A Profession That Found Me
In my youth and as a high school student, I was always fascinated by life’s challenges.
I pursued my high school diploma with a specialty in biology and thought that would be
my professional path. As a National Service volunteer, I worked with all types of people
and realized that the complexities of the human condition was something that would
lead me down my continued path. So, I feel like the field of social work was something
which chose me rather than the other way around.
To Be There for People
For many years now I’ve been working in the healthcare field. I’ve worked in hospitals
in the internal medicine and neurological departments, in senior residences, in clinical
services to support the elderly and Holocaust survivors, assisting people with terminal
illnesses, and over the past few years I’ve returned to my role as an in-hospital social
worker in the dialysis institute at Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon. My job is to accompany
patients and ensure they get whatever they need in regard to their rights and care, and
be there for them from the time of diagnosis, as their disease progresses and where
necessary as they approach the end-of-life.
End of Life
Tzohar Ad 120 is an initiative that provides halachic and ethical support to patients and
families dealing with complex and often terminal illness. I have been involved with the
program from its inception and over 600 families have turned to us and we are always
prepared to help. Rarely are the people calling us the patients themselves, but it is
typically their families.
They turn to us with specific issues they are dealing with regarding questions of
resuscitation, feeding, respiratory support, questions about dementia, how to honor
ailing parents as well as issues surrounding advanced directives ahead of death and
other legal issues that can arise.
They turn to us to gain halachic, ethical or legal insights and my job as a social worker
is to accompany them and together with a rabbi allow them to have clarity around end-
of-life and be able to reach decisions in peace and with the information they need.
Family unity is a main goal in our efforts, so we include all the relevant members of the
family to be involved and we allow them all to express their opinions and we encourage
them all to be able to speak and express their thoughts so that .
The Challenges of Separation
We work directly alongside rabbis, and as a social worker I use all my professional skills
in order to listen to the family members and gather the relevant information to make
informed decisions to help families with the mass of medical treatment data that is being
thrust upon them and the enormity of facing the reality that they will be saying goodbye
to loved ones that brings with it all sorts of sensitive complexities. Our service is
available free to people in Israel and abroad, 24/6 and also via Zoon. My goal is to
bring people to the point where every family will feel at peace with their decisions, even
long after their loved one has left the world.
Reporting for Duty
On October 7 th I was called into the hospital leaving my husband Liron and three
children at home. Our oldest daughter at that time was staying in Sderot. Alongside my
personal fears, I was so moved to see so many hospital employees; doctors, nurses,
cleaners, social workers and other support staff, stepping in at a time of urgent need, as
if they were called into the military. The hospital was inundated with a huge wave of
injured patients and sadly many were dead. The ambulances would arrive, drop off the
patient and head right back out to get more injured patients.
My role went from taking care of patients being admitted into the Emergency
Department to providing information to family members that were looking for their loved
ones in the Information Center that had been set up. In retrospect, I know that many of
those I helped were looking for people who had been killed or taken captive. Those
were hours filled with conveying the worst news possible. One’s whole professional life
is planning for days like that and everything I had trained for allowed me to prepare for
those awful moments, yet there is no book or training manual that could allow one to be
ready for something that massive.
Matters of Life and Death
People ask me if I feel uncomfortable dealing with death, but I know that I am exactly
where I need to be. I pray that wherever this work takes me, I will bring the tools and
knowledge to achieve the goal of providing support for people and alleviating some of
the burden they are being forced to deal with.