Words from the mediation room

A personal account of arriving at AHAVA mediation almost by chance - and discovering a guiding principle: we decide, we choose the details of our agreement, and the agreement must make us happy. Three months after signing, it is good to discover that a family in two happy homes is possible. The children look healthier. There is room to grow.

On a single day I spoke with three different people who each told me a story of a family member they had been estranged from for years. In all three cases, that person had the same name: Or-Ya - 'the light of the Name'. The answer that came to me: perhaps the light of the Name is in rupture. From all of us. A lie above an abyss.

A thank-you to the many friends who walk alongside AHAVA mediation - who bring couples in, sit beside them in the process, anchor them emotionally, and even fund their mediation. The righteousness that flows from you to your loved ones and their children is unmatched. After you have experienced for yourselves that things can be different, you do not let them continue the pain. This is a shared creation. Engraved in the heart.

A friend tells me my page is a downer - that I write mostly about parents' separations and pain. I answer him: if you received the waves of pain coming from parents thrown into crisis, court, rupture and boycott, you might think the opposite - that I am not doing enough to cry out their pain, and the pain of the children I meet. You would understand at once what kind of pain children live in today, and that this calls for a kind of social state of emergency. Share. You surely have friends in the situation. Let them know their reality can be the opposite of what they live now, even if it looks imaginary and hopeless. With everything else life already brings, with wars of many casualties around us - to see parents at war today is a complete hallucination. So the opposite is true: I do not speak about this enough. The more we speak, the more this epidemic may pause, or quiet down.

The first cohort of the AHAVA mediation course begins at 18:00, on the day a father of children chose to end his life because he was estranged from them, and the day the court released the name of a man suspected of murdering his daughter-in-law's father three months ago. A reminder of what we are trying to do here. Matters of life and death. Thank you to those who registered. I am moved by your presence and your wish to learn the foundations of reconciliation in the family. Moved by the privilege of gathering, editing, broadcasting and telling - to you and for you - the story of a path that found a word for healing and turning points in the lives of parents and children. To my parents, my children, my family, my friends, and the parents we mediated for - dedicated to you, in AHAVA. 13.11.23

"Mom, at school they told me my parents are getting divorced - is it true?" Raphaeli asks. I tell her: the children are confused, because many people who separate say and feel that way. But who are we really evicting? Sometimes we evict cats fighting in the yard at night. People - I don't think it's beautiful to evict. Dad and I separated and we separated homes, yes. And we built a bridge between our two homes - yours - so we'd have two happy homes. So you can tell them your parents didn't get divorced. Your mom and dad mediated. Tomorrow we have a hearing at the rabbinical court. Mixed feelings - on one hand it feels archaic, like representing a scene from a different story. On the other, as someone who loves ritual, I feel it moves something inside. Separation isn't a single point in time. Like the building of a relationship - strung like beads in a chain - separation, too, is a chain, and each bead unties and dismantles something. And in every stage of this untying, something new is built in this self that is renewing. A year and a half of dismantling and rebuilding, and the hand still unravels and weaves from within. Thanks to Shahar, who will always remain a full parental partner in raising the two rare diamonds who came through us into the world - reason enough to walk through whatever life brings. There is still so much to learn and rebuild in our consciousness around separation. I pray we learn to part in peace and in love, when the time comes - as part of life.

I have a dream, in which parents do not tear each other apart to the point of estrangement, blockings, and wounds that pass to the next generations. Where children do not carry burning hatred between those who brought them into the world. And where family courts close, one by one, for lack of public interest. From the very first step toward this dream - five years ago - they said it had no chance. Some still say I have no chance, that everything is becoming more extreme and our generation is lost. But the more I swim through these family battlefields, the more I see this dream is not only possible - it is essential. A small-huge family disaster arrives at my doorstep daily, and we have learned to understand: this is an epidemic that touches, in some form, almost a hundred percent of us. We have proven, in many cases, that this is solvable to the level of a miracle, in the parents' own words, leaning on formulas that bring order to the head and the heart. Now it is a matter of echoing these messages widely and opening the gates for parents. Parents at war are children in danger - and not only their own children. This is no longer only a family issue but a wound that has become a social one, because our children marry one another. Thank you for the privilege of dreaming, and of helping parents create a new space of joy in their children's hearts. Beautiful miracles are happy children. Shana Tova. #AHAVA

