Widowed in all but name

Haaretz Newspaper - English Edition  - Friday, April 4, 2003
by Charlotte Halle
 

Girlfriends of fallen soldiers must be allowed to 'officially grieve'

The organization which Phyllis Heimowitz and her daughter Tamar Richter founded was borne out of a family tragedy. The two established "The Non-Profit Organization for Emotional Support of Fiancées (Girlfriends) of Fallen Soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces" in late 1997, just weeks after Lt. Avi Book was killed by Hezbollah fire in Lebanon at the age of 22.

Though no blood relation to the family, Avi - an officer in an elite combat unit - had been the boyfriend of Michal Heimowitz, Phyllis' daughter and Tamar's sister. The young couple had been dating for two years and were planning to marry. In the week when Michal and Avi had planned to celebrate their engagement, his family sat shiva (the traditional Jewish mourning period).

"Michal's entire world collapsed," says Heimowitz, a former New Yorker, who immigrated to Israel 34 years ago. "She went through such intense suffering. We didn't know what to do with her. She totally changed. She went once to a psychologist, but wouldn't go back."

Richter recalls Michal saying that no one understood what she was going through. Well-meaning but misguided family friends told Michal that she would get over it, that she was still young and would find someone else right away.

"I know they were just trying to comfort her," says Heimowitz. "But [it reflects] the way society expects the bereaved girlfriend to just get on with her life. As though it didn't matter that in four months she was supposed to be under the huppah."

Heimowitz and Richter approached the IDF's bereavement unit to find out what help they gave to girlfriends of fallen soldiers.

"They offered nothing, which we felt was very, very wrong," says Richter. "So we decided to do something for girls like Michal."

By law, the IDF provides substantial emotional and financial support to the families of fallen soldiers. "That's a wonderful thing," says Heimowitz.

"But who is considered bereaved family? Only a blood relative or someone who is married to the soldier. A girlfriend is not considered part of the family because she has no official status." Richter points out that an unmarried partner of a fallen soldier is not officially informed of his death by the IDF and does not formally "sit shiva" according to Jewish law.

Encouraged by Tsafra Dwek, who heads the Ministry of Defense's rehabiliation center in the Dan region, Heimowitz and Richter set up a fund to provide support groups for the girlfriends and fiancées of soldiers who die during their army service.

The idea of group therapy was inspired by Heimowitz's sister in the United States, who told them that a support group had been the most powerful source of help when she was recovering from cancer.

In November 1997, two-and-a-half months after Avi was killed, the first support group for girlfriends began meeting in Yehud, drawing young women from across the country.

Nine bereaved girlfriends - in addition to Michal - were contacted with assistance from the IDF's bereavement unit. Led by a social worker trained in psychotherapy, whose salary was paid from private donations to the fund, the group met weekly for close to a year.

"Michal never missed a session," says Heimowitz. She reports that three out of the 10 members of the group were supposed to have married within a few months. "Others were not at that stage," she says, "but their emotional suffering was immense."

Heimowitz recalls that in early 1998, while the first support group was up and running, the list of fallen soldiers continued to grow. She and Richter decided to approach the IDF for funding of the groups. "We felt that the army and the Ministry of Defense had a moral obligation to the dead soldiers to take care of their beloved girlfriends - emotionally," says Heimowitz.

Drawing on Heimowitz's contacts as an English teacher for senior army officers, the two secured a meeting with General Gidon Sheffer, then army head of Manpower, which has responsibility for the army's bereavement unit.

Sheffer said that while the army would not run the support group, he did agree that if the fund became a formal non-profit organization, then the Ministry of Defense would provide a yearly allotment of NIS 15,000 to pay the salary of the support group leader. Heimowitz's and Richter's efforts are purely voluntary.

"For the first time, the army was recognizing - in essence - the girlfriend's rights to receive emotional support," says Heimowitz. "It was a very big accomplishment." (She notes there had been a prior one-time instance of recognition: The IDF did provide structured emotional support for girlfriends of the 73 soldiers who died in the helicopter collision in 1997.)

