The charm of the neighborhood that we thought was gone from our lives is now returning with a new spirit • And this time it is not just for the sake of the atmosphere, but a real need that shouts from the field and is required more than ever
Mutual help within the neighborhood // Photo: Yael Azulai
"Neighborhood" is a phrase that has taken hold in our slang in recent years.
When we want to describe something scattered, untidy and irresponsible, that is conducted casually and with a lot of pulls from the waist, we say "what a neighborhood."
But as time goes on and the end of the epidemic is not in sight, the role of the neighborhood goes right into the vacuum created due to failures upon functional failures of the “responsible adult”.
Although the first closure turned out to be successful in preventing the epidemic from spreading, it left hundreds of thousands of Israelis in an economic collapse.
We were able to flatten the curve of those infected, but we neglected the curve of social distress.
Older people who die in their homes without anyone knowing, domestic violence, single parents who fail to lift their heads above the water and so many families who have come to a turnip.
Within this reality, devoid of the responsible adult, the neighborhood and community command were seized, becoming the most active and effective force in Corona.
I, for example, live in the Hadar neighborhood of Haifa.
40,000 women and men in the most crowded and diverse area of Haifa.
Precisely here, in the heart of the city, it was possible to find a neighborhood that knows how to behave like a family.
Hundreds of good people, this is the best way to define them, teenagers, students, members of missionary communities and social activists, decided to take the grace into their own hands, changed reality and without exaggerating - actually saved lives.
Even now, during the hallucinatory holiday season, just like in the first wave, they are the first line of assistance - handing out food to hungry families, going through lists of hundreds of elderly and isolated people and calling one by one to ask how they are, checking what they are missing, knocking on single neighbors' doors to make sure no one They will not be forgotten, they drive and return, initiate and establish, go out into the field in a time of uncertainty and health crisis - for the community.
We recruited volunteers, produced initiatives from one day to the next, managed to raise a holiday for isolated families and help local self-employed.
The charm of the neighborhood we thought was gone from our lives is now returning with a new spirit.
And this time it is not just for the sake of the atmosphere, but a real need that shouts from the field and is required more than ever.
The neighborhood was revealed as a source of hope in one of the most difficult periods of humanity.
On days like these, when the end of the plague is not in sight and reality is changing at a dizzying pace, the only balm is the community, the immediate environment, the neighbors.
The next time someone tells you "what a neighborhood," you'll know you're in good hands.
Barak Sela
is a member of "Dror Israel" and coordinator of the "Neighborhoods in Change" project of the Shahaf Foundation
