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One Year Later in Israel’s North: "The Supportive Community Really Saved Us"
Tens of thousands of Israelis still feel the residual impact of the Second Lebanon War one year after the first Hezbollah Katyusha missiles hit the northern Galilee. With funding from UJC’s Israel Emergency Campaign and in partnership with the Israeli government, JDC’s programs continue to address the heightened needs of Israel’s most vulnerable citizens—children, the elderly, immigrants and people with disabilities—striving to recover in the north and those currently living under fire in Sderot and the Gaza border region.
When the Katyushas began falling in Haifa last July, Mordechai decided to stay put in the apartment he has lived in for the last 47 years. "I’m a Haifa’ite at heart," says Mordechai, 56, who suffers from epilepsy and lives alone. He didn’t go to the neighborhood shelter, even when a Katyusha fell 50 meters, or 164 feet, from his apartment building. But as the rockets kept falling and Mordechai was increasingly housebound, he received daily phone calls and hot food from a source on which he has come to rely—Nissim, his ‘community parent’ from JDC's Supportive Community program for the elderly. "Nissim called all the time and came to the house," described Mordechai, making it easier for him to continue with some kind of daily schedule. The Haifa Supportive Community for Elderly operates like the nearly 200 other communities across the country, providing a basket of services which responds to seniors’ varied security and health needs and day-to-day concerns, thus allowing them to live independently. Each neighborhood-based community has a community ‘mother’ and ‘father’—adults who helps aging couples and individuals with repairs, tasks and errands. The program also offers home visits from doctors 24 hours a day, ambulance service to the hospital, and installs an emergency call button at home that gives members the reassurance to age in their natural environment. Beyond the physical security, the Supportive Community’s home visits and social and cultural programs reduce the isolation so many elderly feel. Nissim works with his fellow community parent, Mira, who can communicate with both Russian and Hebrew speakers, helping them with life skills such as learning how to cook, buy groceries or pick up medicine at the pharmacy. In Haifa, the neighborhoods where the local Supportive Community operates suffered numerous attacks and near misses last summer. The community members, who suffer from a wide range of physical and developmental disabilities and are generally living on very limited incomes, had difficulty taking care of themselves. In order to provide daily hot meals, kits and fans to use in the bomb shelters, UJC’s Israel Emergency Campaign helped fund JDC’s respite care for the Supportive Communities. Both the emergency and year-round support provided Supportive Communities has been essential for many of the participants. Yisrael and Binyamin, an elderly, ailing father and adult son who suffers from a severe case of diabetes and developmental issues, live together in a small Haifa apartment, where they are tended by a Filipino caretaker and supported by a distant cousin. Their cousin, Chaim, happened to be out of the country when the war broke out. But as members of the Supportive Community, the family was in touch with Nissim. During the rocket attacks, Nissim took Binyamin to the doctor, "offering help when I couldn’t be there," said Chaim. "They absolutely saved us." In the year since the war, both ’community parents’ have spent a tremendous amount of time with Binyamin. Nissim has installed handlebars in the bathroom and "has a long list of tasks," says Chaim. Mira works with Binyamin, who tends to forget what he has learned between visits, teaching him how to make soup, go shopping and manage the allowance that Chaim gives him. "He has developed a real relationship with Mira," says Chaim. "He waits for her visits." Now that the war is over, the Haifa Supportive Community has continued to grow and expand its activities, including holiday parties and occasional trips. Nissim is encouraging Mordechai to get more involved in the community, perhaps working as a volunteer and helping other participants with more physical limitations. And while Mordechai is not committing to anything just yet, the contribution the Community has made to his daily life is clear. "It helps me be more connected to people," he says. "I love the visits and I’m always ready to go out. They’ve really saved me." July 2007 |
