Yuri and Larissa Faizakov Grandparents Raising Orphaned Grandchildren

On October 7, 2004, Yuri and Larissa’s son Oleg and his wife Ludmilla were killed in a terror attack in the Sinai town of Taba, just across the Israeli border. The couple was on holiday for their tenth wedding anniversary. It was the first real vacation they'd had since getting married. Oleg and Ludmilla had left their two children behind with Yuri and Larissa in Tel Aviv. Yigal, 3, and Daniel, 9, were suddenly orphans. Each one had a birthday coming up soon, to be celebrated for the first time without parents.

After the tragedy, the children went back and forth between their paternal and maternal grandparents, until it was decided that Yuri and Larissa would take full responsibility for their upbringing.

SELAH, which had given initial emergency aid to the family at the time of the tragedy, now came into their lives more intensively. As Yuri relates: "Shmulik [SELAH volunteer] started to visit us regularly, and gave us the feeling we were not alone. The children had very difficult problems, they had been through such a tragedy and so many changes in their lives. It was very difficult for us to deal with their problems. “

Then Larissa started going regularly to the SELAH support group. Every time she went, she felt she could get answers to any kind of question. Before, it was as if we were without an anchor. But from these sessions we got an idea of different possibilities of how to react and respond to our grandchildren. And we started to understand why they are acting as they do. "No matter what is happening, we know there is a place to come to where we can be together with other people, to tell them what has happened to us and hear what is happening to them. It has also been very important for us to learn that sometimes there are simply no answers. That's part of life too.

"What we get at SELAH I can't imagine getting anywhere else.”