If we had to select one, or even two, secret ingredients that explain the magic of OneFamily, what would they be?
Take an unprecedented and unimaginably ugly phenomenon: people blowing themselves up in order to maim and to murder others - as many as possible.
The Second Intifada had arrived in the land of Israel. Rockets from Gaza, bombings, shootings, lynchings all around.
Who could have imagined something like this? In our own land? Not even 60 years after Auschwitz? Everyday people on buses, in cars, in shuks were getting blown up.
In this world of think tanks and experts and ‘ologies and defense and security technologies it was dangerous to walk the streets in our home neighborhoods.
Israel scrambled to get to grips with the horror and the uncertainty and the shock of this terror from within. Israel considered the military and the political manner in which to respond to the wrecked bodies, wrecked families, wrecked lives and wrecked communities. Israel was struggling to come to grips with what was going on.
People had no prior knowledge of how to help themselves or to help each other. No model. No experience.
What would the effect be on the individuals concerned? What did they need? How long would it take to recover? Would they ever recover?
Maimed. Orphaned. Traumatized.
Some really thought that Israel and the Jews could finally be defeated. It could all be over.
But wait. There was something happening in response.
Chesed. Compassion. Innovation. Foresight. Patience. Understanding. Resourcefulness. Generosity. Energy. Marc and Chantal Belzberg and their family were galvanizing their talents, their humanity, their friends, their experience, their contacts, and of course their love. They quickly built an extended family around them. OneFamily.
There was no manual to go by. This new Family just worked 24/7, and they evolved and they gave and they learned and they connected and they fought.
And here we are, over a decade later. OneFamily has developed into a unique, mature, established organization. Yet the passion and innovation remains as pioneering as it ever was.
OneFamily enables and nurtures and rejuvenates and understands. They revive and rehabilitate.
They feed and they build and they secure and they heal. They surprise and they push and they fight and they strengthen and they cherish and they make miracles happen.
And they do it because OneFamily believes in the potential and in the resilience of every single individual.
Open arms and open hearts. Each member of the Family has this for each and every one of the people whom OneFamily serves. Put all of these individuals together and you have the force of good that has emerged from the darkness of the evil that OneFamily has worked to defeat.
But how do we tell people what OneFamily does? How do we explain who OneFamily is and the sheer relief and joy that being together brings? How do we explain why there is such a profound need that must still be a priority and must still be supported even if “things are quiet”?
How does an organization built on pure, raw chesed, but which is yet so insightful and focused, stay true to itself – an organization of modesty, based on Torah values and doing good to others – reflect the deeply profound expertise that it has created?
One Family has explored the way to go.
It was all about what dress to wear when OneFamily goes outside to the big wide www world.
OneFamily knows who we are. But were we to say it? In this era of sound bites and HD pictures and compassion fatigue, this is a very important issue. OneFamily cannot avoid it.
If we had to select one, or even two, secret ingredients that explain the magic of OneFamily, what would they be?
Expertise? No. that doesn’t fit on its own. It is integral to a bigger picture.
Emergency response? But we’re not that, and we’re not just that. OneFamily is a family and a friend. True friends and family are there, forever. Emergency response comes and then it goes.
And how are we to explain the different roles within OneFamily. Other organizations talk about staff, service users, clients, social workers, volunteers. But OneFamily is truly a family. There are no distinctions. That’s not OneFamily’s style.
The answer was here all the time. It was just a matter of identifying it.
Come into the center. Sit in Chantal’s room with her. Spend a day in the field with one of our case workers. Spend an hour or so at a retreat or camp or group session. Experience OneFamily.
The answer is “Together”.
And the secret formula is the “Power of Together”. An organic, unplanned, bursting forth and enjoining of pure elements: tender loving care and raw need. The two have blended together into OneFamily for over a decade. And here we all are today.
Today we are pleased to celebrate success and to celebrate the achievements of OneFamily. At the same time we despair at the new crises and heartbreaks and shattering of lives that continue to plague the people of Israel, and its victims of terror in particular.
But everyone who is devoted to this place and to this cause is a vital element in the secret, magic, ingredient that has enabled this country to pick itself up and to dust itself off after each and every terror attack, and to overcome the effects of terror that it has faced – still the resilient start up nation.
That secret magic ingredient that looks after the people in critical red and moves so many to coping yellow and even to stable green – the” Power of Together”.
This is One Family’s past, present and future.
If OneFamily had not come along, only G-D knows where so many thousands would be, and where the State of Israel would be as a result.
This is what the “Power of Together” represents. And this is the message we are going to celebrate within OneFamily and share with the world.
Madelaine Black