Nearly every month for the last decade, more than 1,000 people from across Israel and around the world have visited ALEH Negev-Nahalat Eran to see this unparalleled rehabilitative village for themselves. By applying best practices from around the globe and creating their own for areas yet to be addressed, this expansive residential and rehabilitative complex in Israel’s south provides a host of rehabilitative solutions for individuals from all backgrounds and levels of need.

Though the global pandemic has kept visitors away over the last several months, ALEH Negev-Nahalat Eran’s brilliant leadership is shining brighter than ever before. While modeling creative ways to adapt to the new normal and shield their exceptionally vulnerable residents with severe disabilities from COVID-19, ALEH Negev-Nahalat Eran has also safely transitioned hundreds of outpatients who rely on the village as a rehabilitative lifeline back to a somewhat regular treatment schedule. At its very core, it is a crucial rehabilitative resource center that the community simply cannot live without.

Established nearly four decades ago by a group of concerned parents in search of a better life for their children, ALEH has grown into Israel’s largest and most comprehensive provider of residential and rehabilitative care for individuals with severe disabilities and complex medical conditions. Thanks to ALEH, hundreds of Israeli children, adolescents and young adults with multiple disabilities enjoy all of the specialized services they need to grow and thrive, including residential living, high-level medical care, rehabilitative and therapeutic treatment, special education, vocational training opportunities and social and cultural activities.

While on his own mission to find proper care for his son, Eran, who was born with severe autism and intellectual disabilities, Almog fell in love with ALEH and helped the organization expand their mission by advocating for the creation of a community where individuals with disabilities could live, learn and play side-by-side with their non-disabled peers.

“Instead of establishing rehabilitative resources or finding a place for individuals with disabilities in existing towns, it was time to build a multifaceted rehabilitation center capable of serving everyone’s needs and then building housing and municipal resources around it,” explains Almog.

Fueled by his love for Eran, who lost his battle with Castleman’s disease in 2007 at the age of 23, Almog worked with ALEH to make his dream a reality. Today, ALEH Negev-Nahalat Eran is a home and family for more than 150 children and young adults with severe disabilities and complex medical conditions, and provides crucial outpatient care to thousands of individuals from Israel’s south, including rehabilitative treatments and therapies, dental care, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and communication and speech therapy.

“Through HMOs and the Ministry of Defense, at least 100 civilians and soldiers from the Negev receive rehabilitative treatments in the village every day. This means that on any given day there can be ALEH residents with severe disabilities, local students, soldiers, politicians and high-tech entrepreneurs all swimming together in the same hydrotherapy pool. This is our inclusive reality, and the Negev—and the rest of Israeli society—are better for it.”

As plans to expand the village take shape, the ALEH Negev-Nahalat Eran Neuro-Orthopedic Rehabilitative Hospital is already nearing completion. While Israel is home to nearly 9 million people, there are fewer than 850 rehabilitative hospital beds in the entire country, and none of them are in Israel’s southern region. This state-of-the-art rehabilitative hospital, which will include 108 rehabilitative hospital beds and Israel’s first translational research institute, aims to solve these problems while also helping the Negev bloom.

Thanks to the support of multiple government ministries, the JNF and international donors, the hospital, which is set for completion in 2021, will increase the number of Israel’s rehabilitative hospital beds dramatically, bring quality care to the residents of the south, and create more housing and jobs in the Negev. Residences for the medical professionals who will work at the hospital are also being built adjacent to the village, widening its influence with its borders.

By Elie Klein