reserve duty is like a “truck driving through your house. You’re a wreck. When it leaves, you have to rebuild your home. Life is not perfect, so a couple has to rebuild their marriage and home – and it takes time.”
The Kestenbaums’ seven-year-old daughter was in denial during the war. “She ignored me, didn’t say goodbye, and refused to talk to me on the phone,” Eitan recalled. “Even today, she doesn’t always respect my authority. Our eldest son told me he was proud to be the son of a reservist but that he was scared and prefers an IDF office job when he grows up, and not to fight.”
Miriam Amedi noted that going to reserve duty has now become a way of life. Reservists will have to serve 70 or 90 days a year. “Many kids see their fathers put on uniforms, and they start to regress into bedwetting and other behaviors, and be fearful. There are more places where one can get therapy, but there needs to be a national program to help reserve duty families. The country has to take responsibility for this,” she said.