Amir and Shachar Naim were awakened on October 7, 2023, as sirens sounded across their home in Kibbutz Erez. A member of the community security team, Amir Naim quickly got dressed and ran to get his equipment, leaving his pregnant wife behind.
High school sweethearts, the Naims had just celebrated their first wedding anniversary. Shachar Naim waited alone with their dog in the shelter, hoping to hear from her husband. Amir updated her when he arrived at the security headquarters and began fighting, but then communication went silent.
The security squad had split into groups, and Amir was paired with his friend Danny as some 30 terrorists attempted to infiltrate their community. Only eight members of the security team were there to stop them. While attempting to rescue another injured member of the squad, Amir Naim was shot and critically wounded. By 12:30 p.m., three men from Kibbutz Erez arrived to tell Shachar Naim that her husband was dead. “Since then, life has never been the same,” Naim told The Jerusalem Post.
While most kibbutz members were evacuated to Mitzpe Ramon, Naim moved in with her family in central Israel. She gave birth to her son, Raphael, and attempted to return to her previous work as a human resources manager. She had a good job, but when she was asked to plan Purim parties and team-building activities for her colleagues, she felt disconnected.
Then, one day, Naim attended an event at Kibbutz Erez organized by a new NGO called Atufot, a center created in the aftermath of October 7 to support women coping with trauma, loss, anxiety, depression, and other emotional challenges. It also provides a space for women who simply need somewhere to pause, breathe, and reconnect with themselves.
Naim reached out to a friend who was working there, Yuval Arem, who connected her with the founders. Eventually, Naim was hired to handle marketing, social media, and outreach for the center. “This is part of my healing,” Naim said, noting that she eventually moved back to Kibbutz Erez. “This place saved me. I am not sure I would have come back to live in the kibbutz if not for Atufot.” Her late husband, Amir, was born and raised there. Naim said there are days when she does not want to get out of bed, but working at Atufot gives her a reason. “This is not just a workplace,” Naim said. “It is a home.”
When The Jerusalem Post visited Atufot in September, the center felt like a refuge. Soft-colored walls, the fresh scent of herbs and flowers, and artwork created a warm, inviting atmosphere. Beanbag chairs, a kitchenette, and a central table offered women places to sit, gather, and talk. The treatment rooms carried the same soft colors and calming atmosphere, designed to make the women who entered feel safe and cared for.
Dr. Sapir Bitton and Dr. Shimrit Yichye founded the Atufot Center. Bitton, who also lives on the kibbutz, is a psychiatry resident at Soroka Medical Center, a practitioner of Chinese medicine, and a physician specializing in breastfeeding support. Yichye is a clinical psychologist and senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University.
Kibbutz Erez is located only 600 meters from the Gaza border. On October 7, Bitton was working at Soroka while her family was on the kibbutz. Her family survived the attack, but Bitton lost her brother-in-law while he was fighting in nearby Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
Bitton evacuated with the rest of Kibbutz Erez to Mitzpe Ramon. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, volunteers poured in to offer services and support to the evacuees. The community accepted as much help as it could, but Bitton and several other women began thinking about what would happen when the volunteers left, and they eventually returned home. They knew they wanted to go back to Erez, but they also knew they would continue to need support.
That's when they began dreaming about what would become the Atufot Center: a place born from their personal experiences of pain, fear, loss, and helplessness, but also from a deep belief that women have the power to heal themselves, one another, and their communities.
The women envisioned a space where they could breathe, talk, and feel physically and emotionally embraced and supported. When they returned to Erez, they decided to turn that vision into reality. Bitton and Yichye built Atufot from the ground up.
“It was late at night in Mitzpe Ramon in November 2023,” Bitton said. “We were sitting together in the makeshift art room at the hotel where our kibbutz had been evacuated, dreaming together of creating a center for us, a center for women… Our dream grew and became a reality.”
Today, the center offers a multidisciplinary, holistic range of treatments and activities that bring together body, mind, and community. Alongside therapeutic support, Atufot holds monthly gatherings and events, workshops, and in-depth programs designed to give women an ongoing sense of community, belonging, and support.
“A lot of people ask why women,” Yichye admitted. “It is not that men don’t need help or deserve it. But women need something different than men, and that is okay.”
Women come from kibbutzim across southern Israel to use the center. The oldest woman receiving services is 93, and the youngest is 16. Since it opened less than two years ago, Atufot has supported around 600 women, with about 100 coming to the center each week or month, depending on the program.
Few barriers stand in the way of walking through Atufot’s doors. Women do not need a diagnosis to receive services; they can simply need support. Nor do they need to be officially recognized as victims of terrorism or family members of victims. Through donations, Atufot subsidizes its services and makes them accessible to the women who need them.
Recently, Netta Inbar joined Atufot as CEO, hoping to help the organization develop a financial model that will allow it to remain sustainable beyond donations. She told the Post that nearly three years after October 7, much of the outside world is beginning to move on. For the people of southern Israel, however, the aftermath of the massacre remains part of daily life.
The group understands that empathy will not last forever and that, as Israel’s political landscape changes, philanthropists may shift their attention and funding to other priorities.
For Arem, ensuring the center’s longevity feels deeply personal. “It is what makes me get up every morning,” she, like Naim, told the Post. Arem’s husband was also a member of the security establishment and survived the massacre. She said the family continues to live with survivor’s guilt. Her husband’s family is from Nahal Oz, one of the kibbutzim hardest hit on October 7, and Arem had friends who were murdered and kidnapped into Gaza.
In May 2024, Bitton and Yichye held a Zoom meeting to discuss what they hoped to create. Arem was living in Kiryat Gat at the time. “I felt like I had to be a part of it,” she said. “I had good work, but something about this place made me feel that I had to work here.”
She reached out to the founders, and they built a role for her. Arem joined Atufot on its first day and today manages the center’s activities. Like Naim, she credits the center with helping her decide to return home. “Thanks to Atufot we came back here,” she said of her return to Erez. “Now, I am here with a full heart.”
Bitton said that even as the war has ended, the women of the Gaza border communities continue to fight on a different front: rebuilding their communities and helping them heal. Women, she said, are often the foundation of their families and partners, and strengthening them can help strengthen the communities around them. “We are trying to build resilience day by day,” she said. “We wanted to build something for us, for our community, the women of the Gaza envelope.”
Nearly everyone who walks through Atufot’s doors carries her own traumatic story from October 7. As the anniversary of the attack approaches, the coming days will once again be filled with memorials, ceremonies, and mourning. But in Kibbutz Erez, amid everything that was lost, these women have also chosen to create something new. “I believe in this place,” Bitton said. “We have chosen to come back here. We have chosen to build.”
This article is written in collaboration with Atufot.