In Conversation with Israeli Humanitarian Alice Miller

"My response to trauma has to be to see everyone as human." 

Rabbi Lizzi spoke with Alice Miller, the CEO of Natan Worldwide Disaster Relief, an Israeli organization providing all-volunteer medical, dental, and humanitarian support all over the world. Their conversation was wide-ranging, fascinating, and surprising. 

Learn more about NATAN and support their work at https://natanrelief.org/donate/ 

Anyone interested in learning even more about Natan should contact Alan at alan.s@natanrelief.org

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

So,

oh, say Shalom. Oh yeah, say Shalom.

Israel, they are ko yo schweith. Long shalom, ako Israel. Ya se shalom, ya se Shalom, shalom, Aleinu, el ko yo shvel. Ya se shalom, ya se Shalom. Shalom alein, oh Israel, yes, shalom. Yes, Shalom, shalom alein, oh Israel, yes, I say Shalom. Yeah, say Shalom. Yes.

A Shalom, shalom. Elena ako yo shvetael,

the Maru Amen. So welcome everyone, and welcome Alice all the way from your home on the other side of the world. I'm gonna just say a few words about how this conversation came to be, and then what I'm gonna do is I'll, sort of you know what? I'm going to do it right now. I'll, well, yeah, it's a allowed, a multi Okay, forget it. No, never mind when you start speaking. If you're not spotlighted for everyone, I'll make sure to spotlight you. But So this week's, this week's Torah portion, because I can't help myself, is about priests, which a lot of the book of Vayikra Leviticus is, and a lot of people are. A lot of modern egalitarian people are challenged by this, because it seems like the priests are given a special job and have special prestige because of their family lineage, and they haven't earned it. They haven't done anything for it, you know. And it feels kind of like nepotism and like that's not fair. Like, why doesn't everybody get this kind of special treatment? And one of the one of the commentaries in in the little book here, it talks about how, you know, every society has certain people that need to be given more responsibility, or that have more responsibility? And I thought, yes. And the difference between the Torahs version of Judaism and our version of Judaism today is we no longer have priests who inherit those levels of different responsibility. Different responsibility, for the most part, is chosen, and people take it on and and, and oftentimes it's not glamorous as as I don't think the priests job was either there was a lot of, like, blood and gore involved, but it was, but it was, like, hugely important on behalf of the people. And I thought, Who are the people today who take on voluntarily work that that places them at a higher level of risk and responsibility that is not necessarily glamorous, but is hugely important and and may, in fact, you know, be like, like the priests, the people who intercede between us and the abyss. And the answer is humanitarian aid workers, people who are, you know, doctors and the people who go to places that are that are places other people might be afraid to go or, you know, are dangerous, and they they place themselves in the breach, and it is a higher calling. And it's not something you're born into, necessarily, but something that many people choose. And so what we're going to get to talk about today is an organization of all volunteer doctors, dentists, social workers, humanitarian aid workers based out of Israel, Natan, worldwide relief that does this work. So I want to thank Alan Silberman, who is on this pod on this screen somewhere here. Hello, Alan. Hi. Nice to see you two days in a row. So Alan and I got to know each other on the forward Association board. The forward is like the oldest Jewish National American newspaper used to be written in Yiddish. Now you can read it in English and. Um, but anyway, through, through that, and he reached out to say, like, I really had to meet this woman who were about to get to meet Alice Miller. And he said, You have to hear, you have to hear her story. You have to hear about her work. And it just like, the more he he talked about it, the more fascinating it sounded. And the truth is, there's so much that is that is hard to hear coming out of Israel right now, that to hear something that is encouraging and a light, you know, the or leguim, felt like, Wow. I would love for our community to hear more about that, and I know the conversation we'll have will be what will cover a lot of ground. So Hi, Alice.

