OCTOBER 7: ONE YEAR ON – FILM
October 7: One Year On - ORT’s Response in Israel And Across Our Global Schools Network
When terrorists first swarmed across the Gaza border on the morning of October 7, 2023, the initial, desperate response from staff and teachers just a few kilometers away at the World ORT Kfar Silver Youth Village at Ashkelon was clear – to protect our students.
But after the immediate shock of those dark first days, the past 12 months have seen the unfolding of a traumatic experience beyond anyone’s worst expectations. Our staff and teachers have responded continuously to a myriad of essential needs for their students and colleagues, while suffering their own personal losses and tragedies.
World ORT Kadima Mada – our operational arm in Israel – serves around 10,000 students of all ages in schools, extra-curricular programs and other initiatives across the country.
As an educational organization we have strived to provide our students at schools and centers in Israel, and throughout the diaspora, with the strength and support they need to learn and grow – and now also to process the trauma they have experienced while building resilience to the horrors of terrorism and war.
Read on to learn more about ORT’s global response to the crisis that has affected countless lives across Israel and Jewish communities worldwide.
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Remembering Eyal
As the ORT family joins global Jewry in marking the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks, we are inviting our students, teachers, and all across our schools network to join us in a special ORT project.
In June we shared our collective grief following the death of Eyal Shynes, son of Mirav Shynes, manager of World ORT Kadima Mada’s YOUniversity program in northern Israel.
Eyal z”l was killed in Gaza while serving as a sergeant in the IDF’s 931st Battalion of the Nahal Brigade. He was just 19 years old.
Emergency Response
The Kfar Silver Youth Village sits just a few kilometres from the Gaza border. Many of the students from the village’s High School live in the kibbutzim most desperately affected by the attacks and tragically lost family members and friends on October 7.
For Amos Gofer, Kfar Silver CEO, that morning was a deeply chilling experience.
“We were willing to die for the students,” he explains. “After a few hours I said I’m evacuating all the students and everyone from the village because no one was coming to help us.”
Thanks to the heroic actions of two coach drivers who were prepared to travel to Kfar Silver despite rocket attacks, it was possible to evacuate more than 60 students to safer areas in the north of the country. Thankfully, the vast majority of Kfar Silver’s 1,000-plus students were already off-site for the festival of Simchat Torah. Days later, as IDF soldiers preparing to go to battle used the village as a respite center, the ORT community rallied to provide them with much-needed care items, food and rest.
During the first weeks after the attacks, WOKM staff concentrated on giving relief activities and stress relief for anxiety. Many students were already displaying post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms or acute anxiety.
Students from ORT schools worldwide came together virtually to show their support for their peers in Israel. They shared prayers and candle-lighting and heard from Israelis about their experiences.
Eloisa Molina, a psychologist from Colegio Olamí ORT in Mexico City, gave tips on how to recognize the symptoms of someone struggling with traumatic events. Students heard how to help themselves and others with emotional self-care, and what actions at home and school are helpful and unhelpful.
World ORT launched an emergency international fundraising campaign to help provide the urgent educational and psychological support needed.
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Continuing Educational Programs
Writing in the Times of Israel in late October, Dr. Moshe Leiba, World ORT Kadima Mada’s Chief Pedagogy Officer, described how ORT was providing dignity and hope to those displaced by the war, just as the organization had done after the Holocaust.
He explained: “We had assumed that the type of work characterized by our support for Jewish refugees in DP camps between 1945 and 1948 was something relegated to the history books. But here we are, nearly 80 years later, continuing our mission with the same commitment and passion.”
Comprehensive psychological support packages included one-on-one and group sessions for students with psychologists trained in mental first-aid. World ORT Kadima Mada staff systematically mapped and evaluated the emotional needs of our beneficiaries and began to provide dedicated, tailored support to individuals. For many, these therapeutic workshops in subjects including science, robotics, coding and virtual reality proved to be a lifeline.
