Israeli Hospital Rabbi Bridges War and Home Fronts
by Noa Amouyal – chabad.org
By all accounts, Kfar Aza resident Yaniv Ohana shouldn’t be alive to tell his story. On the morning of Oct. 7, it quickly dawned on him that terrorists were on the loose in his small kibbutz. As a member of his community’s civil defense unit, he drove to the armory to retrieve the weapons stored there, only to be greeted by a handful of Palestinian terrorists. Having had time to lightly arm himself, Ohana engaged in a nasty firefight with them from his car and, luckily, managed to eliminate a few.
A panicked call from his wife, Yula, who was huddled in their home’s shelter, interrupted him. Terrorists had entered their house, she yelled. Ohana immediately rushed home. Some 40 terrorists surrounded it.
A fierce firefight ensued. After sustaining eight bullet wounds, including a bullet to his lung, Ohana managed to find cover in a ditch. After hiding there for hours, a police officer found him and brought him to safety. Ohana was convinced his wife and two children could not have survived the ordeal.
Miraculously, they had.
Moments before Yula called him, she and their children—aged 9 and 12—were hiding in their home’s shelter when she heard the terrorists enter the house. In a panic, she looked around the room for cover, knowing it would not be long before the shelter was breached. By a stroke of Divine Providence, a small storage chest the family used for Sukkot supplies, tucked under the bed in the shelter, was empty due to the ongoing holiday. The space was small, barely large enough to hide them, but Yula successfully stuffed herself and the children inside and waited.
Over the next hours, she could hear the terrorists’ footsteps walking back and forth in the house above her. They sat on the bed directly above her and the children, reloading their guns. Yula could hear Arabic language videos playing loudly, objects shattering and the raucous laughter of the men laying waste to her home.
Luckily, the latch used to normally open the storage chest door had recently broken off, making it flush with the floor and difficult to recognize as a door. The terrorists eventually decided to move on, finished their pillage and set fire to the Ohana home.
Frozen by fear, Yula dared not move, petrified she would leave the hiding place only to encounter the terrorists outside. The fire above them grew and smoke filled the house. She and the children struggled to breathe. Seeing that time was running out, she finally grabbed her children and made a mad dash out of the storage box and out the back door.
The three sought shelter in a nearby warehouse, the only one of four such structures which had not been burned down. When IDF forces found her, she was convinced her husband had been slain.
Days later, battle-weary and traumatized, Ohana found himself in Sheba Medical Center, one of Israel’s leading hospitals, located outside of Ramat Gan. It was there that husband and wife were reunited, his health turning for the better when he heard confirmation of his family’s miraculous survival.
Almost everything in his house was burned, but miraculously, his tallit and tefillin remained intact. Still, Ohana approached the hospital’s chaplain-in-residence, Rabbi Levi Gopin, co-director, with his wife, Esty, of Chabad-Lubavitch of Sheba Medical Center/Chabad of Tel Hashomer, to inspect the holy items to make sure he could still use them.
“We’ve been close ever since,” Ohana said. “He’s helped me with everything I’ve asked for. He’s an amazing man.”
Ohana’s tallit had been rendered not kosher by the damage, and Gopin arranged a new one for him. But the rabbi did not stop at what could be considered the domain of a chaplain.
“In addition to spirituality, music is my second love, and the terrorists destroyed all my equipment,” said Ohana. “Without me even asking, Gopin found a generous person who gave me a new drum set.” Having lost everything, Ohana was struggling to rebuild. The drum set was more than just an instrument; it was his first step back to normalcy.
Months later, Gopin helped the Ohana family with their son’s bar mitzvah, and today, nearly a year later, Ohana remains in frequent touch with Gopin. Yaniv and the Ohana family are just one example of how Chabad has touched the lives of the thousands of people who’ve entered the hospital—many with unimaginable injuries.
‘We Want to Help Everyone’
In his work as a Chabad emissary, Gopin has spent nearly 20 years as the hospital’s chaplain. When he speaks about his work, his tone is matter of fact, despite the myriad of ways he’s brought hope and optimism to those in crisis.
His position is oftentimes demanding and chaotic, as Sheba is frequently the first place wounded soldiers are sent to when they come back from the frontlines.
“We want to help every Jew and actually every patient who comes in,” Gopin said while standing in the middle of the hospital’s expansive emergency room.
“It’s our mission to help everyone with what they need; the Rebbe trained us to do this very thing,” said Gopin, referring to Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. “Some need spiritual guidance, some seek strength as we speak with them during their darkest hours and, of course, some are in a deep financial crisis.”