You know that thing called divorce? At the end of August we close a year since we separated our homes and told the children. Turns out you need to know who - and no less important, how - to get divorced. I can't tag the Facebook-less ex, but I can recommend our wonderful mediator Motty Danos, and the handsome (and single - grab him quickly!) matchmaker Aviel Teitler who introduced us to Motty. Thanks to both of you, champions - because of you we have a photo for Family Day and we flew with the kids to Sinai. Sinai was good to us. We'll come again. AHAVA - family-emotional mediation.

From the start of the month of Av we are commanded to lessen joy - for the fall of the two Temples and the passing of Aaron the Priest, "the seeker and pursuer of peace." I know people for whom one more reduction of joy will burst the pressure cooker. If you, or your friends, are inside the volcano, here are a few things you can do to let a little air in. Breathe. (1) Begin a list of what you have - start with the children, with the memory of their once-perfect laughter and the way they used to look at us. (2) Do not send long, accusing messages in moments of boiling. Write to yourself, on slips of paper. The other parent usually thinks the same of you. Quiet the screens. Make room for breath, yoga, meditation, the support of close loved ones. (3) Take a sheet of paper. Calculate how many days remain in our responsibility for our children until age 18. Divide by two. Ask: is this a path I can walk, want to walk - and are there other ways (there are) to speak my pain without turning it into an irreversible reality. (4) On the same paper, calculate how many days remain between my current age and, say, 90. Breathe. Ask how many of them I am willing to invest in the painful side of life. (5) Ask: can I, in some dimension, turn my main complaint about the other parent into something I can be grateful for? If I think she should thank me for what I am illuminating for her - what could I, in turn, thank her for, regarding her main complaint about me? (6) Repeat: parents who act for their children's good do not give up on agreements between them. They work, with determination, to multiply them. This is the safe path back to that smile that once tanned the children's faces, and ours.

*** This post is hard to read, and is meant for parents of shared children who do not speak to one another, or for people who know such parents. *** A conclusion I have reached from years of family mediation: parents of shared children who do not speak = pain that seeps daily from them into the children, to a level that can lead to a father murdering his daughter, or a grandfather murdering the other grandfather following their children's divorce - real cases from Israel in the past month. And to suicides of one of the parents, and to suicide attempts by children. On the latter two there is no proper data collection - the collective coping in Israel is repression and denial, alongside closed-door discussions. I am not even speaking of the phenomena that never reach the press: daily suffering, financial loss, loss of health, well-being and concentration. Phenomena in children such as eating disorders, learning, health and mental disorders that pass through generations, parental alienation, contact refusal, dropping out of school, violence, descent into crime. There is a direct link between these phenomena in children and the level and quality of the connection between their parents. This conclusion is, for me, unequivocal, and proves itself day after day, and I therefore feel a duty, a will, and a need to share it. A small step today inside the territory of war ('who voluntarily checks themselves into the courthouse?') leads, with the distance of years, to a wish to take each other's lives, and tragically, to an inconceivable wish to take their children's lives along the way. A battlefield. Please, parents, do not allow a state of rupture between you. This is not what you promised yourselves and your children when you decided to bring them into the world and create souls in your image.

A short dialogue from the mediation room. How long have you been fighting in court and into the heart of your children? - 'Two years.' How much money have you spent so far? - 'I am at 90,000 shekels, I do not know about his side. His father funds his war against me, the mother of his grandchildren.' And what is the situation? - 'We do not speak.' Does the money come through? - 'Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Whatever he feels like.' Does he see the children regularly? - 'Not really.' Do they sleep at his place? - 'Not really.' Do you regret, in hindsight, having gone to check yourself into the courthouse to decide for you how you will live your lives? - 'A foolish, idiotic woman. I curse the moment.' 17.7.22

