Do Clowns Have the Power to Heal?
Medical clowns have long been a fixture in Israeli hospitals. New research shows they do more than entertain—they can help accelerate recovery in ways traditional treatments can’t.
Medical clowns have long been a fixture in Israeli hospitals. New research shows they do more than entertain—they can help accelerate recovery in ways traditional treatments can’t.
When my friend Heidi Gleit asked last summer for volunteers to teach a weekly Hebrew reading-and-writing evening class to Eritrean and Darfurian asylum seekers in the Israeli town of Lod, I agreed immediately.
At every Passover seder of my childhood, my father Gershon Glausiusz would break the middle matzah, as the Haggadah instructed, place one half in an embroidered bag, and fling the bag over his shoulder, saying, “This is how we carried our possessions when we went into exile.” He was talking of his own deportation…