To that end, Chabad of Sheba has distributed millions of shekels (hundreds of thousands of dollars) to soldiers and their families since the war began. Additionally, it collaborated with Colel Chabad, Israel’s longest-running charity and largest food-security NGO, to give out 300 2,000-shekel (about $530) gift cards to provide families immediate relief.
In his work at the hospital, Gopin fields a stream of requests, and proudly says he’s been able to fulfill about 90 percent of them. However, he explained, in his experience many of the patients are looking for something beyond tangible items when they first arrive at the hospital.
“In the first days here in the emergency room, they’re very emotional,” Gopin said. “But when they enter the rehabilitation unit, there’s a different atmosphere. There, they become hopeful and acknowledge that perhaps the worst is behind them.”
Gopin took Chabad.org on a short drive to the rehabilitation unit at Sheba, where he spends a significant amount of his time in the hospital’s newly established 36-bed rehab center, a fusion of cutting-edge treatment modalities and groundbreaking technologies such as virtual reality and robotics. The rehabilitation center is designed not merely to address the physical ailments of war victims but to also foster a conducive environment for mental healing, facilitating a quicker reintegration into the daily rigors of life.
While that advanced technology is a testament to the “Start-Up Nation’s” medical ingenuity, Gopin is focused on helping to heal the bruised and battered souls who are in need of a comforting ear and words of wisdom.
That explains why the moment we enter the rehabilitation department, Gopin knows the name of virtually every patient and staff member in sight. He walks in with a smile, shaking their hands, asking how they’re doing and following up on the status of their loved ones.
‘Our Enemies Want Death, and We Want Life’
In Sheba’s rehab center, Gopin embraces Evyatar Ovadia, a combat soldier who was badly wounded in January in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. After being hit with a rocket-propelled grenade, Ovadia was sent to Sheba to begin a three-month rehabilitation process. He now comes to the hospital multiple times a week for outpatient care.
“Rabbi Gopin has come here, helps us lay tefillin, and has connected us with generous donors who want to help with whatever we need; if it’s possible, he will make it happen,” he said. “Life is hard now, but I’m learning how to do everything again from a physical, emotional and spiritual level. Chabad has been there with me during this entire journey.”
What keeps Ovadia optimistic is a love of life. “Our enemies want death, and we want life. It’s as simple as that. We are a people of light and happiness, and Chabad makes sure we have that. Just by staying alive that’s how we’ll be able to win.”
It’s evident that Gopin has become an integral part of the lives of his patients, and they stay in touch long after leaving the hospital.
Just a few weeks ago, he officiated at the wedding of one of the soldiers who he helped during his time at Sheba. When Gopin asked the soldier if he’d rather choose someone else, the soldier told him, “ ‘No, you’ve been the one escorting me through every single milestone of my recovery and I want you by my side during the most important milestone of my life.’ ”
Wounded in Gaza, the soldier came to the hospital where his arm was amputated. He then underwent a grueling recovery process. It was a journey that would make even the most optimistic person despair, however, Gopin, the young man’s family and exemplary hospital staff were able to get him from the hospital bed to standing under the chuppah with his bride.
When asked how his work has changed since Oct. 7, Gopin acknowledges that there’s never been a dull moment at the hospital. But whether illness, pandemic, terror attack or war injury, one thing remains constant: There is always someone in need of help within the hospital walls.
“There’s never an empty bed here,” Gopin lamented.
Beyond the Hospital Walls
That said, the hardest part of his job is when families are seeking reassurance that everything will be OK even when doctors give Gopin conflicting information.
“Sometimes, you find yourself in the middle where you want to support the family and support the doctors and sometimes those goals don’t always coincide,” he said. “Sadly, it happens too often.”
Many patients aren’t in Sheba for very long, as they are often transferred to other more specialized hospitals or discharged home. To that end, Gopin does all he can to stay in touch with as many families as possible, as their time in the hospital is counterintuitively often the easiest phase of dealing with trauma.
“Trauma has a number of phases,” Gopin explained. “First, the individual needs to accept what happened to them. Then they need to find strength within themselves to rebuild and that’s very hard. In the hospital you have an entire team looking after you. But when he or she goes home, they’re alone and in pain and it’s easy to lose hope. I try to make sure that doesn’t happen to people.”
As for Ohana, he’s an example of someone who has been deeply impacted by this individual attention.
“Chabad’s presence at Sheba is so full of optimism and purity,” he said. “They really care about what we’ve been through. They’re living angels. When you’re so badly injured, you think there’s no hope, and Rabbi Gopin is here to tell us otherwise.”