Just Hi everybody, hi. So

I want to just, can I am I? Can I give your bio here so that people know a little bit about you? Or Should your bio come out as we talk? Go. Ahead. No problem. All right. Okay, so Alice Miller, who is the CEO of Natan, was born in South Africa and made aliyah to Israel at the age of six, I'm guessing, with your family. And Alice holds a degree in aerospace engineering from the Technion and an MBA from Tel Aviv University, and so in Israel, she's known, and she's famous for a landmark legal battle that she forged ahead with that opened up the Israeli Air Force pilot course to women like prior prior to her bringing this legal case, it had not been and now it is, and she is a pioneer in advancing gender equality in Israel. And so Alice spent a decade as an officer in the Israeli Air Force, and two more decades in aerospace and technology in the private sector. And then, following October 7, she shifted focus to humanitarian aid work, and she lives in the Galilee and of Israel part time, and in India with her family part time. So already, I'm intrigued by by where you live, how you spend your time, and why you chose to make this shift when you did in your own life. But first of all, Alice, I feel like now I've been talking for six straight minutes. So Have I said anything that makes you that? That makes you want to respond before I ask you a question?

Yeah, I must just say, first of all, hello to everybody. It's really, really lovely being here. I'm so grateful to this sudden pause in the middle of the day here in Israel to, you know, sing a song like osecha Lomb. You know, in in Israel these days, ya sehalom is not a song that we sing anymore. You know, it's just not sung here anymore. It's like there is no space to sing this song. It's extremely sad, but you know, and you you said that I'm going to bring something up uplifting, but I just have to say that it really touched me deeply, just stopping for a second and truly saying to myself, please, like, make peace. This is what we all need, you know, and you add this, which I haven't heard earlier, which is so beautiful. I always had a kind of a personal problem with this osech along the Israel, but now I understand it a little differently, just thinking about it, saying, you know, imagine peace in Israel between the Jews and the Palestinians right now, I think it will ripple all over Earth. You know what? I mean, like, it's, it's as if, like, the crux of, of of humanity sitting here in this holy land, you know, I know Holy Land is not a term that is used much, but, oh,

sure. Why not? I mean to a whole lot

of people, Christians, coned, it, or whatever. But doesn't matter. I'm just saying, you know, it's such a it's a hot spot over here. You know, it's just a hot spot on earth. And once there's peace in Israel, there cannot not be peace everywhere else on Earth. It seems like it's something like this. You know, it's and really touching for me to just sit here and say, Yes, this is what we want, every mother, every father. This is the only thing we want on Earth. Only thing we want peace. We want people to be able to live a life, a peaceful life, you know, as human beings, no matter who they are, as you sang so beautifully. So I just, you know, I couldn't just, you know, ignore that and dive into Alice Miller, because I feel it's beautiful that you guys get together and say, Yes, you know this. This is where our priority lies, in prayer, in what we want for this world is extremely

beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Well, you know, I get we're all. We all have our different our different tools, right? And, like, I'm a rabbi, so my I don't know, like, I can't do humanitarian aid work like the people in your organization, but we can lead prayer and talk about our values and talk about what our aspirations are for the world. And hopefully, if we say it, we'll educate our children to believe that it's possible, and then maybe they'll go out and,

well, I got news for you. Prayer is humanitarian work. Oh,

girl, thank you. You just made all our day. Because everyone here on this Minion, this is like, what we you know, every day at 8am true, I believe in 100%

really, why humanitarian work? It's like, there's a God out there. What are you praying for? I'm going like, when a ton worldwide disaster relief. When there's a disaster anywhere on Earth, we arrive there within 24 hours. We open a medical clinic. We start off with a medical clinic. We're being bringing doctors from Israel, social workers, because there's always that side of it. Also we we tend to people's wounds coming out of the rubble, praying for the healing of that child. Is that not humanitarian work? You know, it is pure human I believe in it truly. It's pure humanitarian work. Even if you're not there tending to the wound, you are praying for that wound to heal. You are praying for that child. This is what you do. It's, it's, it's, it's immense in my eyes. You know it's not Yeah, so I think we're in the same business. Okay,

all right, I'll take I won't argue with you. I'm certainly not going to argue with you. So Well, look, you began just now to give us a little like, a little window into what what Natan is. But before we before we dive into that. Do you just want to tell us a little bit more about yourself? It's interesting in your bio when it says davka, specifically, after October 7, you moved from aerospace and technology into humanitarian aid.

