Madison doctor’s love affair with Israel
Madisonian Dr. Larry Charme had just come home from a week of study at Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem in early July when the war with Lebanon broke out.
So he turned around and returned to Israel, this time as a volunteer.
During his earlier trip, Charme developed strong connections with Israelis. And he felt the buildup to the war after Sgt. Gilad Shalit was kidnapped on June 25 by Palestinians tunneling under the border with Gaza.
“[T]he tension that was building [in Israel] was palpable,” he said.
In contrast to most of his trips, when Charme traveled with federation or synagogue missions or as part of organized groups, this time he was independent.
“I am blessed with a need for little sleep and I spent time wandering the city day and night,” said Charme, a gynecologist on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine.
Perhaps because of that freedom, he met many Israelis. At the end of the trip, Charme said, he made a list of the names of all of the people he could remember with whom he had had a meaningful conversation. It totaled 90 people.
So when the bombings and fighting began, Charme’s next step was obvious. “I felt an overwhelming need to go back to show that I cared. I had an emotional investment. My goals were to support Israelis.”
So he flew back to Israel on Wednesday, Aug. 2, and spent the next two weeks volunteering through several charitable organizations and getting to know people.
‘Labor of love’
Charme spent more than a week refurbishing old wheelchairs at Yad Sarah, “perhaps the most well known of the large national charities. It primarily provides assistance to thousands of people who need medical equipment. It sent hundreds of wheelchairs north to evacuate old people,” he said.
“The people working in that place — working with them and talking with them were the most powerful experiences I had,” Charme said.
“They were mostly seniors who have been there for a long time. Many did not speak English well. They dealt with each wheelchair like they saw the person who would use it.
It was a labor of love for them and it was so inspiring.”
Charme described individuals he encountered, who had clearly touched his heart.
“One lady wheeled herself into our building and said, ‘Hi, that’s my wheelchair you’re working on.’ She was the life of the party,” Charme said. She explained, apologetically, he said, that there was something wrong with the chair’s brake. “She asked me if I could fix it,” Charme said, “and I wanted to cry.”
With severe health problems, including diabetes and asthma, this woman was outgoing, cheerful and entertaining, Charme recalled. Despite these many challenges, she asked humbly for just a little help. “It was a powerful moment,” he said.
Charme also volunteered with other organizations. With the aid of the director of American Physician Fellowship, an organization that trains foreign doctors to work in Israel in times of national emergency, Charme applied for and received an Israeli medical license.
And though he investigated working in several hospitals, Charme realized he would first need to learn to speak Hebrew, a project he is now undertaking with enthusiasm.
Charme also worked at Meir Panim, a charity that focuses on feeding the poor, and at Mesamche Lev, an organization that primarily provides new shoes to families twice a year, on Passover and Succot. But during the current crisis, they are offering general aid and succor.
“They are desperate for money,” he said. “In the week before I came, they had processed 2,200 refugee families from the north. And it was done by just four rabbis, a computer and one copy machine. They gave people coupons worth about $50 that they could use in any grocery store.”
Charme also volunteered with the Yaffa Institute. Founded to provide education to the poor of Yaffa, where, according to Charme, 70 percent of the Jewish residents live under the poverty line, it does drug and violence intervention and teaches neglected and abused children how to relate to people.
Between his volunteer assignments, Charme also managed to spend Shabbat with two sons of Milwaukee’s Rebbetzin Feige and Rabbi Michel Twerski.
‘Just give’
Recalling a conversation with a man returning from the funeral of his nephew killed in Lebanon, he quoted that grieving uncle’s words. “Our behavior from now on will legitimize his death. What we do now will make it worthwhile.”
And what we American Jews must do, Charme believes is support our Israeli family.
“Without the help of people overseas, it’s a desperate situation. In Jerusalem,” Charme said, “there are many people asking for money.” “Don’t question them [about their need.] Just give,” he said.
“You should rush to the mitzvah rather than resent it. They only ask you for money. They don’t ask for your son for the army. Their deaths and their sacrifices have to be legitimized by our actions.
“We need to send them love. The most dramatic way is to go there and share their lives and hug and kiss them,” he said.
One of the best ways to help Israel is “to develop a love affair with the people and the country for what they are doing for us. And whatever you do for the people you love, just do that [for Israel.]”
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