[written on the 18th of November]
Last year I went to the psychiatric hospital in Har Nof twice a week, to do my practicum as an Art Therapist. Twice a week I would get on the bus and tram, through a wondrous mix of Jerusalem residents and visitors, passing Jaffa street, the Mahane Yehuda Market, my former high-school and the central bus station - reminiscing about the past, thinking of the future, trying not to think about the terror and violence I once witnessed there growing up, rather thinking of hope and peacefulness if possible - I had a long day of work ahead of me, no time for anything but hope.
Twice a week I walked into a neighborhood so different from my own, an ultra orthodox community. Within it, I would walk into a place filled with the city's despair... filled with the worst possible stories of loneliness and violence and rape, awful childhoods and misfortunes and situations you could never imagine. Stories I mainly have to keep to myself and share only with my colleagues to protect the privacy and rights of my patients, and to do what we are there for - to help our patients. Like in Hadassah hospital, which I've actively supported for a long time, here too - once inside the hospital walls, religion, race or nationality didn't matter. Patients and staff come from all different backgrounds. Tolerance is key to doing our job, accepting anyone, any background, any emotion.... anything but violence.
Among buildings telling a tale of a bloody and painful past all of their own - the people I got to know there, staff and patients alike, taught me how one might, despite it all, look to the future. How - with such small odds, knowing the patient might return a month after release, a patient might get hurt, commit suicide, commit a crime - one still holds on to hope, still tries to make a change, still smiles, still laughs, still creates...!
This morning I heard that four men were murdered a few steps from this hospital, in a synagogue, during prayer, and a fifth man was murdered while trying to protect others and prevent further casualties. May they rest in peace.
It leaves me relatively speechless and scared for the future and for my loved ones.
It also makes me think of those I know and care deeply about, who were probably in the hospital at the time. It is quite a quiet neighborhood and I am sure they heard the shots. I think of the reactions of patients with anxiety disorders, patients who have violence in their family or background... The difficulty to move on and work as usual, even if you are an Arab or Jewish doctor, nurse or therapist. The high alert that must have kept them all inside the buildings. I know how strong a lot of those people are. I know they will put all their effort into getting through the day, and tomorrow, in that god-forsaken-psychiatric-ward, there will still be that unbelievable and inconceivable drop of hope. That inexplicable despite-it-all will to live. Those unimaginable slowly growing friendships and those underestimated low-payed workers who still have a glimpse of belief in their eye that they can make a small change in an old and crumbling system. The rare patients who, despite a lifetime tarred with horror and sadness, puff on their unhealthy cigarette, sip their cheap coffee, and dare to think of what they want to do tomorrow and even the next week, dare to imagine and then slowly even paint with a bright color as they wrestle with the idea that they might have a future... Wrestling with hope.
