The Long Way Home 

The Home that Was
Meirav and Talya are sisters. Meirav has brown hair, Talya has red, and both have thick bouncy curls. Their family was poor, six people eating and sleeping in a ramshackle single-room apartment in rundown South Tel Aviv, but theirs was a happy home. Meirav liked to read, while Talya could barely sit still for a minute. Talya followed her ima around, helping her in the kitchen and shopping with her at the makolet (grocery store); Meirav often could be found curled up with a book in her abba's lap. Even at a young age, Talya had all the makings of a "social butterfly," while the more-introverted Meirav preferred her own company. But they had a few things in common: they both idolized their big sister Shoshi and adored Eitan, their baby brother. And both excelled in their studies at the local school.

And both were left devastated by the double tragedy that tore their family apart.

No one at the EMUNAH home in Bnei Brak had ever met Talya and Meirav. But even if they had, no one could have recognized the two girls with the ready smiles and the bouncy curls, in the two little waifs that stood before them on that chilly winter morning accompanied by a social worker appointed by the Social Services Department. Their once beautiful hair was matted and infested with lice, their clothes torn, their faces blank. No one had cared for these girls in many, many months. It had been two years since these would-be third and fourth graders had seen the inside of a school.

Meirav and Talya had simply ceased to speak. No words came out of their mouths at all. So they weren't the ones to tell Achuzat Sarah director Shmuel Ron about the double tragedy that had struck their family two years earlier: the year that big sister Shoshi was killed in a car accident and baby Eitan was swept away in a neighborhood flood that literally washed their little brother out of his mother's arms as she sought frantically to hold onto him to save his life. They were not the ones to explain to the "abba" and "ima" of the mishpachton, the EMUNAH Home's Family Unit for young children, how their own father's and mother's relationship was so irreparably severed by their sorrow that their father filed for divorce and then left home. And they weren't the ones to tell their madrichot (counselors) how their mother then ceased to function, stopped talking to them, stopped dressing them, stopped feeding them, stopped sending them to school and stopped kissing them good-night. Meirav and Talya said nothing at all.

Going Home
Months passed after the two sisters had arrived at Achuzat Sarah, months in which they benefited from a concentrated regime of therapy, particularly art therapy which enabled them to express themselves non-verbally, months in which the “magic” of warm beds and warm hugs enabled the girls to begin to open up and communicate with the devoted team surrounding them. The staff doctor, dentist and psychiatrist had each lent expertise to enhancing the girls' physical and mental health, while their mishpachton "mother" and loving Sherut-Leumi (National Service) young ladies had gently instilled in them basic lessons in self-care, and brushed their once lice-ridden hair each day until it shone. Meirav had finally begun to read once more – there were lots of great books in the Home – and Talya was taking a bi-weekly dance lesson.

"We're going home today," Meirav confided in her madricha one morning.

The madricha was pretty certain that they weren't going home. "Why," she asked Meirav gently, "do you think you are going home today?" "Hamenahel, the director, told me that our ima is coming today,” she answered. “Why else would she be coming than to take us back home?"

Their mother did indeed arrive that morning, her eyes filled with tears and her hands filled with candy. She did, finally -- for it had been many months apart -- wrap her two daughters inside a passionate motherly embrace. But when the visit was over and she turned to go, Meirav and Talya realized that she had not come to take them after all. Their mother walked out the door; the two little girls began to weep. In the corner, their madricha also wept silently.

The Home That Is
It is now almost a year that Meirav and Talya have been residents of Achuzat Sarah. They have begun to find their place among the Home's other 5 to 14-year-old residents, most of whom also arrived from situations of abuse, abandonment, conflict or neglect. There are ups and downs: Meirav draws pictures of the "family that was" in bold strokes of black and grey; Talya's pillow is frequently wet with tears. Still, with the help of intensive psychological counseling and academic tutoring, as well as their art therapy program, the two girls have made slow but significant advances in their emotional well-being. Most importantly, they have found a measure of the self-worth that was so sorely lacking when they had arrived nearly twelve months ago. Both head off to school each morning dressed in matching black skirts and colorful shirts – they enjoy dressing "like sisters" in coordinating outfits – proudly sporting pink "Dora the Explorer" backpacks, denim pencil cases and healthy snacks. Both spend long hours talking and playing with the Home's animals, having discovered that hamsters and bunnies are great listeners. They have even been seen to smile.

Their mother continues to visit, and she continues to bring candy. But despite the staff's best efforts to convince her of the importance to her daughters of home visits on Shabbat, she refuses to take them. A part of her died when she lost two children, and now she feels she has nothing left to give to the two who survived.

So it is left to Achuzat Sarah and its dedicated staff of counselors, caregivers, psychologists and teachers to serve as surrogate parents to these two sisters. Meirav and Talya benefit from the care of the professionals surrounding them, as well as their new "big sisters," the 15 National Service young women whose devotion to them knows no bounds. The combination of professional care and personal attention is empowering them to succeed in their studies and to begin to develop healthy interpersonal relationships. Despite the years of school they missed, both are now learning at grade level, with their regular education supplemented by Achuzat Sarah's wide range of extracurricular activities, including sports, arts and crafts, computers and chesed projects.

In the more than fifty years since its founding, Shmuel and Ita Ron have raised hundreds of once-lost-and-lonely boys and girls, watching proudly as their "alumni" have completed university and army or national service, and then gone on to build healthy and happy families of their own.

Now it is Meirav and Talya's turn. They can never replace the brother and sister they once adored, the father who once nurtured them, the mother who loved them so. But here at Achuzat Sarah they have the warmth, the stability, and the affection that they might otherwise have only dreamed of. Here at Achuzat Sarah they have the opportunity to start over and to succeed in life. Here at Achuzat Sarah, these two little girls have finally found a place to call home.

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