When the hostages came home, Israel exhaled – but only for a moment.
Because what comes after survival is its own kind of reckoning.
In this conversation, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Iris Gavrieli Rahabi reflects on the unseen work of healing after collective trauma.
A member of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society and longtime teacher in Human Spirit — a psychoanalytic–Buddhist training program that bridges Western depth psychology and Eastern contemplative practice — Iris has dedicated her career to understanding the meeting point between psyche, suffering, and compassion.
She is also the co-founder of First Line Med, a volunteer network that has provided long-term, free therapy to survivors of the October 7 attacks, to bereaved families, and to those who returned from captivity.
We talk about what it means to accompany others through devastation – when the cameras are gone and the quiet grief begins.
How psychoanalysis and Buddhism meet in tenderness and truth-telling.
And how healing, both individual and collective, asks us to stay present to the unbearable – without turning away.