"I stole the child yesterday from his mother.." - What did you say? - "That I stole the child. I came over. She did not let me in. He came out after me. Got into the car and I drove off." - You used the root S.T.E.A.L. to describe a hug between you and your own child? - "Yes. And I blocked her." - When you brought him into the world, did you imagine a day would come when you'd use the word 'stole' to describe a meeting with your child? - "No." - Doesn't make sense, right? - "No." - You should also be ready for a police investigation. - "Not afraid." - Do you understand how much the family situation you're describing is begging for the two of you to sit down and write what to do so things won't get even worse, and if anything can still be repaired in the children's souls and ours - please offer it quickly because we don't have any more time? - "There's no one to talk to." - And does she have you to talk to? In your own words, you stole her child for the night. - "I also take responsibility." - How much do you want to change your life? - "Very much." - This is a process that requires you to be attentive. Committed. In trust. The wound is deep and bleeding. We will look at things with you because you are here and asking to change, and in the next step we will ask her. When she believes there is an opening for change, she will come, even alone. And then the process is with the two of you alone. Until agreements. I have seen and accompanied this happen. Do not despair of trying. From where you both are, the alternative is fairly terrifying.

A question: I am currently in a place where I see couples of parents who have done a 180-degree turn, from a battlefield of terror to hugs and laughter, and all of it happens in front of me from start to finish within the framework of mediation. From confusion to clarity. From heartache to sighs of relief. These are parents like the amazing couple who this morning finished a process by signing an agreement between them, after two years of mutual heartache and suffering. Like people who can't believe it. And my question, in such a state, is what do I do when I have friends and relatives whom I know and love, who know about the option, but something - probably the embarrassment of being exposed in front of me - keeps them from coming, and I see how they continue to suffer, perhaps for no reason that cannot be solved in the way it happens with us every day. My options: A. Do nothing. They know about me. In their own readiness and ripeness, they will come. The counter to this is that their children have no time. They have already been experiencing very strong pain for a while. Domestic violence is growing across society. We are all interwoven. Our children marry one another. There really is no time to wait until parents ripen, while the children meanwhile go through hell. The second option is what Udi tells me: "You are in the work of acts of loving-kindness and in matters of saving children's lives. Understand it already, you nudnik. Halachically, a rabbi would issue you today any permission you would ask for, that would help you bring peace into a home. It means clearly knocking on their door. Daily. Otherwise, they may reach you in a state of advanced multi-system rot." What kind of friend am I? If I am not sitting at their door every day - until it happens, I am not even pursuing peace by my own standards. 24.6.22

I deal in matters of life. I deal in matters of life of children. I deal in matters of life of parents. Of sisters and brothers. Of grandfathers and grandmothers, uncles and aunts and their children. I write this down for myself in order to manage to believe that this is what I have been privileged to engage in. Today they signed. Only they know the magnitude of the pain that found its place inside a process complex in its sensitivity and beautiful to the end for the sake of their children. And for their own sake. Those who chose to place the children before their own private pain - which had only deepened with time - won a new friendship: reconciled, containing, supportive and cooperative. Heroes. Thank you for the privilege of being your bridge. There are days of victories on the battlefield. And children walk out of the wounding space of parents in conflict. The smile rises onto their face immediately. Children are the quickest to reward you for the peace you make between yourselves. #AHAVA

About 2,000 years ago Rabbi Yochanan recorded for us, in vocalised Hebrew, a message for these very days. On the interpretation of Avshalom's request - the son of King David - for the death of his father, Yochanan wrote: 'Bad culture inside a person's home is harder than the war of Gog and Magog.' When I read it for the first time on 7.3.21 I was in shock for a while. To my understanding, we have cracked Gog and Magog. We, and parents who experienced with us, are surrounded by the light we felt. We have defeated our private Gog and Magog. Our children were created from a divine spark through us, and we have been privileged with a miracle - that they call us, with smiling faces, mother and father. We have been privileged to bring a smile to their hearts. From one home or from two. Thank you that we have arrived at this rung in our lives, where we understand the magnitude of the hour and the privilege of creating for them pleasant childhood memories.

