“Five years ago, my brother committed suicide,” said 35-year-old Moshe, a resident of central Israel. Moshe greatly admired his older brother and was shattered not only by this death but also by the circumstances of his passing. His brother did not leave a suicide note, leaving his family with many difficult questions. Moshe realized he needed help.
Every day, Ruth Edel, administrator of Nechama Grief Counseling, patiently sits near the phone in her Ra’anana home, waiting for calls from English speakers seeking help dealing with their grief and sadness. It is often difficult for those who are suffering to reach out. “The first call is the hardest thing to do,” she said.
Moshe had contacted Nechama based on a friend’s recommendation. Having someone with whom he could share his feelings was helpful. “Sharing all the information, just getting it off my load, hearing some perspective, and navigating around feelings was useful,” said Moshe.
He didn’t want to overburden his parents or his wife with his feelings or sadden them any further. “A huge part of it was just sharing and having someone I could talk to about it.” Having an unbiased, sympathetic counselor to speak with was helpful, he said, and the Nechama grief counselor helped Moshe understand his innermost feelings.
“There are a lot of insights that only someone who knows how to do this can take and connect the dots. There are many things that you say softly or you don’t even say, but she could read between the lines and surface a lot of those feelings, just reflecting and asking follow-up questions.
“I found that I was able to come across things I didn’t even know that bothered me so much because she connected all those dots,” he said.
Nechama: The Israeli nonprofit providing English-language grief counseling
The Hebrew word nechama means “comfort.” The nonprofit, through its network of grief counselors, works to bring comfort and consolation to members of the English-speaking population in Israel who are suffering from loss.
Edel explained that Nechama’s grief counselors work with clients suffering from all facets of grief, ranging from the death of a loved one to divorce, loss of employment, loss of expectations, and serious injuries. The organization has 20 counselors currently working throughout the country.
For Edel, who has been working as a grief counselor for 16 years, helping those in emotional distress is a family calling. In 1980, her mother, Lillah Kosky, helped found the Jewish Bereavement Counseling Service, which offers counseling to members of the British Jewish community.
“This was something that piqued my initial interest in grief. It was part of my life and always a discussion at the table,” she recalled. “After my mother died unexpectedly, I decided this was something I wanted to do.”
In 2007, Edel, who made aliyah 42 years ago to Ra’anana from London, took a Nechama counseling training course at the Orthodox Union Center in Jerusalem. “I did the course and loved it,” she said of the 2.5-year course.
THE NECHAMA Grief Counseling organization in Israel was founded in 1999 by two immigrants from the US – Rebbetzin Bayla Gold and Tova Reich. At that time, there was virtually no grief counseling available for English speakers in Israel.
Around the same time, sisters Thea Givati and Adina Rakoff arrived in Israel from South Africa. Both were qualified bereavement therapists. Givati pioneered the Nechama training program, which the organization still uses. The sisters had active roles in managing Nechama, with Rakoff overseeing the training program for new counselors.
Five years ago, after becoming the organization’s administrator, Edel realized that Nechama needed to broaden its reach by opening additional training courses for more grief counselors nationwide. Until that point, Nechama’s training courses were offered only in Jerusalem.
Edel, together with counselor Judy Frei, began training counselors in Ra’anana and has been training counselors ever since in cities throughout the country. Today, training is offered primarily in Jerusalem, Modi’in, and Ra’anana.
Although grief counselors at Nechama are not mental health professionals, they undergo an intensive 18-month training course before they are permitted to treat clients. “There is no way that any of our counselors is going to go to a situation and not know what to do,” said Edel confidently. “We deal with every possibility, whether it be abuse, suicide, or anything else.”
What qualities does Edel look for in a potential grief counselor? “First of all, I need my counselors to be extremely tolerant of every situation,” she said. “Obviously, empathy and being non-judgmental are extremely important because we don’t know who we’re going to be seeing.”
Most of Nechama’s grief counselors live in Jerusalem, Ramat Beit Shemesh, Modi’in, and Ra’anana, but counseling will be available soon in Rehovot, Zichron Ya’acov, Netanya, and Petah Tikva, said Edel. The location of the counselors is significant, since the grief counselors go to their clients’ homes.
“This is where they [the clients] feel most relaxed,” explained Edel. “That’s always been our tradition.”
Grief counselor Shifra Shafier made aliyah from Teaneck, New Jersey, to Jerusalem in 2017 and wanted to spend her time volunteering and helping people. “Unfortunately, I had a couple of friends who had been through some very painful grief, and it gave me the idea of helping people who are in grief,” she recalled. Shafier took the Nechama grief counseling course that was offered in Modi’in.
Shafier said she gained a great deal from the role-playing sessions during her training. “Sitting across from someone who was like your client and having to counsel them face to face, and learning how to speak to them, was an experience that was very helpful to me.”
