In the immediate days after the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas, Talya Tomer Schlesinger was engulfed in a historical first on both national and personal levels. The historical first in Israel led to a massive IDF call-up of more than 300,000 men and women in the reserves, who dropped everything to resume their IDF alter egos.
These dramatic changes were most heavily felt by the youngest family members, whose routines were disrupted and who have minimal coping skills. Tomer’s impetus to create a children’s book came from a need to comfort her own young kids – Goni, seven; Hadas, five; and Roie, two.
“I was in an impossible situation. I was asked, ‘Could Abba [Daddy] die?’ I didn’t have words to calm them. I was terrified. I couldn’t lie to them, and I didn’t have the inner faith that everything would be okay,” Tomer recalled.
With missiles falling, Tomer noted that it was the scariest time for fathers to leave their families. In early October, she first had an idea to convert an IDF shirt into a puppet’s uniform for a generic reservist dad, to help her own kids and nursery school teachers normalize the new realities facing these children. Her aunt, the artist and translator Rena Bannett, carried it out. Tomer soon envisioned the impact that a storybook would have beyond the nursery school walls.
Those early days of the war were full of anxiety. “Following a meeting with our psychologist, I felt more equipped and had messages I wanted my kids to hear. After that, they were reassured. That’s when I knew I had to organize a book,” Tomer said.
She instinctively searched out children’s books in local stores. Parental dilemmas could often be resolved by a book that addresses the issue, whether potty training or the woes of naturally curly hair. But her search failed. Nothing met her immediate needs.
Hitting home
Tomer was born in Safed to North American olim Rabbi Barry and Shira Schlesinger. She grew up in Efrat and now lives in Jerusalem’s Talbiyeh neighborhood.
She admits that she has no experience as an author. As a 2011 graduate from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design ceramics department, Tomer is far removed from her original artistic pursuits; however, the skills she acquired along the way prepared her for this undertaking. Over the years she had turned to public urban art, such as inviting the public to help her adorn public benches. Later, she dressed the tree trunks in fabric along Emek Refaim Street in Jerusalem’s German Colony. She liked the public interaction and the community aspects.
But post-Oct. 7, she realized that she couldn’t protect her children while living in a war zone, and the children’s book began to germinate. “Israel had changed. I wanted a peaceful life for my kids, but then there was reality”, said Tomer, who is listed as the author of Family in Reserves (Mishpacha b’Miluim), although her role was closer to lead writer, project initiator, and all-around motivator of a group effort.
“This creation was not meant to be a literary marvel; that was not the heart of the project,” she said.
With family members living in the Gaza border communities, her kids knew more than she wanted them to know. “During the first days, Adi Vital Kaploun – my cousin Anani Kaploun’s wife – and their sons Eshel, four months old, and four-year-old Negev, were missing and thought to be kidnapped to Gaza.
“In those early days, my children told themselves that Abba was out looking for them,” Tomer said. The boys were found abandoned over the border in Gaza. “I couldn’t find the words to tell our kids that Adi was dead until after I had consulted with the psychologist, who helped me separate the narrative about my husband, Yair, from the massacre of my cousins,” Tomer said.
This was no theoretical exercise. It hit home.
Tomer knew that she wanted to create a children’s book. She planned it as an illustrated book that would be told from the child’s point of view, at their emotional level. In discussing the book, the psychologist pointed out that the book needed to address fear – the subject that had to be faced head-on.
Tomer approached Daniella Koffler, whose work as an illustrator she knew and admired. She asked her if she would do the illustrations but – and the “but” was big – she couldn’t pay her yet. She told Koffler that she had no immediate funds but that she anticipated getting donations and would compensate her at a later point.
Koffler gladly agreed. With most men in the war, women joined the project from across many professional disciplines, such as a bibliotherapist, while others fulfilled functional roles such as distributors and contact people.
Getting the book out posthaste
The immediacy of the need pushed conventional niceties aside. “People wanted to get this out as quickly as possible and were proud to take part in it. From concept to having the printed book in hand was only two and half weeks,” Tomer said.
Alone at home with three very young children in her charge, it may seem unrealistic to take on a project as complex, emotionally draining, and potentially exhausting as this. Most people would suffice with just getting through each day.
Fortunately, the support of her parents, who put in many grandparenting hours, enabled Tomer to bring Family in Reserves to the world. “After the fact, I can see that it gave me something to do for my kids, my family, and my country. It allowed me to be busy and be part of the world at the same time,” Tomer said.
To accomplish this goal required artistic vision, literary skill, psychological insight, and business acumen. The team they amassed – whether by design or women’s intuition – fell upon a model of “community that could interact and interfere respectfully,” said Koffler, as they considered suggestions, adapted their ideas, and worked determinedly toward their goal.
The depictions of Israeli soldiers are illustrations based on photographs of real uniforms. The different roles of the reservists are augmented with the actual equipment that the army uses day to day. The concrete imagery – like recognizable army vehicles – represents experiences from the soldiers’ lives.
Koffler is Israeli, born and raised in Jerusalem’s Old Talpiot neighborhood, where she still lives. She is also a 2011 graduate of the Bezalel Academy, where she studied illustration and animation within the screen-based Arts Department. She is an animation director and producer.
