Immediately after October 7, Dekkel Bachar--a rehabilitative sports specialist with dual Canadian and Israeli citizenship--considered how she might help the countless Israelis who had been traumatized by the terrorist attack. Although she was visiting family in Toronto at the conflict's onset, Bachar sprang into action.
"I needed to go back to Israel and help," said Bachar. She works at the Israel ParaSport Center--which is supported by JUF--based in Ramat Gan, one of the world's largest institutions focusing on the empowerment of people with disabilities through sports.
Over the months following October 7, Bachar traveled across Israel. She sought to identify people with physical disabilities who could benefit from The Center's services among the victims of the Nova music festival and kibbutz massacres, as well as the 200,000-plus Israelis displaced by the conflict.
"I went to the north and the south," Bachar recounted. "I went door to door. I went to the hotels [where tens of thousands of evacuated Israelis have been temporarily housed]. At one hotel, I met a man with a spinal cord injury sitting alone in his room. So, I brought a massage therapist and physical therapist and got him moving again."
That story, said Bachar, is one of a multitude of accounts of Israelis who have been helped by the
Shesek
program, The Center's free post-October 7 outreach efforts. The name "Shesek" is an acronym for Hebrew words that translate to mean "rehabilitation, "sport," and "community."
"You can see how people light up" when the staff from The Center help those in need, said Bachar.
Since
Shesek
began, The Center has set up temporary shop in approximately 40 sites across Israel. Among its beneficiaries are 50 Nova survivors some of whom, along with family members of those slain, have formed a
Shesek
basketball team. This venture-a partnership between The Center and the Tribe of Nova Foundation, a nonprofit established immediately after October 7-is helping victims regain physical and mental well-being and confidence, and reintegrate into daily life.
The Israel ParaSport Center was founded in 1960 by ILAN--the umbrella organization for social services for people with disabilities in Israel--under the leadership of the late Moshe Rashkes, a hero of the Israel War of Independence. Originally known as the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled, it offers swimming, wheelchair basketball and tennis, table tennis, archery, and other rehabilitative sports. It also provides social work services to more than 3,500 members, both those born with physical disabilities and those who became physically disabled due to war or other injuries. Clients represent the broad swath of Israel's population: Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Bedouins. Many have gone on to win awards at the Paralympic Games---including Caroline Tabib, the international table tennis champion.
"While grateful for the generosity of all American Jews, The Center holds a particularly soft spot for Jewish Chicagoans, who have been the backbone of American support," said Jennifer Flink, the Chicago-based National Executive Director of the ParaSport Center, U.S.
In the 1970s, Chicagoan philanthropist Nate Shapiro--who passed away in January--visited The Center and fell in love with it. Upon his return to the States, Shapiro connected with Israeli Chicagoans Shaul Streifler and Dan Litvin to start a Chicago chapter. Together, with Shapiro's friend Shelly Stillman, they organized an annual brunch at the Ravinia Green Country Club, free of charge, to let friends in the Jewish community know about The Center's work. Soon, Chicago became The Center's hub. Thanks to the efforts of outgoing President Lori Komisar, also a Chicagoan, The Center's American headquarters is now in suburban Northfield.
"The Center is a place where G-d kissed and never left," said Komisar, who--with her longtime partner, Morrie Silverman--first learned about it at one of the brunches. "There's a sense of belonging that doesn't exist" anywhere else.
Robert Nagler Miller is a journalist and editor who writes frequently about arts- and Jewish-related topics from his home in New York.
