Our Team

Hello,

I’m Bar, and together with a few other incredible women, I established “HaBait Shel Bar – Israel Women’s Cancer Association”. This organization is my (second) life’s mission, and in the following post I hope to share why I founded it. 

Remember 2020 and how hard it was? For me, 2020 was incredible. I was succeeding as a valued officer and commander, finding work-life balance and active as a pretty good athlete. 2021 however was a nightmare. My beloved mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer, and after 9 long months which were in fact short, she passed away following an arduous and inspiring struggle. 

In those 9 short months, my mother underwent two surgeries and three hospitalizations. The first hospitalization lasted three weeks, and the second no less than 40 days! By the third, we were no longer counting, not to mention many other hospital visits between hospitalizations. 

We bustled from doctor to doctor, from one hospital to another, to Rabbi Firer, to treatments and examinations and to doctors abroad. As someone who always dreamed of being a doctor and chanced upon law school and a law career, I rediscovered the medical world alongside my mother and family.  

Naturally, I took it upon myself to manage this “project”, and in 2021 I held a full-time position, in addition to my role in the military, which was my first life’s mission: “Project Manager: Mom’s cancer”. I’ll say it now – anyone who hasn’t supported an ill loved one doesn’t fully understand the scope of the position, and how much it changes everything. 

The first stage of the project was surgery. We were prepared for two days of hospitalization, which turned into 40 hospitalization days for my mother, and three months of unpaid leave for me. It was then we understood the magnitude of the battle, and that we had entered the fight of our lives. In addition to the battle against cancer, I battled my internal inclination to leave my profession after a very short career. My mother’s doctors supported me (Dr. Susmallian and Eti Barak), as did my family, obviously, with my mother in the lead. Eventually, I found acceptance – who could experience such a thing and remain the same?

All throughout there were moments, as there still are, in which I felt that the medical staff were my best friends. They are my mentors, the only ones who truly understand me and understand my mother’s suffering. Through this I realized that there is something greater here than just a fleeting feeling. 

Then, Professor Tamar Safra, head of the Women’s Cancer Center at Ichilov Hospital and my mother’s oncologist, recruited me to manage her research team. When I heard her words over the phone my stomach dropped from sheer excitement. I’ve been working at Ichilov’s cancer center for 9 months now, and the weight of the mission envelopes me each morning. I have great respect for my work, and for the genuine attempt at influencing the lives of patients. 

My mother passed away unexpectedly. 

The heartbreak I have experienced since is the hardest feeling I’ve ever experienced, as if half of my heart and lungs were removed and I could no longer breathe. Suddenly, I found myself re-learning how to live life. In my new journey in this world, which has been going on for 7 months now, one thing is clear. My mother’s unwritten last wishes are to unwaveringly act for the sake of the patients, seeing as cancer is our family’s story. Establishing the association was the first thing I did on this new journey, immediately after rising from the sheloshim, as an instinctive and immediate act. Today, it’s the only thing that allows me to breathe easier. 

I write to you today – 

As a daughter to a mother who passed away from uterine cancer

As a granddaughter to a grandmother who passed away from breast cancer

As a great-granddaughter to a grandmother who passed away from ovarian cancer

Cancer is my life’s mission, and I will not rest until I make a difference.

My home is yours, and yours is mine. 

Bar