She pointed out that having a sufficient number of English-speaking grief counselors in Israel is essential. “Someone whose mother tongue is English will be able to be much more connected in the conversation and much more understanding than somebody who is a native Hebrew speaker but speaks English.
“It’s not the same quality of language. When you’re talking about emotional pieces, you really need a full and complete understanding of what the person is saying.”
Edel said that grief counselors perform a valuable service, especially during this period when psychological and mental health services are at a premium in Israel, due to the effects of the ongoing war.
“Grief counseling is very much a one-on-one conversation that enables people to talk in a way that they wouldn’t be able to do with a friend or a family member,” she explained. “We are their ears. Sharing and talking about what they’ve gone through, and not feeling judged, enables people to talk more easily, and that in itself is the therapy.
“Somebody can come to us and say, ‘I don’t need help because I can talk to my sister-in-law, or I can talk to my best friend.’ But when you sit with a fully trained grief counselor, you can open up in a way that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise. We enable them to talk and share their thoughts in a way they would be unlikely to achieve with friends or family.”
Nechama meetings are based on confidentiality. “Our sessions with clients are a safe place,” Edel said, adding that every counselor in the organization is fully supervised by senior staff.
GRIEF COUNSELING, explained Edel, is much more of a conversation.
“It’s quite subtle,” she pointed out. Sometimes the grief that the client is suffering masks underlying feelings that have been present for many years.
“Very often when we talk to somebody and they’ve just lost a parent, we look, and we discuss, and we sometimes find there’s something else going on that has compounded the loss. We give no advice, and we are totally non-judgmental. Not feeling judged enables people to talk more easily.” Added Shafier: “A lot of times, whatever was going on for them underneath becomes much more prominent during grief.”
The goal of treatment, Edel said, is to be able to assist the clients to eventually move on with their life and live side by side with their grief.
The number of calls that Edel receives requesting grief counseling varies. But, she said, providing assistance is especially valuable during wartime, when psychologists – both private and those in the healthcare services – are overwhelmed with patients.
“Right now, the country is in such a mess,” she said. “We are a battered and bruised nation, and we [at Nechama] feel that we can take the strain off the professionals.”
While immediate family members who have lost loved ones during the war receive mental health counseling from the IDF, others who may not be eligible for IDF assistance, such as grandparents or the girlfriend of a fallen soldier, are also grieving and need help.
“It’s really hard to get people to come forward,” Edel said. “Making that phone call can be really difficult, and sometimes I do outreach just to help it along.”
While Edel does receive calls from people in need, some prefer to send an email and describe their situation. “They may write, ‘I’ve lost my brother, and I’m so depressed. Can you help me?’” Edel replies instantly to their emails or calls and arranges for a visit from a counselor.
Most people who require grief counseling will meet with Nechama grief counselors 20 to 30 times. “Sometimes we see people for as long as a year. It just depends on how they’re doing, what their needs are, and how complex it is.”
EDEL SAID that there are two different types of grief – complicated grief and simple grief. Complicated grief, she explained, involves a situation of multiple losses occurring all at once, or numerous losses in the past. Or it can be a case of suicide or homicide.
Simple grief might be the loss of a relative, spouse, or parent through natural causes. Nechama’s grief counselors understand when more is needed and when to refer the client to a psychologist.
By the same token, she added, psychologists frequently refer clients to Nechama because they feel that grief counseling is what the person needs.
Edel said that the most common reason people seek grief counseling is due to the death of a loved one. In some circumstances, she added, people may suffer extreme grief over the loss of a beloved pet.
Sometimes grief can be reawakened years, or even decades, after the loss occurred. For example, bringing back the body of a loved one for reburial in Israel can reawaken the feelings of grief that were not dealt with at the time of death.
Other circumstances of delayed grief can occur when adults who were abused as children recall the feelings that they experienced, years later, after the abusive parent has died. “Sometimes people come to us with an obvious loss, but when we sit with them, it turns out it was something way back that has just been compounded in their recent loss,” said Edel.
Individuals who are already receiving psychological treatment are not eligible for assistance from Nechama. Its counseling services are available for a nominal fee of NIS 50 per visit, and Edel said no one is turned away if they cannot afford the cost.
Moshe said that the NIS 50 fee had its benefits. “I didn’t need to think about the financial aspect of it because it was just NIS 50, which I think is amazing because it still means you need to put in something, and it’s not for free, so that you can take it seriously.”
Edel added that the organization does not take on a client until at least three months have passed since the loss occurred. “We know from experience that the client needs to be ready for counseling and over the initial period of shock,” she explained.
Reflecting on the organization, Edel said, “People need to know that they have an address and can get good help. And it doesn’t have to be a psychologist.”
Managing Nechama Counseling Services, she said, has given her a significant amount of personal satisfaction. “Everyone says, ‘Gosh, that really helped me.’ We feel privileged to be allowed into people’s lives and have the opportunity to make their grief situation more manageable.”
For more information, visit www.nechamagriefcounseling.com.
