When my phone rang three weeks ago, I saw an Israeli number and thought it might be from one of my relatives living there. The last thing I expected was to hear a polished female voice saying, “Hi Yael, I’m from i24 News. We heard about your book, “The Elephant In My Room,” and we’d love to have you share it with our viewers. Would tomorrow morning, at my Yaffo studio, work for you?”
I almost dropped the phone. “She thinks I live in Israel,” I whispered to my husband. I would love an excuse to get on a plane and go to Israel, but there was no time to get there from Passaic, New Jersey in time for an early morning shoot!
But “The Elephant In My Room” deserves as much attention as it can get and I said as much to the reporter. “No problem,” she said. “We’ll do the interview over Zoom.”
I’m sharing this story with Jewish Link readers, not because of my six minutes on i24 News, but because the Jewish Link has been such an important part of my journey in producing this book. This past November, I wrote in these pages that I was on a mission. I was determined to write a therapeutic storybook for children in Israel, many of whom have been traumatized by the war. There are hundreds of children who have watched their fathers don a uniform and leave home, who have run to mamad shelters when missiles fly close to home, and who have been exposed to stories or actual views of horror.
I am a social worker and I work on the front lines with parents and with children who find their feelings overwhelming. Like everyone else, I’ve been closely following the news from Israel since Oct. 7 and worrying about the children there. Israel has a shortage of first responders in mental health. How could I provide simple tools to help children cope with the traumas of war?
Not coincidentally, I once wrote another story in The Jewish Link, an interview with world-famous Holocaust survivor and author Edith Eger. Dr. Eger said, “You can’t heal if you don’t feel.” I had Dr. Eger in mind when I came up with the idea to produce a storybook to help Israeli children identify their feelings of anxiety and stress and think about helpful ways to deal with such powerful feelings.
Now time was of the essence. In just a few short weeks I put together the story of Benny, a little Israeli boy whose father has gone off to war and who has had the experience of running into a bomb shelter and knowing a missile hit a building in his town. Benny starts to have trouble sleeping, worries constantly and dreads the sound of sirens. One night his mother comes into his room and when she realizes his fears are keeping him awake, shares her own feelings with him and proposes some ideas for handling them. My hope was that this would help children recognize their feelings and learn ways to deal with them.
It’s one thing to write a story. But how do you take an idea from a dream to a published book, and manage to distribute it to thousands of Israeli children? Through LinkedIn, I connected to the indomitable Nechama Norman who connected me to many key volunteers. Nechama never asked, “Do you think it’s possible?” She’d ask, “What do you need? How can we do this?”
We Jews are a nation of givers and suddenly everyone wanted to help. A talented graphic designer, Goldie Silberberg, agreed to take on the project, completely pro bono. Someone else offered to do the Hebrew translation, with another person doing the Hebrew editing. Chaya Rivka Davis has been on the Israel end, distributing to hotels, to chayalim’s wives and families, and navigating to those that are reaching out. As Nechama put it, “When we do our part, Hashem makes the magic happen.”
Pearl Markovitz wrote an article about my project for The Jewish Link and shortly afterward I was interviewed by the Jerusalem Post, with a link for donations. Requests for the book began coming in from all over Israel. We raised the funds to distribute 3,000 books, in coloring book form, each with its own pack of Crayola crayons. But the demand keeps growing.
Families in hotels are asking for them, telling us they help both the children and their parents express their feelings and sleep better at night. “My two sons enjoy coloring the books!” one mother wrote. “My older one has a hard time with emotions, but when I read the whole book to him, he said, ‘Yeah, sometimes I’m also afraid.’ I think it was so therapeutic, especially the tools [for handling emotions] at the end.”
One little girl said she didn’t use the color red when she colored her book because it reminds her of sirens. Another person reported that a group of at-risk teens picked up 100 copies of the book to bring them to 50 soldiers who were going on leave, to take home to their children.
Teachers have been using “The Elephant In My Room” in the classroom to spark discussions. We are now starting the second phase of the “The Elephant In My Room” initiative, using the book as a platform to support communities of parents and educators in becoming first responders for emotional processing and healing for children.
“The Elephant In My Room” is like therapy in a box, even if the children perceive it at first as simply the gift of a coloring book and crayons. I am so grateful and honored to have been able to make this happen for several thousand children. But we’re not done. There are many more children who could benefit! If you’re able to make a donation or help out with our mission in any other way, please be in touch — we all need to do our part for the youngest victims of the war’s disruption and trauma. www.paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=UVN4RHMUXA8R2
