Tal Feingold Ben Harush ’02

Posted on March 22, 2024

My name is Tal Feingold Ben Harush. I am 39 years old; a clinical social worker; a therapist; a care coordinator at a post-hospitalization residence; a mother of three young children; the partner of a soldier in reserve service who is a man of the soil, someone who works with his hands; an Israeli; a Jew; and an alumnus of Bronfman 2002. A person.

Through these multiple identities, after the immense disaster of October 7th – a day that shook up everything that was familiar and safe – I found myself trying to understand and navigate how to return to myself and my ability to be there for others.

As a therapist, I strive to create for my clients a safe, protected transitional space where they can develop. This space requires me to be able to imagine them and myself, to be in an experience of dreaming and playfulness. These are words that have become impossible and insufferable in the period after the tragedy of October 7th. How can I dream when my biggest and deepest nightmares are becoming reality before my eyes? How can I create a safe space, when in reality there is no safe space? When terror invaded our homes and made every place unprotected? When our physical and emotional boundaries were brutally violated, and there was no one to protect or save us? When the calamity that my clients experienced was also my calamity?

I found myself fighting for the possibility to think. For the possibility to ponder, imagine, and feel…

Five months into the war, I feel that all of these possibilities are threatened every day anew, and that I am facing the task of my life to succeed in holding on to them, even if for only a few moments. The fear of the hate that has reared its head. The anxiety for the fate of my children and my family; the unceasing loss of life. The worry for the soldiers. The deep shock regarding the atrocities that are happening on the other side of the border, and the anxiety that political and public discourse clearly tends toward limiting the possibility of thinking differently, feeling differently, and challenging and protesting the injustices done in my name. The daily worry for the hostages and for the fate of my beloved country if it does not succeed in doing everything it can to bring them home.

All of these fears and anxieties make therapy more difficult. Because of them, the possibility of creating transitional spaces has become a mission and the imperative of the hour. Can we be people who feel and wonder? Can we continue to demand for ourselves and others not to know? To feel even when the feelings are intolerable?

I believe that we can. I believe that we have no other choice. We need to work hard to fix what is broken. We won’t be able to fix everything. But we need to fight for the right and the duty to think and to feel – for ourselves, and so that we can continue to hope for good in the future. In the streets, in our interpersonal relationships, in dialogue with the other and the different – inside the home and outside of it. As a therapist as well, in every meeting and at every moment.

We need to agree to be together in this unthinkable pain and uncertainty, to insist on the possibility of not knowing and existing in a transitional space.