A few weeks into the war, a mother in southern Israel began to notice how deeply the crisis was affecting her seven-year-old son. Already struggling with anxiety, he had become increasingly frightened by the sirens and reluctant to leave home. His father was serving in Gaza, and the news of the war only intensified his fears.
And then she found a digital platform designed to guide people through the growing range of mental health services and resources. Developed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and its partners, Nafshi brings together professionally vetted options, from self-help tools and support groups to more intensive forms of therapy, making it easier for families like hers to find a starting point.
What makes this story meaningful is not the technology itself. It is the human need behind it: a mother searching for help for her child, and a system better equipped to connect her with support. Her experience was far from unique. Since the start of the war, more than 300,000 Israelis have been helped by JDC’s digital mental health solutions.
After three years of wartime reality, millions of Israelis are facing emotional, social and economic hardships, while the professionals and institutions that support them are under increasing pressure. Challenges of this magnitude cannot be met simply by doing more of what we have always done.
The question before us is not only how Israel recovers from what has been damaged. It is how we use this moment to build stronger, smarter and more accessible social systems for the future. This is the promise of post-traumatic growth: the possibility that individuals, communities and even entire societies can emerge from profound hardship with new strengths, capabilities and opportunities.
Israel already possesses extraordinary assets: human capital, entrepreneurship, science and technology, a strong civil society and communities that know how to mobilize for one another. For decades, Israelis have harnessed these strengths to solve challenges once considered nearly impossible. Now we need to direct more of that capacity toward both longstanding gaps and new pressures created by the war. Technology can help change that equation.
There is no substitute for a physical embrace in a moment of pain. No substitute for eye contact between a therapist and the patient sitting across from them. No substitute for another human being who is truly present during a difficult moment. Nor should there be.
The technology we need is not technology that replaces human connections. It is technology that enables human connection to reach farther. It can help identify deterioration before it becomes a crisis, enable earlier intervention, connect people to information and professionals and help individuals recognize not only their difficulties but also their strengths. It can also make social systems more scalable and more personal.
A digital service can reach Kiryat Shmona, Sderot, Rahat and Tel Aviv at once. A self-guided support tool can be available at 2 a.m. Data and artificial intelligence can help tailor support to different needs and direct scarce professional capacity toward those who need it most.
This is particularly important in fields such as mental health, where demand has grown faster than the number of qualified professionals. The answer is not to replace psychologists with algorithms. The answer is to create a broader continuum of support through prevention, digital tools, group-based services and, when needed, face-to-face professional treatment.
Technology can also strengthen the professionals already in the system. AI can reduce administrative burdens, improve access to knowledge and help professionals make better use of their time. Smart technologies can help older adults live safely at home. Real-time data can help local authorities identify emerging needs and respond earlier.
The goal is not to remove people from the system. It is to give professionals more time to do what only people can do: listen, understand context, build trust, exercise judgment and be present during the most difficult moments in another person’s life.
At JDC, we have seen what becomes possible in Israel when social innovation, technology, government and philanthropy are brought together around a shared challenge.
Our role has increasingly been not only to operate programs, but also to help develop and test new models, improve services through data and digital tools and work with government, local authorities and other partners to bring successful solutions to scale.
Across aging, disability, employment, mental health and community resilience, the objective is the same: to innovate stronger systems that can serve people across Israeli society. The real test of innovation is whether it can become part of the way a system works — whether it can be evaluated, improved and adopted by public institutions and made accessible regardless of where people live or which community they belong to.
The task is to move from promising ideas to sustainable social infrastructure. This is where philanthropy plays a particularly important role. During a crisis, philanthropy understandably focuses on the urgent. That support is essential.
The years ahead will also require another form of philanthropic leadership: investing in the capabilities Israeli society will need long after the emergency phase has passed. Philanthropic capital can create the space between an idea and a national system, allowing an idea to be developed, tested, evaluated and improved before wider adoption.
Philanthropy can also operate in ways that public systems often cannot, making collaboration and partnership even more important. It can connect sectors that do not naturally collaborate. It can invest in technology, professional capacity and evaluation. And it can help successful models move from pilot programs to public infrastructure.
For funders, this approach means adding a second question to the urgent one: not only “What need can we address today?” but also “What capability does Israeli society need to build for the next decade?”
That may mean investing in responsible AI, digital infrastructure, professional training, cross-sector partnerships and solutions designed from the outset to reach Israel’s diverse communities. At its best, philanthropy can provide the flexibility and risk capital that allow Israel to experiment responsibly, learn faster and build lasting capacity.
Of course, the more powerful the technology, the greater our responsibility. Poorly designed technology can deepen inequality. Services that are not adapted for Arab society, Haredi communities, older adults or people with disabilities can leave behind precisely those they are meant to help. Privacy, safety and professional accountability must therefore be built into these solutions from the beginning.
For decades, Israel has transformed constraints into engines of innovation. The opportunity now is different: to use those same strengths to turn a profound social crisis into an engine of rebuilding and growth. If we succeed, the achievement will not be another app or another successful startup. It will be a society capable of reaching more people earlier and in more personalized ways. A society that prevents deterioration rather than responding only once a crisis has occurred. A society that strengthens people’s capacities rather than focusing only on repairing vulnerabilities. A society that uses technology to expand the possibilities for human connection, rather than diminish them.
Ultimately, the question is not only what technology Israel can build next, but what kind of society we can build with it — and how, together with our philanthropic partners, can we turn that vision into reality?
Hadas Minka-Brand is the executive director of JDC Israel, part of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the global Jewish humanitarian organization.