We came not to rescue but to re-connect the broken pieces
United Hatzalah has come to Sydney from Israel to offer their support in responding to trauma
I am writing this from Sydney, thousands of kilometers from home, yet painfully at the epicenter of the latest scene of Jewish grief. In the adjacent room to where I am, sits an elderly couple with a member of our United Hatzalah delegation to Sydney. The exhausted and traumatised couple literally ran from the bullets, trying to seek shelter during Sunday’s horrific terror attack that targeted a family-friendly Chanukah celebration in Bondi Beach. Inches away from being shot and killed by the latest antisemitic attack to befall the Jewish people, this couple sits with our delegation to start the recovery process.
While the gunfire has subsided since the deadly rampage, sleep has not come to this couple. Even when it does, the nightmares bring the ordeal back to life. Our senior clinician and psychotrauma specialist Dr. Adam Ballin is treating them not only for what their bodies endured, but for the emotional scars left behind. In moments like these, there is no difference between the physical and emotional. Trauma has no boundaries.
At the nearby Sydney children’s hospital, two more of United Hatzalah’s delegation members are sitting quietly with a mother whose world has collapsed this week. Her husband, community leader and Chabad rabbi, was murdered. She herself was injured. Some of her children were also wounded. Medicine is not the only remedy that she needs.
United Hatzalah came to create compassion and company. The ‘Heroes in Orange’ who dropped everything on Sunday afternoon to travel thousands and thousands of miles to Sydney have come to provide relief not only to this Rabbi’s wife and her children, but to the greater Sydney Jewish community who are struggling to reconnect the broken pieces after the terror attack.
The timing of this intervention is essential. Research consistently shows that psychological First-Aid, provided in the early hours and days following an event dramatically mediates the development of long-term trauma or PTSD, far more effectively than care that begins at a later state. That is not only the impetus behind the delegation’s mission but the reason why United Hatzalah established its Psychotrauma & Crisis Response Unit in 2016.
Our work began even before we reached the shores of Australia. Enroute, we found out that there was a passenger in need of assistance. A 17-year-old girl was making her way back home to be with her family who were among the victims of the Chanukah massacre in Sydney. She was helpless in the air, suspended between what she knew and what awaited her on the ground. Lonely grief was her traveling companion. Our team made sure she was not alone.
Last night many in the Jewish community gathered near the location of the attack to begin to grieve and heal. We light another Chanukah candle to bring light back into this dark corner of the world. Collectively we declare, we will not be frightened, even though we are. We will not hide, even though we might want to. And most importantly we are still here, even though we lost precious members of our Jewish community that day.
This tragedy reaffirms and reconnects us to the Chanukah miracle. The mighty Greek conquerors tried to destroy our Jewish spirit with darkness. But the heroes of the time, the Maccabees, stomped out that darkness with the light of our tradition and faith.
In the coming days, we will attend funerals. We will be there, because showing up matters. Because grief shared is grief that can be survived. We did not come to Sydney to rescue lives in the conventional sense. We came here to help rebuild lives. To reconnect the pieces so that healing can begin.
It is only by standing united will we once again rise from the tragedy and while the Jewish community of Australia might be shaken to the core, but they are not alone, not forgotten, and certainly not defined by what was done to them. Chanukah will once again be a happy time. It will once again be safe to celebrate proudly. When that time comes, United Hatzalah will be there to celebrate a new Chanukah miracle.
Linor Attias is the Deputy Director of International Emergency Operations at United Hatzalah, and a veteran United Hatzalah volunteer. She is an emergency response strategist who has overseen international missions during some of the most harrowing crises of the last decade.
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