Head of the Resilience Department at ZAKA, Vered Atzmon Meshulam, delivered a powerful testimony at the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference, recounting her experiences in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks and the healing mission that emerged in their wake.
“On the midnight of October 8, I volunteered at the Shura base,” Atzmon Meshulam recalled. “I stood beside parents, siblings, and children, facing what no human heart should ever have carried… bodies tortured and seen with unimaginable cruelty.”
Atzmon Meshulam, a medical psychologist with over 20 years of experience in end-of-life care, stated that nothing prepared her for the scale of suffering she and her fellow volunteers witnessed. “These were not just murders,” she said. “They were acts of deep inhumanity… In that silence, something inside me broke, and something else awakened.”
With the support of ZAKA’s leadership, she co-founded the organization’s Resilience Division with Oz Avizov to aid in the emotional and spiritual recovery of first responders. “This has become our shared life mission,” she said, emphasizing that ZAKA, often known for honoring the dead, is “a guardian of life.”
The Resilience Division operates trauma-processing circles not only for volunteers but also for their families. “We built a cutting-edge national system combining trauma-informed therapy, Jewish spiritual tools, and community-based healing,” she said.
She announced the next step in this mission: creating the ZAKA National Resilience Center, “a true home for recovery, renewal, and sacred strength.” The initiative, she said, is driven by a philosophy of “healing resilience; resilience that grows not despite the pain, but through it.”
Atzmon Meshulam paid tribute to her grandmother Aharon Meshulam, a Holocaust survivor, whose “quiet resilience and unwavering Jewish spirit” inspire her daily. “We will continue, because we must,” she said. “We owe it to our brothers and sisters who were murdered, that their deaths will not be in vain.” She concluded with a call to action: “Unity is our strength. Evil will never defeat our spirit.”
Written in collaboration with ZAKA