29/5/97

When self-helpers get together

    Told she had "Elephant Man's disease," 22-year-old Idit came to understand that misery does indeed love company. She yearned to share her fears and feelings with the only kind of person who could truly sympathize: a fellow-sufferer.
    Nine years later, her solitude finally ended when she read an appeal in a newspaper from another lonely soul with the same condition.
    That notice also got the attention of the Israel Self-Help Center, and together, they went public. Idit discovered, in a matter of hours, there were 2,000 other Israelis just like her.
    Breastfeeders, asthmatics, epileptics and about a dozen other like-minded soulmates got together on Tuesday at the Women's League for Israel premises, for the first confab under the auspices of the center's Jerusalem branch.
    Self-help is a supremely Jewish concept: the huddled, super-supportive communalism of the Diaspora. You could say that the shtetl was the epitome of self-help.
    On the other hand, self-help was the antithesis of another Jewish concept: pioneering Zionism. The stress there was selfless fealty to national interests; individualism was perhaps the most sociopathic ism in a society whose only abundance was in ideologies. Though by now, Zionists may be prime candidates for a self-help group of their own.
    A stroll among the booths at the Jerusalem seminar brought visitors in close contact with the most diverse group of groups you'll ever see. However, Israel's most stunningly successful self-helpers were not represented. That would be the association for the gruntlement of disgruntled Russian immigrants, better known as Natan Sharansky's Yisrael Ba'aliya party.
    There were lots of people milling about, but it was difficult to tell if the minglers were here for specific personal interests. Like, the La Leche desk was not surrounded by hordes of suckling babes, if you know what I mean. And people seemed to dally at the Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) stall for longer than you'd expect.
    This was society at its most good --with a lot of Anglit spoken among the good-doers. This is not surprising, for voluntarism and social consciousness are cornerstones of English-speaking societies.
    High-profile illnesses were represented, such as cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's; the less-known (and therefore more vital to its members) included an association for fibromyalgia and another for Charcot-Marie-Tooth, which is not a dental discoloration problem but a grim motor and sensory debility.
    Rather differently afflicted people scooped fliers off the desks of Parents of Homosexual Children, and Debtors Anonymous -- which should perhaps team up with a neighboring group, my personal favorite, Triplets Plus. (I'm sure it was only coincidence that this booth was placed directly under a sign reading "Israel Institute of Productivity," one of the building's occupants.)
    This country has come out of its various closets, judging by the list of 409 self-help groups provided by the national umbrella organization.
    Most are related to high-profile medical conditions, or serving such needy types as immigrants and Holocaust survivors. But the gamut runs from, well... Shfaram widows to Tel Aviv bikers; Parents Against Cults to Friends of Converts; lesbian feminists to Orthodox homosexuals; Fathers Against Their Will to Women Who Love Too Much; haredim who've gone secular, to guardians of Jewish traditions; mothers with sons in fighting units, to low-profile army rejects; afflicted neighbors to mortgage victims; immigrants from China to Parents of North American Immigrants; heart-transplant patients to the Society to Live and Die With Dignity (euthenasia); Victims of Vaccinations to the Ringworm Association; and a wonderfully-named group that goes by its Hebrew acronym ANAK ("huge"), Amutat Nemuchai Koma -- or the Fellowship of Little People of Israel.
    There are glaring omissions: nobody has yet organized an Association of Victims of All-Night Burglar Alarms. Parents Of Obnoxious Children. Logizomechanicophobics Anonymous (people who fear computers, naturally).
    To start such a group, or for information on existing self-help organizations, contact the Israel Self-Help Center, 37 King George St., Tel Aviv, Tel. 03-629-9389 or 03-620-0259; in Jerusalem, 23 Haturim St., Tel. 02-537-3675, 537-3906.