Richter, 30, a lawyer [like her father, Yitzhak Heimowitz, chairman of the AACI's legal committee], established the fund as a legal entity, and, with her mother, began meeting regularly with IDF bereavement officers to distribute material about the groups and to get help in locating bereaved girlfriends.

"There is absolutely no pressure to participate," says Heimowitz, who asks permission from each bereaved girlfriend before sending her an information pack about the organization. On average, she says, she speaks to each girl seven or eight times before anyone joins a group.

The dining room table in the family home in Kiron is piled with files about each different contact she has made. Uptake, she estimates, is around 85 percent.

Now on their 10th support group, Heimowitz says that "history paced the start of each group." Each time there were 10 young women who wished to participate, a new group was formed. Each group meets for two hours on Friday mornings and lasts an average of eight months to a year.

Serious financial problems arose for the organization in April 2002, following a spate of suicide bombings and Operation Defensive Shield: So many unmarried soldiers with girlfriends were killed that there was a need to start two groups in quick succession. The army's financial contribution, which had risen to NIS 20,000 per year, was not enough to cover costs of three groups running simultaneously.

An email request for private donations reached the in-box of Arnie Draiman, the representative in Israel of Ziv Tzedakah Fund, the American Jewish charity founded by well-known author and poet Danny Seigal. The result, says Heimowitz: A check for a "significant sum" arrived at her front door and another group was started.

"It's very important to us that the young women receive this support totally for free," she says, "since the blood relatives receive the emotional support from the Ministry of Defense for free and we see the young woman as part of the bereaved family." She says providing financial support for the girlfriends had never been pursued. "It's not our purpose and I think it would be wrong," she says. "I was only concerned with their emotional health."

 The young women who participate - usually aged 17 to 27 - tell her that the group "gives legitimatcy to their feelings" and helps them to "officially grieve," says Heimowitz.

Some of them had lived with their boyfriends for years, she says. "In the group, everyone really understands each other. There are young women who want to wear the dead soldier's clothing or sleep in his bed or go to his grave all the time. From the outside world, this can be looked at with horror. Within the group, it's totally accepted. Someone phoned and told me the group gave her the courage to go to the grave, which she hadn't visited since the shloshim [end of the 30-day mourning period]."

Heimowitz explains that boyfriends - of female fallen soldiers - can also participate in the groups, although she says this is more likely to be helpful to them if there is more than one male in the group, a situation which has not arisen. A gay partner has never approached the organization to attend a group, she says, but insists she would "not make any distinction between grief and grief."

Heimowitz also emphasizes that groups are also open to women whose soldier boyfriends were killed in non-combat situations, such as car accidents.

Last January, a young woman called Etti Hadad, who had lost her boyfriend in Lebanon back in 1994 when she was 18 - contacted Heimowitz and told her she felt she had not grieved the way she should have. Hadad took it upon herself to form a special group for other women in her situation - women who had lost their partners years ago - under the auspices of the organization. She was able to locate other women; one member of the group is in her forties and never married after losing her boyfriend in Lebanon in 1984.

Now working on forming the 11th group, Heimowitz emphasizes that the goal of the organization is not to help the girlfriends to "forget the dead soldier.

"You'll never forget. It's about having the scar and continuing with that scar because we must continue - continue to live and build a family and be happy."

Her own daughter, Michal, married a year ago. The huppah under which she was wed bore the words, from Deuteronomy 29:13-14 when Moses addresses the Jewish People: "Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath, but with him that stands here with us this day before the Lord Our God and also with him that is not here with us this day." The passage was chosen by Michal's husband.

Richter believes that her sister's former boyfriend Avi would have approved of the organization's work.

"I know he wrote to Michal before he died that when soldiers are killed, their girlfriends have to go on and keep living. I think Avi would be proud of this. It's really in his memory. People do all kinds of things in memory of people and this is our way to remember him."

The Non-Profit Organization for Emotional Support of Fiancées (Girlfriends) of Fallen Soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces can be contacted on (03)534-7860 or (03)534-9577