Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund

I often try to find the delicate balance between my current events commentaries and my reports about the latest  happenings with our children’s projects. As the saying goes, there is never a dull moment in Israel. Yet, despite the fact that people enjoy reading my news updates,  sometimes my urge to comment on the latest news reports takes over. It often takes a gentle reminder from a friend/supporter to blog about what’s new with the children (so thank you Michelle!).  Feedback from the readers, whether through comments on-site or off, is always welcome.

The Music Therapy program is literally bursting at the seams! While I would be very happy if the need for this program would disappear, the recent increase in terror shooting attacks on the roads, as seen in the recent murder of a kindergarten teacher, a father of seven children, has only increased the demand for our services, and the therapy with music program is one of the most popular. We have close to one hundred children being treated in that program alone in the course of a month, which has necessitated the evacuation of a storage room to enable the creation of a second Music Therapy Room in the Center, so we can have simultaneous music treatments in two separate rooms designed specifically for music. This of course will increase our equipment and infrastructure needs, as we will need to duplicate most of the instruments, as well as acoustically insulating the rooms so they won’t disturb the treatments in the other rooms. This will require the partnership of our beloved friends and supporters and, as always, a little help from above, but we will get there!

Here in Israel, we celebrate our New Year on Rosh HaShanah, which usually falls in September. Obviously, most of the Western world celebrates New Year’s Day on January 1st, and therefore, I want to wish all of you a happy, a healthy, and a spiritually uplifting year!

David Rubin

Shiloh, Israel

On a tragic night several years ago, a young married woman named Rachel, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, and the mother of a little girl, lost her husband in a horrible crash on the roads near Shiloh. For a couple of years, it seemed as if she was in a state of emotional collapse. She couldn’t handle both her own pain and that of her daughter. I remember meeting her one day in Jerusalem and listening to her trembling voice describing her efforts to find a good psychotherapy program for her young child. I told her about the subsidies that Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund was offering for our various play therapy programs in Shiloh and I am convinced that that very moment was the beginning of their recovery from trauma. I am happy to report, and Rachel has said it herself many times, that our therapy programs were a life-saver for Rachel’s daughter.

Tonight was Rachel’s wedding at Tel Shiloh, the site of Ancient Shiloh, the place where the Tabernacle stood for 369 years in Biblical times. It is also Shiloh to where the men of the tribe of Benjamin came in the summer to find wives from the young maidens of Shiloh who were dancing in the vineyards in their white dresses (Book of Judges 21:19-22).  So too in our times, Rachel’s young groom found his wife in Shiloh and there was singing and dancing in the vineyards once again.

Congratulations to Rachel, to her daughter, and of course, to Rachel’s new husband. Mazal Tov to them and to all those who have the privilege of turning trauma into miracles in our times!

David Rubin

Shiloh, Israel