More than 2,000 children were reached within the first month, with students from grades one to eight in both the northern and southern peripheries of Israel gaining some semblance of normality through these lessons.
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Parent evacuated from Kiryat Shmona to an evacuation center:
“We wanted to say thank you very much. You pitched in to help our children from the first moment and were a stable, supportive ground for them. You provided the evacuee children in the resort with many hours of activity and distraction from the reality that was imposed on them. They waited every week for the robotics meetings where they were intrigued, researched, developed, learned and created their own worlds.”
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From Emergency Needs to Essential Care
The enormous extent of the long-term mental health needs of our students, teachers and their families was almost immediately clear.
The challenge was complex. Professionals urgently worked to reduce the anxiety felt by all within the community, before also equipping teachers and parents with the tools needed to support their children.
“The sense of security in one’s home is damaged,” explained Royi Yablochnik, Kfar Silver’s lead psychologist (pictured). “We need to find a way to calm the mind. I give the students and staff exercises on how to do this.”
World ORT Director General and CEO Dan Green visited Israel in November to see first-hand the efforts to establish some sense or normality for students as they slowly returned to classrooms. With the international ORT community raising more than $2 million in the first two months, Dan paid tribute to the whole ORT family for the efforts being made to repair the tremendous damage and pain.
He explained: “To see our students coming back to school was fantastic because there was so much joy in their faces. To have this opportunity finally, having been either stuck at home or relocated around the country or being on Zoom. That was wonderful.
“It was also tinged of course with lots of sadness. We paid a condolence visit to one of the staff members of Kfar Silver, who very sadly lost her son fighting for the IDF. That was a tremendously humbling experience.”
He paid tribute to staff “for the incredible work they have been doing – picking up the pieces, showing love and support and care for all of our students”.
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Vital Respite Opportunities
World ORT Kadima Mada extended its support provision to more than 4,000 students across 44 evacuation centers and introduced an additional opportunity: international respite trips.
The first group of 10 Israelis who travelled to Mexico for rest and rehabilitation spent time with peers from Colegio Olamí ORT, in Mexico City.
Each of the 15-to-18-year-old students from across Israel had experienced different types of trauma: some had lost family members, parents, siblings or close friends, and one Ukrainian student who had fled one war only to again be faced with violent conflict.
The trip’s schedule included rehabilitation sessions with a team of consultants, social workers, and psychologists.
Dr. Leiba accompanied the students and said: “These two weeks were one of the most powerful experiences in my life: we laughed, cried, remembered, talked, planned.
“We returned home exhausted physically and emotionally but with powerful, exciting, and fulfilling experiences. The trip taught me a lot about resilience.”
Further trips took place to Los Angeles and to New York State in the United States. The New York trip was laced with its own mix of emotion, tragedy and pain. The group was renamed as the ‘Eyal Delegation’, in honor of Sergeant Eyal Shynes. Eyal’s mother, Mirav, had been due to travel to the U.S. with the students.
Judy Menikoff (pictured), Vice-Chair of World ORT, hosted the group and said “nothing prepared me for the unbelievably moving moment of witnessing those children in my own home, joining to share a sense of togetherness, belief and hope in a more positive future… The trip fostered a sense of normalcy, unity, and importantly fun, despite the challenging circumstances.”
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Supporting our Schools in the Diaspora
The pain and trauma of the past year has not been contained within Israel. Lives have been affected throughout World ORT’s network of schools and educational facilities in more than 30 countries.
Our students and teachers have come together from far and wide to proudly show their support for Israel – often while dealing with their own losses and the scourge of rising global antisemitism.
At Colegio Leon Pinelo, in Peru, staff mourned together and blessed the memory of the school’s former student Dr. Daniel Levi Ludmir, who was killed by terrorists as he was giving medical treatment to wounded civilians at Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7.
A World ORT Educators’ Forum was convened to hear about experiences across the diaspora and revealed a significant sense of anxiety and fear.