Do you want? I'll tell you how I see it. I see it this way. I think I've said this somewhere else before, but I'm going to say it again. You know, on the seventh of October, after the massacre that happened in the south of Israel, I live in a small kibbutz called hokuch in the northern part of the Sea of Galilee, and we were sure the Arabs are just going to come down from the hills and slaughter us. The next day, it was spoken in the groups, you know, we were sure that what happened in the south is going to happen in the north. And we put on more street lights, and we divided ourselves into teams. You know, I was in the medical team, someone else was in the fighting team. And we were preparing for a slaughter. You know, we were preparing for for being able to take care of ourselves, and because the government did not arrive in the south of Israel, we were sure they're not going to arrive also in our area, and we did what we had to do to protect ourselves. And then it didn't happen. And another day passed and another day passed, and the scare started kind of fading out. The war was raging on. The war later happened in the north of Israel, where we live. So we had all the war above our heads. But for me, I saw many, I think most, I think all of my friends in the kibbutz, I saw what happens when your life is threatened you, you close up. You say, Okay, how do I protect myself? How do I protect my family? How do I protect my clan? How do I, you know, my community, I don't give a damn about what's happening beyond my friends right now, because I'm busy protecting myself, and I had a feeling that if I succumb to this, I cannot live with myself on Earth. I don't want to live in this kind of a world. I don't want to live in a place where my heart is squeezed. I want to live with an open heart no matter what happens. And I understood that what I want to do is I want to help others no matter what I want to wake up in the morning do something today and know that what I did today helped somebody somewhere, and I left my I was VP space in a startup company building a factory on the moon. Actually, that's what I was doing. And I just come back from a large international conference in Azerbaijan, standing on the stage with NASA, and I said to myself, and. It's not me. It's not what I want to do in life. I want to do something else, and I left space, and I had no idea what I'm going to do. I didn't really know. I knew I want to be a CEO, because that is me. I have that kind of ceoness about me, but I didn't really know what and where and how. I just knew that that's something I want to do. And then I started on the journey of looking and trying to find out, you know, what's out there. And I saw, recognized this nonprofit called Natan, worldwide disaster relief, and understood that it's either a lie what's happening over there? Or it's a miracle, because how can 1800 professional volunteers be doing work with not one paid person? I'm the only paid person in the time nearly. We have a few small other tip ins, but generally I'm the paid personnel there. And I said, Okay, how can this work? And I found we have 10 people in the management of Natan, all of them, 100% volunteers. One's a retired pilot, one's a HR professional. Our medical lead is a doctor. Our psychosocial lead is leading the welfare of one of the settlements around Gaza. Like everybody's engaged working, but they also have this humanitarian heart and a will to help people in distress, wherever they are. Another thing that drove me into this was saying to myself, I do not want I knew what's going to happen. I Nobody knew what's going to happen, but I saw where it was going, and I saw the I know that the extreme right wing government we have, and their eagerness to use the Army as a tool, you know what I mean, they're the politicians have an enormous arsenal of tools. You know? They can go to negotiations, they can use the army. They can do nothing. There are many things they can do. And I knew that this, I don't know how to say it in a polite way, Trigger Happy government will choose that direction. And I said to myself, what can we do in Israel in order to show a different face of us? You know, it's not all of us are standing there shooting down Palestinians. There are different people in Israel and in the US, by the way, because we have 20% American volunteers. And I said to myself, Okay, this is what I want to do. I want to show the beautiful face of Judaism and Israelis and American Jews. I want to show compassion. I want to share show ingenuity. I want to show chutzpah in a beautiful way. You know? I want to show all of these things. So, yes, this organization is the organization I would like to lead, and that's why I'm in the tongue today. Yes, just that, is it?

Well, how has it been? I mean, that it's been, what, like over a year and a half

been exactly like you said, extremely non glamorous. Extremely non glamorous. It's so tedious, it's so tiring. I wake up in the morning and I'm so afraid to see the 20 emails Alan sent me from America saying, you know, we have to meet with this one. And you have this, and you have that. You know, there's so much work that goes into this in order for us to, in the end, serve a child on a border somewhere. But it is so beautiful. We have endless potential. We have had a very tough year with donations, because naturally, our donations come from American Jews and from federations in the US. And obviously lots of the donations have changed direction into Israel. You know what I mean? Because the needs in Israel are so large with the rehabilitation of the south of Israel, the north of Israel, that many of the donors are saying, Okay, we're not interested in serving anybody who is not, you know Israeli right now, maybe we will in the future, not right now. And understanding the importance of us being there in the disaster area, showing the showing our face over there, showing our our compassion over there, is beautiful, but like not for not for me as a donor, you know what I mean. So we've had a very tough year in that sense, but we're very lucky that we're extreme. We our costs are very low because all of my professionals are volunteers. We need a little money for flights, food we usually get from our local partner, so we're still able to act and do beautiful things around. The world. So

