עברית
Beit Goldschmidt Stories
Shani*, Beit Goldschmidt
What is Beit Goldschmidt to me? On 30.11.08 I arrived at Beit Goldschmidt. My first impression was that it was a beautiful place. I arrived there in order to improve my behavior. At the beginning it was very hard to believe that the staff were there for my own good. They tried to tell me all the time that I could do it, that I was capable! And I really didn't make it easy for them. But with their help, I learnt. It wasn't easy, but I learnt. I remember that during the first year it was hard to believe that the staff would come back the next day. I would stand all day opposite the front door and not let Anat [Beit Goldschmidt director] leave, because I was afraid that she wouldn't return. She insisted that she was going and that she would come back, but it was still hard for me to believe her. Day after day I continued to test her until in the end I believed her. I learned something else extremely important at Beit Goldschmidt: that life is like a spiral that always returns to the same point, even if it's from a completely different place. This thought caused me to believe that I can and that I am capable and that – even when it's hard for me – I mustn't give up.
Inbar, Social-Worker at Beit Goldschmidt
"The girl that dared to believe she belonged," could be the slogan for Shani. In three words, that describes all there is to say about a process of nearly two years. More than that, it describes the young girl who dared to think about the next step. About where will be the right place for her next, about her future, about the different dreams that reside within her. There is still quite a way for us to go together, and the path is twisting as well as enriching, sometimes sad, but also happy and exciting. That's the way of the 'spiral', which is how Shani likes to describe it, and it's how we keep arriving at the same point, revisiting the same difficulty, but from a different angle, one level up.
Shani is a young woman of songs. According to the songs she chooses during each period of her life, it's possible to see the process she's going through. During the first period she would sing to herself, "If there's a Garden of Eden, or a hiding-place, hug me and my fears and take me there now." Shani wanted us to know that she was calling to her mother. A year passed, and Shani was already in a different place. She no longer withdrew into herself, she no longer lashed out violently or threatened the staff and the other girls. She didn't cry just because her needs weren't fulfilled. Shani overcame and overcame, and at the Memorial Day ceremony she chose to sing: "We won't be alone, they are gathering the hope, the night still allows us to cry."
Beit Goldschmidt gives Shani and the other girls a therapeutic space alongside daily work with the counselors and the teachers. Everyone is devoted, understanding, and sensitive, and everything is done with the warmth that is required – that is insisted upon – by the house-mother. We won't be able to take Shani's anger from her. But she has grown and overcome and widened her freedom of choice. And this continues all the time, both at Beit Goldschmidt and when she visits the wonderful host-family that treat her like their daughter. Usually, it doesn't feel like work, it feels like life.