Jennifer Saber, a World ORT Education Department Project Manager, explained: “The stories I heard shook me: teens frightened watching social media posts of ‘war porn’ and antisemitic images hitting too close to home; schools in the Diaspora opening their doors to students needing respite from war-ravaged Israel; teachers worldwide not knowing how to comfort their students, while in need of comfort themselves.”
Students have been deeply affected by fears of expressing their Jewish identity in their home countries – in person and online. Teachers explained how an increase in security at schools as a preventative measure against rising antisemitism had been damaging to student mental health.
“Increasing visible security around the school had the opposite effect,” one explained. “The students questioned why there was all of a sudden more security and asked if they were in danger.”
A mini-series of sessions with experts, organized by World ORT’s Education Department, sought to alleviate these concerns. One student said the lessons had provided “the opportunity to ask questions and solve our doubts, giving us the ability to face situations in which we are discriminated against just for being Jewish”.
This is a crisis with no end in sight. World ORT’s Education Department is continuing to support our network of schools – both as a shoulder to cry on and to lend a helping hand.
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Looking to the Future
It is clear that the ongoing needs across Israel and our World ORT Kadima Mada community will be significant and long-standing. A wide-ranging psychological support provision will be needed for many years to come.
As 2024 continues and we prepare to enter the second year of the war amid ongoing threats to Israel, we continue to focus our efforts on the delivery of a structured schedule of activities for displaced children. These will continue in evacuee centers and schools as well as our provision of extra-curricular courses and programs including activities such as robotics, animation and photography.
We expect to continue the delivery of these weekly enrichment activities into 2025, adapting as the needs arise. World ORT Kadima Mada colleagues are currently investigating the feasibility of offering a program of activities for the children of Kibbutz Nir Am, situated just two kilometres from the Gaza border. This initiative aims to welcome the children back to their homes, once the situation allows, and offer a program which will feature a range of workshops for elementary and middle school students. These activities will be held at Kfar Silver Youth Village.
Our specialist mental health program of counselling and therapeutic activities is continuing for students at Kfar Silver. This includes individual therapy, group therapy, and creative approaches – such as horse therapy and krav maga – for students struggling to verbalize their emotions. Dedicated specialist sessions take place for Ukrainian students who fled war in their own country and settled at Kfar Silver.
Royi Yablochnik, Kfar Silver psychologist says: “Students really benefit from combining physical exercise with psychological support. The sessions give the students an outlet for aggression and strong emotions, which allows them to return to the classroom feeling calm. Also, if a child who is struggling academically and emotionally feels more self-confident through sports abilities, he or she will transfer these skills back to the classroom.”
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Continuing to Care for our Students
World ORT Kadima Mada will continue to offer small, one-time grants to support student and staff needs such as iPads, Tablets, cell phones and other technological equipment for learning; gift packages for instructors; support for those with relatives serving in the IDF.
Future respite trips for both staff and students – within Israel and abroad – are being planned.
Ann Rettig, Head Counselor at Kfar Silver says: “The psychological care for students this year has been essential, especially for students who live nearest to the Gaza Envelope, close to where terrorists infiltrated.
“Some of our students lived through long hours in the dark with no food or water. Many were rescued from their homes as an emergency, and some of them were exposed to seeing dead bodies. It is very important to continue to care for our students and create a supportive environment.”
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'Profound and Positive Effects'
Dr. Moshe Leiba concluded: “Since the war began World ORT Kadima Mada programs have had profound and positive effects on our students and staff. Through flexible learning models, robust psychological support and leveraging technology, we have successfully maintained educational continuity and enhanced emotional resilience.”
World ORT’s important work since the start of the war has provided support to thousands of staff and students across the country. A year on, they continue to face an uncertain future throughout the country.
Ongoing support is crucial to address the immediate needs and World ORT expresses profound gratitude for the funds raised thus far, enabling us to advance this vital work.