when I go to your website, you know there's a little map that has a bunch of different sites that shows where you've been over the last decade or so, like Serbia, Nepal, Ukraine, Syria, India, Mozambique, Guatemala, Haiti, all of these different places, Colombia, Turkey, Morocco, what like? How does it work when you know a disaster happens, there's an earthquake, and you said, within 24 hours, you guys have set up a medical unit. Like, I have a couple questions. One is to, you know, describe the logistics of like, what happens in what order to get people on the ground actually doing productive work. But my second part of that question is, how do you avoid being like the you know, we say here in America is like white saviors. Now, I know not all Israelis are white, but you know, basically going into a place where, culturally, you know, you're you're not of the same culture, and fixing in a way that might actually undermine their culture, as opposed to, you know, supporting, yeah, and so like, how do you work with partners there on such a quick timeline in order to be genuinely helpful?

So first of all, these two things go together. We arrive very quickly after the disaster. Okay, so people are really suffering from the disaster itself. You know, if you have a cut arm and you need somebody to tend your cut arm, or if you have any other problem that you have, when you have a problem, you don't really care who the person is that's helping you or treating you at that moment. For example, we served Syrian refugees in Serbia for a long time, and they were, what do you call them? Refugees in motion? Okay, they were traveling through and carrying on into Europe. We asked them, you know, from time to time, they used to ask us, who are you like? Where are you from? And we're Israelis. They didn't care. You know, they had their problems at that moment. You know, refugee has to flee somewhere, and he's got a heart condition. He hasn't got any medicines. His medicines are back at home, so we are able to give him medicines. He doesn't ask, who are you? Where are you from? How are you undermining my culture that doesn't really exist in that I'm just putting it in an extreme way. Okay, on the other hand, my me, personally, my father was a religious Jew. His father was a rabbi. My mother was is a Christian who converted to Judaism. And I'm married to a Hindu, and Hindu from India. So generally speaking, I've seen culture, various cultures. My children are, you know, half Indian, half Israeli. And I think that we have, in Natan, after 20 years of working around the world, a very modest approach when we approach anywhere in order to help anybody with anything. You know, we come there, and the biggest question that we always ask is, what do you need? You tell me what you need. Okay, I'm not here to tell you what you need. You tell me what you need. And that is how we put up a school for refugees, refugee children in Lesbos, because that is what they asked for, and that is how we helped with a gender based violence program in Nepal that we saw in our clinic, women coming through and getting treated for their wounds from the earthquake, and a woman after woman after woman telling us about gender based Violence they're experiencing. So then we understand that this is an area that help is needed. And then together with a local nonprofit, and usually when we work with local nonprofits, that is, I think, the way we break this white savior scene that you're talking about, you know, we ask the local people what they need. We have a local nonprofit who is helping us give the services, and we, in a very modest way, can come and and hopefully do good. Yeah.

And then how long do you stay? You know, how long do your doctors, nurses, social workers, dentists, like, how long do people stay? Really

depends. First of all, our doctors come. All of our volunteers come for two weeks at a time, because they're all working doctors, they can't leave for months on end, so they come for two weeks at a time. But we hold for months. Like in Ukraine, we spent eight months on the Polish border while, you know, Ukrainians were fleeing into Poland, so we spent eight months with a clinic on the border over there, serving people with teams that change every two weeks, like our teams change every two weeks. So we're very good at doing this. This is like the speciality of of Natan in managing uh volunteers and. Making a smooth transition between them, so that service, high quality service, is given to people, yeah,

you know, I told you, oh, this is funny. One of the questions down here that Gail asks is, why haven't I heard anything about this organization before? So