Koffler completed the nearly 40-page, 20-cm.sq. book, with its detailed and well thought-out color illustrations, at breakneck speed to get it out. She credits this with being an animator, noting that she is used to doing “blitz work, by moving everything else aside. Animators tend to be a bit OCD,” she added.
“It has to be at the doorsteps now!” Koffler recalled Tomer urging. To that end, “we worked together as the children played, between mothers,” she said. “Since the kids were with us, we could just turn to them and ask them what they envisioned, like riding dragons. We needed to listen and imagine,” she said.
Koffler employed cut-out illustration to achieve the images she wanted. Early in the war, during quiet periods “somewhere” in the North, she asked Tomer’s brothers serving in the reserves to pose as fantasy action figures and send the photos to her fully integrated systems using iPhone and iPad. From there, the images went right to her Mac computer, which would transform them, at her direction, into photos “softened into a collage.” They are “sculpted together,” as Tomer put it, to suit young readers.
They also used Hebrew diacritical vowel signs (nekudot) so that beginner readers could read the book. There are also pages for children to add photos or drawings of their family in reserves; and thoughtfully, a page for children to express the things they miss when their reserve parent is away.
Tomer knew that the affected families should receive he book gratis. To date, 24,000 copies have been handed out, largely by word of mouth. “It was a dynamic and organic process to help the reserve families obtain this important work for their homes,” Tomer said.
“People really wanted to be part of this effort,” she added. Their crowdsourcing campaign yielded hundreds of individual contributors who together donated $35,000 to cover initial costs, including printing, and the aforementioned leap of faith by Koffler. “Even more remarkable,” added Bannett, “there were no enticements to lure donors to join the effort.”
Though she had not conceived of this project as a business, there were some practical steps. As a book published in Israel, Mishpacha b’Miluim was deposited, as per law, in The National Library. Tomer wanted it entered as a fully realized publication on record and under copyright.
To support the costs of producing her next project, Family Without a Home, an English translation of the Hebrew book is underway. English was considered vital to include supporters from abroad and extended olim families, and to provide the international community with a window into current Israeli life.
The Magazine asked if there are plans to translate the book into Russian, Ukrainian, Amharic, or Arabic, which could be a bridge to other minority communities who serve in the IDF. Tomer agreed there is potential to consider sectoral needs “down the road,” but this has to be done at a slower pace to be faithful to cultural nuances.
After seeing the reactions of her daughter and granddaughters to the Hebrew book, Bannett volunteered to translate the book into English. Despite experience translating Hebrew academic works, this was a different challenge for which Bannett recruited her Israeli-born daughter, Lani Anouchi, who is also in a reserves family. Bannett recalled that they really enjoyed working together as they explored finding synonyms while retaining rhymes, bridging cultural gaps, and fitting the text within the allotted space.
As grandmother to the Anouchi girls, ages seven, five, and two, Bannett had a front-row seat to their responses to the Hebrew book. Their mother first read it to her oldest daughter, who read it to her little sisters the next night. One grandchild took it to bed and fell asleep hugging it. Similar reactions were repeated in hundreds of homes by grateful readers.
Tomer noted that the book functions as a conversation opener. “No one is pretending that this is normal,” she said. “Finding ways to open a conversation is something we can each do. We can make this less awful.”
Added Bannett: “We do not raise our children to be shattered. On the contrary, we want to raise a generation of people who want to find solutions and grow. This may make us more vulnerable, but we will raise stronger adults who can live, love, and gain resilience.”
The English version of Family in Reserves and the upcoming Family Without a Home are in the late stages of production. They are both “on the way,” Tomer said.
To purchase Family in Reserves (in Hebrew): morning-sale.page/miluimbook
Book about evacuee families
Attuned to cracks in Israeli society, Talya Tomer Schlesinger turned her attention to the evacuated families. Applying the same principles and format to her new book, Family without a Home (Mishpacha Bli Bayit), is written by Tomer and illustrated by Daniella Koffler.
Crowdsourcing has been slower for this book than for Family in Reserves. Perhaps because there is a smaller pool of affected families. According to some counts, 200,000 people were evacuated from the Gaza border communities and the communities along the border with Lebanon, roughly a third fewer than the initial reserve call-ups.
Paradoxically, these families are possibly more vulnerable. One major difference is that they have no central body that lobbies for them. They seem to garner less sympathy, yet research reveals a harsher reality. Despite a roof over their heads and their basic needs covered, a hotel is no substitute for a home.
Many of the evacuees are children. They mostly lack routine, privacy, and normal family interaction.
Parents are preoccupied with their adult concerns after their abrupt dislocation. Their ability to supervise and advise their older kids is limited. These tweens and teens are exposed to the underbelly of the hospitality world over an extended period. The normally solid families are out of their element; they cannot thoroughly occupy their children with wholesome activities at these impressionable stages. There also are reports of molestation and inappropriate behaviors.
“Talya convinced me that if we don’t do this, no one else will,” said Koffler. This book is meant to shine a spotlight on the small fissures that could become deep societal cracks if ignored.
Cleverly, Koffler’s cover depicts a snail symbolically carrying its house. This aptly describes how these internally displaced families are living. After five months of artificial family life and no clear end in sight, their unique challenges are rife for discussion.
To support: bit.ly/familywithouthome
The writer is an artist and writer living in Jerusalem. Her graphic medical memoir on illness and loss, Life-Tumbled Shards, was published in 2023. Reach her at heddyabramowitz@gmail.com.