fashioned a violin<\/a> from balloons for a patient who was an orchestral violinist, and the two of them made pretend music together. Another time, Cara telephoned an artistic friend, who was dying of cancer, and guided her by voice in \u201cpainting\u201d a picture on an imaginary canvas.\u00a0<\/p>\nA tragic Shabbat in 1986<\/p>\n
The notion that it is possible \u201cto give a little bit of a lift, even momentarily, in very difficult situations of trauma and stress\u201d germinated in Cara\u2019s mind on a tragic Shabbat back in 1986. That morning, she discovered her second-born child, 10-week-old Catriel, lifeless in his crib.<\/p>\n
For the remainder of the agonizing hours until sundown, when their son\u2019s body could be removed for burial, Cara and her husband, Tony, were kept company by some close friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a lot of guts to walk into a house under those circumstances. But they sat in our living room and made us laugh. I don\u2019t know how I laughed; I don\u2019t remember what they said. Somehow, they made us laugh. What happened there made me think, many years later, that it doesn\u2019t matter what the situation is; you can always find joy in pain, light in darkness \u2013 though sometimes it\u2019s quite challenging,\u201d Cara said.<\/p>\n
She and Tony went on to have four more children. Their oldest, Avital, today is the mother of four. Sons Avinoam and Ze\u2019ev also have four kids each. Daughter Tchiya is the mother of two. The youngest Nachshon child, Aderet (\u201cShe\u2019s the cherry on the cake\u201d), was born 12 years after Ze\u2019ev.<\/p>\n
‘We couldn\u2019t wait one more minute’<\/p>\n
GROWING UP in England, Cara and Tony belonged to the Zionist youth movement Bnei Akiva. They made aliyah in 1983, a year after getting married. \u201cIsrael was crying out, \u2018Come, come, come!\u2019 and we couldn\u2019t wait one more minute.\u201d<\/p>\n
They started out at Kibbutz Alumim, moved to the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem a year later, and went on to spend 38 years in Givat Ze\u2019ev, about five kilometers northwest of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur children grew up there, and it was a wonderful life. One by one, they left to embark on their own lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cFour years ago, our children said to us, \u2018It\u2019s time for you to move, Mom and Dad,\u2019 so we downsized and moved to Modi\u2019in when our youngest finished school, in August 2023. And we\u2019ve been very happy there. Sometimes your children do know best,\u201d said Cara, who returns to Givat Ze\u2019ev once a week for pottery classes.<\/p>\n
She believes that making changes at certain stages of life keeps things from getting stale. \u201cThat goes for marriage, parenthood, your profession, and where you live, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hamas-led massacres of October 7 occurred just two months after the big move to the smaller home. On October 8, some of Avital\u2019s family and a friend\u2019s family arrived on their doorstep from Ashkelon. Without enough beds for all nine visitors, Cara reached out to her new community for help.<\/p>\n
\u201cA beautiful family I had never met gave us their home while they were in America. Avital\u2019s family stayed there for five months, and the children were welcomed in school and kindergarten,\u201d Cara said.<\/p>\n
Cara emphasized that her \u201cwonderful husband and children are a source of inspiration for me, together with their families.\u201d Her granddaughter Odeya came clowning with her once a month for a year at ADI Jerusalem as a pre-bat mitzvah project. She learned a lot from her Booba.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things Jeff Gordon taught us was to always look for the \u2018shakuf,\u2019\u201d the person in the room who feels invisible. \u201cWhen you look at somebody who\u2019s shakuf, it doesn\u2019t matter what they look like on the outside; what\u2019s going on inside is what needs to be noticed. And with God\u2019s help, always with God\u2019s help, I tend to pick up on it,\u201d Cara said.<\/p>\n
For a week after Oct. 7, Cara couldn\u2019t bear to do her usual hospital volunteering. \u201cBut then I realized I had to. It was a need for me and for the patients. Of course, I was with [wounded] soldiers, and with soldiers who came to visit those soldiers, because they also needed clowning.<\/p>\n
\u201cMedical clowning is very rewarding \u2013 it\u2019s the best profession in the world. I get much more than I give.\u201d \u25a0<\/p>\n
Cara Nachshon, 64<\/p>\n
From South End, England,<\/p>\n
to Kibbutz Alumim, 1983;<\/p>\n
to Jerusalem, 1984;<\/p>\n
to Givat Ze\u2019ev, 1985;<\/p>\n
to Modi\u2019in, 2023<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once a week, Cara Nachshon dresses in silly clothing and heads off to volunteer at Shaare Zedek Medical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14304,289383,146,85,46,1619,5622,164774],"class_list":["post-642575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-aliyah","tag-clowns","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-magazine","tag-shaare-zedek-medical-center","tag-volunteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}