JTA — On the morning she left Jerusalem for a health retreat for bereaved mothers, Taly Drori was surprised to recognize another woman in her rideshare. More than two years earlier, they had often crossed paths in the intensive care unit of the same hospital, where their sons were being treated in neighboring rooms.

The woman was Hazel Brief, the mother of Yona, an American-Israeli soldier who was seriously wounded at Kibbutz Kfar Aza in the opening hours of the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught. Drori’s son, Chanan, also a soldier, was severely injured in Gaza in December of that year.

Both women spent long nights watching their sons fight to graduate from intensive care into rehabilitation, a milestone neither reached. Consumed by their sons’ care, they barely spoke. When they passed each other in the ICU hallway of Sheba Medical Center, Brief said, it was often just “a nod and a look in the eyes, to say, I got you. I get you.”

After two months, Chanan died from a fungal infection. A year later, Yona followed.

The retreat, held in the Gilboa region in northern Israel, offered a different kind of rehabilitation, Brief said, a “sacred space” where hallway nods gave way to a shared language of grief, as mothers try to rebuild themselves.

The gathering was part of a new initiative by OneFamily, an Israeli nonprofit that supports families of terror victims and fallen soldiers. Its impact is so significant that founder Chantal Belzberg was awarded the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement last week, the highest civilian honor awarded by the Israeli government — at a time when more Israelis are unfortunately joining its constituency.

“I am moved not because of myself, but because of the people for whom OneFamily was created: bereaved parents, widows, orphans, bereaved siblings, double orphans, and the wounded, with visible and invisible wounds,” Belzberg said in a statement. “This prize is, first and foremost, recognition of them. It is an embrace for the thousands of families who continue to carry this country, even when their hearts are broken.”

Belzberg’s daughter, Michal Belzberg-Slovin, is a yoga instructor who embraced Drori’s suggestion for a weekly health-and-wellness circle for bereaved mothers, centered on movement, mindfulness and nutrition. During the current war with Iran, meetings are taking place in a bomb shelter. But before it began, Belzberg-Slovin led 10 weeks of Wednesday sessions before the group traveled north together.

The program draws more than a dozen women, ranging from their early 40s to late 70s, all bereaved mothers of soldiers except one whose son was killed on October 7 at the Nova music festival. It was originally intended for mothers bereaved in the current war — 10 IDF soldiers have been killed while operating against the Hezbollah terror group in southern Lebanon during the joint US-Israel war against the Iranian regime, which began on February 28 — but the flyer OneFamily circulated omitted that detail. As a result, several mothers who had lost sons years........

© The Times of Israel