Mazal tov to me on my Hebrew birthday, very special to me - the 7th of Sivan, the day of the giving of the Torah. My eldest daughter Daria-Or was born on Hanukkah, her sister Rona during the intermediate days of Sukkot, and the twins Odeya and Bari on the eve of Pesach. The children of AHAVA were born on the holidays. A family in celebration. And the understanding ripens slowly. About the gift placed in my hands - to offer to brothers and sisters, human beings, parents and children, in all the languages. About the privilege to experience, to formulate, to crash, to develop, to be an experimenter of my own choices. To identify, to change, to surrender to the powers that govern the miracles and the prayers. And first of all - to be a father, to four diamonds-of-the-holiday with melodies. "Soon you will deal more in prevention and less in putting out fires. A nutritional supplement, not a fire extinguisher. You can't put out a thousand fires together. And it burns your soul because you are in very high identification with the parents." The destination is the way = the goal is to refine and to bring myself and those close to me closer to a clean frequency, spoken and agreed upon, that we will keep and develop. And I will enjoy the creation along the way and from the flooding of light I discovered in my heart on the journey from peak to peak, including from the pains and birth pangs that I have been carrying now for seven seasons, to and from every summit. These are simply the peaks and valleys of the movement of my life. And that is the destination: to chronicle this movement in words and to create new movements out of the words. Ego cannot exist among partners to such a creating, intention-unifying frequency. And if it pops up - it is identified immediately and spoken about. I have been privileged to be in love most of my life with five special women, beautiful in the deepest core of their hearts. They knocked the form out of me in a flight of an enriching, empowering, inspiring experience, and the breath out of them was very painful and gave birth to creations that probably would not have been created without them. Grateful for the effort, even for one minute, on my behalf. I was encouraged and I learned. I was moved and I grew stronger. I hope that to the same extent I was pleasant and contributed to personal developments and essential breakthroughs. Eight happy sentences I heard this year from parents: A. This is really healing the pain. B. This is to change the order of the world. C. After the meeting we went back to sleeping together. D. A genius patent, Mordechai. E. Happy is the believer, and happy are we to have merited - he is my best friend today. F. This is the difference between hell and the Garden of Eden. Just like that. G. You are right - the truth of my heart cannot be one option among several to choose from. It is the only option. H. You should have seen the smile on the children's faces and their eyes when I told them that Daddy and I made up. Eight painful sentences I heard this year from parents: A. My daughter tried to take her own life. B. I want him to die. To just die. To disappear. All the troubles will disappear with him. C. It's not normal that she wants to see them every day. D. I stole my child from his mother for the night. And blocked her. E. My daughter tried twice to put an end to her life. F. The three of them are not willing to talk to me and not to come to me. They blocked me. G. He came to Friday dinner as a surprise and his children threw him out of the house. H. My 13-year-old son tried to cut his veins. Please do not try this at home. This is not a drill, this is a runaway train. Pleasure and pain continue to run inside me together with every breath, in AHAVA. Grateful for the privilege and the trust and the responsibility. Apologising to anyone I hurt in any way. I will be glad to receive reflections. Inviting humility with my own wishes. Inviting joy and health and human love for our own sake and for our children's joy. Inviting parents whose children's smile has dimmed to find ways with them to restore the smile to its full strength. May we continue on a path that empowers and purifies, enjoyable and touching the joy in hearts. Happy Shavuot - giving of the Torah - in AHAVA.

