“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen
Many people begin initiatives and grassroots organizations after suffering some kind of loss or challenge, or the death of a loved one. Few begin it at the shiva.
Hadassa Jakobovits Pardes is the founder and co-director of Beit Daniella, a halfway house (well, really a farm) for adolescents recovering from hospitalization with mental illness to help them transition back to normal life. Many of these kids find it difficult to return to their previous educational and social settings that may have even contributed to their illness.
Hadassa’s daughter Daniella died by suicide at 14, after battling anorexia for a year. She had been a popular, outgoing, successful, leader in her junior high school and, like most girls her age, went on a diet. But within a few months, she was gone.
The dog therapist that Daniella had worked with came to the shiva and Hadassa spoke with him about the Israeli medical system having no place of transition for kids to recover after hospitalization with mental illness. “There’s a gap in the system,” she said, “and kids fall between the cracks.” Hadassa didn’t want anyone else to fall into that hole. Before the shiva ended, she had decided to do something; to create something positive from the heartbreaking tragedy of losing her daughter. “We have to build what was missing for us,” she told him.
Hadassa approached her best friend from childhood, Sarah Malka Eisen, an activist, to build the organization together with her, helping her navigate the red tape and the fundraising involved. Founding a non-profit can take years, but within a year and a half, in May 2019, Beit Daniella opened its doors as a rehabilitative day center for youth struggling with mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression and eating disorders.
“Beit Daniella was powered by two mothers, two friends, who refused to accept the status quo,” Eisen says. “As a grassroots organization, we believe people can change and societies can change. That is what is happening at Beit Daniella on all levels – our kids and parents are changing, Israeli bureaucracies have changed to accommodate us, and society is changing to fill the mental health chasm that our struggling youth have been falling into.”
“Our goal was to introduce the concept of this type of facility to the Israeli medical and education systems so it could be duplicated,” says Jakobovits. “This is the first community psychiatric day center for youth in Israel.” The Ministry of Education has helped by providing teacher salaries this year, they have received recognition from the Ministry of Health and, as such, they are in the process of negotiating deals with the health funds. However, the bulk of their funding comes from philanthropy.
The community has mobilized and contributed in unique ways. Their graphic artist is a volunteer and when friends of Hadassa’s daughter got married, they decided to use their ma’asser from their wedding to buy mezuzahs for all the rooms.
Currently, they are in the middle of fundraising for a bomb shelter. Their location, Tzur Hadassah, is right over the fence from the Palestinian Authority, and they need a safe place not only from missiles but from terrorist attacks.
The setting is bucolic and serene. “Just being here is calming,” says N., a 17-year-old girl at the Center, and I agree wholeheartedly.
Beit Daniella offers everything in one place: therapy, education and teaching how to function in a normal setting. Most students stay at the farm for four to six months but afterwards, they can come to the alumni program, which takes place once a week, after school, for up to three years.
Beit Daniella has 18 teens (and there’s a waiting list). 70% of the teens are girls and 30% are boys. So far 100 teenagers have benefitted from their services. Both the staff and the horses outnumber them. The staff includes a dog therapist, a horse therapist, a social worker, a coordinator, an art therapist, teachers, volunteers, psychiatrists, girls doing their national service, and therapy animals. The kids participate in running the Center – tending to the animals, cooking the meals, and cleaning and painting the rooms.
I saw a pensioner who had been evacuated from the North with his family, and who took a house in Tzur Hadassah. He comes every day to the Center to do gardening as a volunteer and he is gaining great enjoyment from it.
Hadassa, originally from Toronto and her husband, David, a lawyer from Belgium, made aliyah 15 years ago after spending 23 years in Belgium. A mathematics professor, Hadassa worked at NATO in information security.
The Center rents part of a farm and it costs about a million dollars a year to run. Many people who knew and loved Daniella contributed to the project initially. Now Hadassa wants to start a branch in the South, where a lot of teens are going to need mental health facilities because of the stress and trauma of the war. Another million dollars is needed to build a southern branch. But first they need a bomb shelter, for which they are now still running a campaign to raise money.
The Center runs from 8:00-3:30 Sunday through Thursday, and parents take the kids back and forth. They’re also very involved in their children’s recuperation.
Moshe Daniel, a son of Borough Parkers, who has been working for the Center for two years, and is in charge of the Dog Therapy at the program, says, “There is no other place with the scenery, the people, the animals, where everything is so perfect.”
His opinion is shared by the kids who attend.
“You have to see the teenagers working with the dogs through love, and the understanding that they don’t demand anything more than that.” And that’s probably because these teenagers feel the same way. They also want love and acceptance.
Horses and dogs are great for therapy because dogs give unconditional love, and horses teach discipline. Riding the horses and caring for these creatures teaches the kids both love (and self-love) and discipline, and that they are capable of both.
Beit Daniella has an incentive program called, “Levels” where kids try to reach goals and are rewarded when they do so. One of the rewards is taking a therapy dog home for a night or a weekend.
G., a really polite and articulate young man of 16, who’s been at Beit Daniella for three months, and whose parents made aliyah from the United States, had been hospitalized for two months because of suicide attempts and self-harm. He says, “This place is great, caring, personalized and small. And with the dogs and horses, it’s a lot of fun. There’s always an active routine. And my parents are very satisfied.”
N. says, “This place is good for me.” She acknowledges that you can’t go back to your old life in one shot. The teachers here are helping her complete her matriculation exams, which the kids can do on site, and she has a dream of becoming a doctor. “I see it as closing a circle,” she says. “I had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital because of a desire to harm myself and several suicide attempts. Now I have a different perspective on blood and life and I want to use it to save lives.” And she seems very determined in her goal.
“I’m more connected to myself, now,” she says I can consider and understand things better.”
In fact, it’s N. who gives me a tour of the place. She shares that she’s always had a dream to ride a horse and at Beit Daniella she managed to realize it.
Beit Daniella realizes many dreams thought impossible by frustrated and struggling parents. At Beit Daniella, their kids get another chance at life, with less probability of a relapse, once they go back to a regular routine.
Hadassa has her own dreams for the place, which is both a testament, and a tribute to her love for her daughter. Beit Daniella is her legacy. Hadassa will never be able to fill the void in her life that Daniella’s passing left, but she and her staff are working hard to make sure that, b’ezrat Hashem, at least on her watch, no other teens will fall through the cracks.”
Website: https://beitdaniella.org/
To contribute to the bomb shelter campaign: https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/donation-targets/113360
If you want to offer support, pitch or underwrite a program, please contact Hadassa Jakobovits Pardes at [email protected].