this is something that Alan always says, that Natan is one of the biggest secrets of Israel society. You know, we are a small organization. We're not Israel aid. You know, they're the big organizations that have a lot of PR, they have a lot of funds. They have 400 workers, etc. We are very small organization with limited resources. We do what we can to put our name out there. We're not very good at it. So that is the reason you haven't heard enough about us yet,

and that's and that's the reason why Alan is going around America talking to Rabbi and saying, you know, let me introduce you to Alice Miller, this incredibly impressive woman who runs this incredibly important organization doing incredibly valuable work to the humanity, and people should know about it, so we're happy to to help, you know, make the work more visible. I let you know I'd be asking you this question, and I thought, you know, I hoped it wasn't, I hoped it wasn't going to be provocative. But at the same time, you know, it's, I think, what many you know, what many of us are thinking about since, like the most visible, and I would say, catastrophic humanitarian a humanitarian situation, human caused humanitarian situation, is happening right next door to Israel and Gaza, and it gets worse by the day. And you know, it's, it's both, you know, bombing and starvation, and you know, some of the the worst kinds of of devastation that we're seeing. And so I'm wondering, like, how, how do you think about this, as the, as the CEO of this organization at what is Natanz role, you know, in in the humanitarian situation right next door. I know that Natan, like, supported and helped communities in Israel post October 7, yes, that's right. So, like, amazing yashiko And so then you have, like, this situation now happening in Gaza. What can Natan do? What is Natan doing? You know, in what ways are you constrained? Yeah,

well, first of all, you know, if Gaza wasn't in Gaza, we had, we would have been there from the first day. You know, obviously it's, it's a horrific humanitarian disaster on Earth period, you know it, doesn't I we totally know that right now, the Israeli government does not allow any Israeli nonprofit to do anything in Gaza. We cannot enter Gaza. We cannot act in any way in Gaza. We actually participated last week in a committee in the Knesset about humanitarian aid to Gaza. And what we understood we didn't know this earlier. We understood that actually the government has got very little knowledge about the situation in Gaza, you know the government, because it is so right wing, and so I don't know against humanitarian aid, etc, they don't even know what's going on. So we decided this happened today. We understand that what we can do right now, because we can't physically do anything, but what we can do, and we are going to do, is to be to communicate with nonprofits within Aza, within Gaza, and to prepare a data, a database for the members of parliament that we can update it, you know, weekly, or whatever, about the health situation in Gaza. There is another nonprofit that is doing this on food in Gaza, giving the information about food. We can coordinate with other health organizations to give this kind of information. It is really sad. We offered to put up a medical clinic on the border of Gaza, together with volunteers Muslim we have many Muslim volunteers. We have as part of our volunteers and to have children, at least, coming into our clinic, being served by volunteers from Israel and going back again. Cogat, who is in charge about what goes in and what goes out of Gaza, said that there's a perimeter. You know, they've cleared the perimeter after the defense in Gaza and Gazans cannot come into that perimeter, not even a children, children with amputated arms. You know, it's not they're not allowing it. So the children can actually not reach the the place that we'd like to. Put up. Sadly, we just can't do anything right now. It's not being allowed. You know, there's nothing we can do. It's extremely sad. But this is a situation, and we've been trying for a long time to find a way to do it. One idea we did have was to put up a rehabilitation center for children in Cyprus, or Greece, or somewhere close to Israel, they are allowing children to be taken out of Gaza now with an with an escort, but they're not allowing them to go back in. So in order to do this, we have to actually find a government who is willing to take people in, you know, and this is way beyond the capabilities of of Natan. We just can't do this

is, I mean, it's interesting, because the way that you're speaking, obviously, it sounds like there are some deep and fundamental differences between the approach of your organization, which, it's a humanitarian organization. It sees human beings as human beings. And like the Government of Israel, the current government of Israel, which I think, sees human beings as Jewish Israelis and other kinds of human beings, or not human beings, you know. And there being a hierarchy where Jewish Israelis, you know, deserve safety and underneath, and you know, everybody falls under the hierarchy differently underneath that or not at all, and that that's like a fundamental difference in approach and Outlook between, you know, you and maybe, and Natan as an organization and and the Government of Israel right now are, I mean, but Natan has existed for 20 years. Are there ways in which are there ways in which the government or has been helpful? Or do you always find that as a humanitarian organization, you are constantly pushing up against the limitations of whatever government you're working with?

