Causes

The Hiburim Family Therapy Center was established to strengthen the family unit — nurturing relationships, love, parenting, and the bond between parents and children — on the understanding that a stable, empowered family safeguards the mental and physical health of every one of its members.

In today’s Israel, the family unit carries extraordinary weight — and faces extraordinary strain. Economic and cultural pressures already test the resilience of couples and families in ordinary times. Since the outbreak of war on October 7th, that strain has become acute. 

Reservists have served repeated tours, many for more than one hundred days at a time; soldiers have returned home carrying the burden of combat; and spouses and children have absorbed long separations, uncertainty, and trauma of their own.

Since the war began, the Center has experienced a threefold increase in requests for therapy from soldiers, their spouses, and their families — including specialized sessions for their children. The Center’s experience is unambiguous: timely therapeutic support frequently prevents the onset of severe post-traumatic symptoms across an entire family. When that support is delayed or out of reach, the cost — to individuals, to marriages, and to the next generation — is far higher.

Each year the Center conducts hundreds of individual and couples’ therapy sessions, hosts monthly workshops, supports at-risk youth, trains parents and educators, and convenes its flagship annual conference for couples, “Awakening Love.” In response to the war, it has built dedicated tracks for returning soldiers and their families and for couples in which one spouse has served more than one hundred days of reserve duty — giving them the space and time to reconnect and remain whole.

The funds raised will help facilitate the following objectives:

– Meet surging, war-driven demand — building on a threefold increase in therapy requests by serving more soldiers, spouses, children, and families.

– Deliver timely care that prevents severe post-traumatic symptoms from taking root across whole families, rather than treating crises after they deepen.

– Consolidate and expand programming — individual and couples’ therapy, monthly workshops, at-risk youth support, parenting and educator training, and the annual “Awakening Love” conference.