Conversations with married parents on the dance floor: If the two of you are dancing together like this with such a smile on your faces, I am guessing your children are extremely happy.. - "The happiest there is." - "I want to be you when I grow up." - Forget being me, you wouldn't necessarily want to. You - what about you? I'm hearing this from you for at least the second time, two years apart. What did you do to feel better with yourself in this time? - "So you are our shaman for today?" - I don't really connect to that title, thanks - I'm just guiding the ceremony. - "You don't understand, in another two-three years, you can't see it today, we'll be your cult and you'll be the guru." - Oh no, please, no. I run away from such definitions like from fire. - "Of course you'll say that, because you still have something to go through." - Write this down: I am first of all a father. After that a mediator. And I don't connect to that world of definitions because, in my eyes, there is no humility in it. There is hierarchy and patronage, but not humility. I'm not there. And thank you for reflecting it. To Li and Aviad, I just understood, thanks to you, that I am dancing the pain and tears of children outwards. This will accompany me all my life. You gave me a new dimension to dancing. I get the tattoos. "Give me something to take back to the dance floor with me." - Try, Or, to see if you can turn your one main complaint in life into something you can say thank you for, and the resistances that come up against you - into pieces of advice for upgrading yourself. Have a great time. Hanan, how did I not see this until today. The married ones are the ones who will carry this on their shoulders. It took me several years to understand the privilege that fell to me, of speaking with parents about the things most precious, important and painful to them. To meet them, to be asked by them, to receive their trust, their hearts, the hope in their eyes - to offer them alternatives that will lead them to make peace and to be happy. For them, this is to change the order of the world. Do you know how much from below, in humility and gentleness and emotion and gratitude that is spoken, one must approach such a craft? All my life I weakened myself, because I felt I was 'too much.' For myself, for people. From strange men who felt threatened and approached me and asked me to dim down, all the way to people very close to me who love me very much - but something in me sets in motion in them a movement towards feelings that are not easy for them to deal with. I understand today from their reflections that this movement helped to light up dark places, so for myself I am turning the current around: from a place of dimming, I am starting from today to amplify. Thanks to you. And going back to dance. Strangers' miracles. "Amplify, Mordechai." - "What are you doing?" - I have been privileged to be a family mediator. The pain I experience with parents in crisis and with their children - I think it has very great value when married couples hear of it. - "You remind me of one mentor, and you both speak quite similarly - Yossi Ginsberg, have you heard of him?" - 24 hours ago we danced together. I live in a house he used to live in, and he is a mentor of mine. Thank you for reminding me of this beloved man, and thank you for the compliment. ------- "I think every couple in the world should pass through this balcony." - Thank you for the compliment, brother. I'm breathing it in. It means one thing, you know. - "What?" - Video. (Chaim Levy, April 2019)

Words I wrote to parents: Hug your sweet child. They have the softness of healing. I am available to you with whatever you may feel a need for, at every stage. I hope you will not fight over the gaps - it is preferable to speak about them at eye- and heart-level, less through intermediaries. You have the formulas. And the books. It is mathematics. To reduce pain, to multiply joy. The days are complex anyway. The more you reduce uncertainty regarding the various life-arrangements, the more air enters the lungs of both of you. Look at this karma. She did not let go in the lower worlds. The new woman does not let go in the upper ones. Result: a child who does not see his father, and a father and his son in great pain. It is you who chose, in the moment of truth, in 'their peace'. In happy children. The miracle is yours, also from here on, day by day. And children are the quickest to reward. The more good words about Dad from your side, and about Mom from his side - their laughter will echo for you all your life in the heart, amen. Let us think for a moment that the product of the process here is happy children. The two of you are forever the two CEOs of this company whose product is happy children. So my question to you is: what do you, as CEOs, need to decide right now in order for this product to become an international startup? In a state of shared responsibility, we do not blame because of whom the relationship ended. Whether a year ago, four or ten. It no longer matters, and continuing to hold on to blame regarding because-of-whom we separated (certainly not because of a person external to us), will continue to maintain the cycle of mutual hurts. Continued blame = continued hurts = emotional cut-off = actions that can be considered revenge = communication cut-off = daily harm to the children, by you and because of you - and now that you understand what it looks like, if you do not choose to act differently, in effect you will be hurting them deliberately. It seems to me that the two of you will struggle to find a new relationship - stable and decent, empowering and connecting - if between you the two of you crossed the intimate line after declaring the end of the marriage at the rabbinate. You did not really stand in your own words at this line, for several years. That is, hope always remained in it - perhaps also in you - even after the get, that perhaps you would return one day. After all you would yield to him, occasionally, and he courts you also, occasionally. A kind of game like this. One that can also be seen as a dangerous game of control regarding your child. Why? Because in practice you did not return, you did not really set yourselves free of one another and allow yourselves to build new partnered lives - despite the declarations before the rabbis - and when one of you 'crossed the lines' towards a new partner, jealousy and anger appeared. These two led to a communication cut-off between you, which is currently very painful for your child. He is in a cut-off from his father. Before you rush to bring into the picture weapons against your own body - chemical-biological treatments, radiation, experiments with substances - check well. There are today proven alternatives, less destructive to the body. Rest in peace, beloved Neri. I learned from you how important it is to let-go (sha-chrer) so that we can continue to shine.