Nothing we have no connection to the government. We don't get any funding from the government. And, you know, we're the we have a non relationship, kind of a thing, you know, like, we just have a non relationship. The only relationship I have with the government. I have many relationships with the government. That's not right to say, and I'm a citizen of Israel, but a big relationship I'm going to have with the government right now is sending my daughter into the army. That's a very big relationship with the government. And you know, can you imagine? I don't know if you because you know, I know, if you can imagine sending your child into an army of a government you do not support

it's hard to imagine. It's

hard to imagine. It's really hard to imagine, on one hand, on the other hand, you know, we were all brought up on this understanding that, you know, when you have a child as a birthday, you say, ayo miyamola, that you sing them a song, sure, and at the end we say, Shati is Keith slim Shana, may you live to see the next year until 120 years? And my husband, who's Indian, he says to me, like, why would you say that to your child on their birthday? You're telling them just survive for one more year, you know? Like, what kind of a blessing is this to give a child on their birthday? Yeah, and I have a little bit of this in my blood. You know, we all do. We have this 100% understanding that we are here and we need to protect ourselves. You know, we do need to protect ourselves. We are living in a world where you have to protect yourself. You know, you have a house, you have a door, you close your door, you open your door to whoever you want to open it to, you know, but you have this kind of separation from from when you need to separate yourself. You know what I mean, and I live in such an ambivalent kind of a reality right now, because my heart is 100% humanitarian. Clear. I have no questions. I remember when my child was four years old and we were living in the Himalayas, and I explained to her we we were driving behind the truck, and she saw soldiers, and she asked me, What are those? Because she didn't know we grew in the Himalayas. You know, we knew tigers and fireflies, not soldiers. And I explained to her that there are soldiers that fight for countries. And she said to me, why do they do that? And I said to her, Look, they're kings, and if the Kings don't get along and they want both of them want something. She said, like, what? So, I said, like, a mountain. So they send their soldiers. And she says to me, but why don't they fight? They're not getting along. Why do they send other people, you know? And then she carries on trying to figure out, you know, the story of, of what's going on here, you know, like, how? How can this be? How can. People he, you know, kill each other to achieve something they want. These, you know, when you actually try to think about these things, you melt away because you can't get it. You can't get it, you know, why would somebody, why don't they just play basketball or something like that? And the ones that win are the winners, you know, like kill each other. What's wrong with like, you know, we all accept it as normal, because we live in this world, and we believe that this is the way it is. You know, there are armies. We have to have armies. These things are, but they're not really natural, if we think about it. You know, you look at a child and you're showing soldiers or armies. He won't get it because it's, it's

it also goes, it goes directly against, exactly opposite from what we teach children, right? If children are having some kind of a disagreement or a fight, we don't say, look, go get five of your friends and then go beat up the kid you have a problem with. Of course, we say, like, how can we help you talk to each other so you can work it out? You say what your feelings are. They say what their feelings are, okay, like, right? And we teach, we try to teach kids to negotiate and to express their feelings with words and to work it out non violently. And then suddenly, everybody grows up and well, because other people have armies and other people are violent. We have to be violent too. We have to be what. What other choice do we have? You know? And I feel like that's exactly right. There's no it's

exactly that way and and that's and I see, I'm seeing my daughter, who grew up in the Himalayas, she had seven different butterflies eating out of a plate as a child, and now she's going to be a fighter. Why? Because her mother achieved the right for women to be fighter pilots, which achieved the right for women to be fighters and all kinds of other things. And now my daughter is going to be a fighter, and I'm, you know, we it's a very, very complicated world. You know, it's not white or black, it. There is so much gray over here in between, but I feel that I cannot do anything else personally now in my stage in life, but humanitarian work. This is what I want to do in life.

How is that received? I mean, how is your more more universalistic heart received by, you know you talked about your your neighbors in the kibbutz, but by, you know, people that you've worked with for decades in the industries that you worked you know, defense, aerospace, technology, I feel like what I have, what I've perceived over the last couple of years. I travel back and forth to Israel a couple times a year, and there's a basic, just a sort of general understanding that after October 7, everyone is traumatized. We're still traumatized, and that that kind of justifies whatever, like in humanity we might, we might be, we, you know, we might support because, like, our hearts hurt and we really can't think about other people. Don't ask me to because I can't, and that's not fair. You would never if somebody was suffering. You would never say to them, think about the person who hurt you. Think about the family of the person who hurt you like that would be inhumane also. So don't ask me to do that, which, you know, there's some emotional truth there. And yet, now it's, you know, 20 months later, you know, and 60,000 people dead and starving later, next door, you know, not to mention what's happening in the West Bank. And I it's hard for me, you know. And I live in America, you're waking up every day. You have your neighbors, you know, how, how are you, you know, how are your relationships with your friends and colleagues? You know, giving that choice you've made, yeah,

now that you're asking me, I've never thought, I haven't thought of it earlier. I think I am much quieter. I think I'm much quieter. I think I don't really state my opinion in many places, because I feel it's of no use. But I can say to you that for me, trauma and pain and despair leads me personally, and I don't know why, to a conclusion that the only way is to see everybody as a human being, that that is what it does to me. And somebody said something really true. It was one of our volunteers that said it to me yesterday. I know who it was, Sue Dickman. I have a woman by the name of Sue Dickman. She's from New York. She's my mentor, and she said to me that she was watching a lot of news lately, even though she doesn't like watching news. And she said that she noticed that the pictures of grief look the same. In wherever you look. You know, a mother crying for her child looks exactly the same. No matter what she is, no matter if she's Palestinian or if she's Jewish or if she's Indian or Pakistani, her grief looks the same. You know, her sadness looks the same. And I, you know, I'm not a very argumentative kind of a person. I don't enjoy going into arguments. I Don't instigate arguments. I I prefer to bring light into the situation, no matter where it is. And that's very, very true. But there is this thing in Israel today that yes, shalom. Alenoval is a sentence that you can say very quietly at home on your sofa, but you won't really say it anywhere else. It is very sad, very sad. What has happened to society. And I hope that once this situation ends, because it is going to end, you know, this way or that way, wars always end. I hope that it will allow people to to release their hearts a bit and and revisit, you know, their true essence. Because I this much might be a bit judgmental, but I think that it is everybody's true essence, seeing a mother as a mother, not as a Jewish Muslim, Muslim, Israeli, Palestinian, Indian. This is our true essence. We have been taught to think that way, you know, like John Lennon said, you know, imagine no borders. Imagine the it's true. This is I feel this is our true nature, that we forget, but the fetters of forgetfulness are temporary. I feel that we will, we will remember. We will remember all of us as a society. And right now, many people have a hard time doing it, but we will remember.

I I pray that, I pray that that's true. And I think, I think that it it is, and it must be, but, and part of what makes part of what makes that possible, I think, is the people who never forgot in the first place, you know, and so the people like your doctors, nurses, dentists, social workers like yourself, who quietly or loudly go about the business of affirming people's humanity like especially the people who are sort of on the other side of the divide, and, and, and risk being called a traitor, right? Or risk being called you're you're not loyal enough. You should care more about your people.

I've got, I've got this kind of a trick up my sleeve. Yes. What do you say? I swear you a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force.

I sued the Air Force. I was an aerospace engineer. I I've got all of these credentials, yes, that people can't brush me off too easily, you know, and say traitor and this and that, because it's not comfortable for them to do that. And I somehow feel like it's a gift from God. You know that it really like somebody said to me, you need to stand on stages. So somebody put up a court case for you, you know, just to bring you onto the stage. It's like somebody up there. I'm talking about God. You know what I mean? Like I feel that. I feel that all of my experience, all of my everything, I've gone through all my life, until the age of 53 which I am right now, has brought me up to a situation where I can allow myself to say these things and not just get brushed aside by, you know, non relevant, or, god knows what. But I still, I said quietly, as I said earlier, because you do have to be a little smart about this, you know. The question is, what do you want to bring with what you're saying? You know, do you want to bring a change? And how to make the change in a in a useful way? You know, not every time arguing and shouting loudly is the right way to create a change, sometimes there are other ways. Yeah.

Well, I mean, and that's the the CEO in you is it's strategy. It's being strategic. And it's not always strategic to make a big noise and then, like, lose your job, or your platform, your position, that gives you the ability to make change, you know, and become discredited, but like, actually retain the ability to do what you're doing. Which maybe requires sacrifices in other ways, but it's strategic. You're Yeah, yeah. Well, so we're coming up on, we're coming up on on time. One obvious question I want to ask you is, what can people like us here in the states do? The first thing I heard you say is, if we know people with money, or we have money ourselves, send it your way, because it doesn't take much, but what we can send makes a big difference. That

will be amazing. That will be lovely. What else?

Anything else we have,

any doctor that would like to volunteer is welcome to volunteer with us right now, because we don't have enough funding and we don't have enough projects going on, so we have way more volunteers than we have work. But still, if you would like to volunteer anywhere on Earth, you're welcome to sign up on onto our site, on the volunteer area, and hopefully join us. We might have a beautiful mission coming up, helping people east of Israel in Syria, Jewish people, and there we're going to be looking for doctors without an Israeli passport. So that might be an opening for doctors that would like to volunteer with us. Specifically, we have a project of telemedicine that's going on in East Ukraine. We have doctors in Israel and in the US that sit at home and serve people in eastern Ukraine through a telemedicine program. We're always looking for doctors Ukrainian speaking doctors, Ukrainian or Russian speaking doctors who would like to volunteer three hours a week or three hours every second week, but you know, not less than that, to support people in in Ukraine. So if there's anybody who knows doctors who speak Ukrainian or are interested in volunteer volunteering, that could be really beautiful, and feel free to just contact me directly. I'll give you my email. You can send it out to everybody, and really feel free to contact me directly and with whatever question you have or anything,

of course, and then you're actually also going to be in Chicago on June 17 to 19th. Right? True. And so if people are interested, want to learn more, at the very least, they might be able to see you or meet you here.

Beautiful. And if anybody wants to organize a Natan meeting, you know, in their house or anything like that, you know, hosting guests to hear about Natan, that'll be also lovely, if you're interested in anything like that. Yeah, but it's very close. Our we're coming around the 16th of, 17th, I suppose, of June will be in Chicago. Yeah,

beautiful. What? What is your budget? I you know, you have, like, these 1800 doctors. You're going all over the world. Everybody's a volunteer. But you do have costs? What's, what's the budget of Natan right now? 800

to $1 million 800,000 to $1 million a year? Oh,

my god, yeah, yeah, that's unbelievable,

but it is, you know, like we have two dental clinics in Israel. We have a dental clinic in Haifa and a dental clinic in Tel Aviv, who support people that are called stateless. Israel doesn't give refuge state to many people. So we have stateless people from Eritrea, Ukraine, all kinds of places like that, that have no passport and no ID card. They're non existent. So we give them free medical treatment by volunteers. We our budget for these clinics is around $50,000 a year. You know? It's just because the dentists are volunteers. They come with their own cars. We get lots of donations for medicines, etc and everything like our costs are minimal, but we have to have these minimal costs in order to run, you know, yeah, yeah,

yes, all right. Well, my, my prayer and hope for you is you not just make but break completely exceed your budget this year and next year and the year after that and that, more and more people learn about the work, and I hope that through listening, you know, couple 100 people will hear you today on the podcast, after after this moment. And I hope that the ripple effect of people quietly going about being good, you know, transforming the little world where they are transforms and ripples out, really, to to the whole world, thank you for all the beautiful work that

you do. Thank you so much. Lizzi and what a beautiful, beautiful event. This is, you know, it's just, it's so heartwarming to see this, especially coming from Israel. I've always said this. I said this to Alan when we visited the reform synagogue in new. New York, you know, we're so not used to this here in Israel. It's so sad. We have such a rigorous way of doing Judaism, you know. And it's just so beautiful to see you guys sitting here and truly putting your heart out there and just saying beautiful prayers and beautiful things to offer the world. It's beautiful. Thank you very much. Thank you.

And then Rebecca down here said, inspiring to hear your voice and vision. Alice, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Well, lots of love everybody, and I hope that everybody is inspired to go off on your day and do a little bit of good. Okay, see you, and thank

you, bye, bye, bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai