{"id":48396,"date":"2026-02-13T01:50:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T09:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=48396"},"modified":"2026-02-11T09:33:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T17:33:45","slug":"farm-transforms-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2026\/02\/13\/farm-transforms-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Farm transforms lives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Danny\u2019s Farm is a leading Israeli centre for holistic healing, offering animal-assisted trauma care, among other services. <\/i>(photo from Danny Stirin)<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>After Canadian-Israeli media personality Shai DeLuca was critically wounded in 1996 during his service in the Israel Defence Forces, the instructions from his peers were as blunt as they were unhelpful: be a man, move on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The injury \u2013 that left him with temporary loss of use of his legs \u2013\u00a0 <\/span>kept him in hospital and rehabilitation for nearly a year, in an era when post-traumatic stress was rarely named, let alone treated. \u201cBack then, PTSD wasn\u2019t understood the way it is today,\u201d said DeLuca. \u201cNo one had language for it. No one recognized the symptoms.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of July 2025, DeLuca traveled to a ranch southeast of Rehovot, Israel, with a Canadian organization supporting IDF veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, families of Oct. 7 victims and Israelis living with trauma caused by terror. What began as just a visit to Danny\u2019s Farm, a unique therapeutic centre, turned into a revelation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of the tour, ranch owner and chief executive officer Danny Stirin sensed something about DeLuca and asked a pointed question \u2013 why had he not dealt with the mental after-effects of his injury?<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like I didn\u2019t even need to say a lot and he understood what I meant,\u201d recalled DeLuca. \u201cHe said, \u2018the moment you\u2019re ready, just message me. I will be there with you every step of the way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The visit was \u201clife-changing\u201d for DeLuca and returning to the farm later allowed him \u201cto understand parts of my own story buried for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeLuca credits Stirin as \u201cthe person who freed me in a lot of ways from a lot of weight that I\u2019ve been carrying for so many years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Danny Stirin, left, and Shai DeLuca in conversation. DeLuca credits Stirin as \u201cthe person who freed me in a lot of ways from a lot of weight that I\u2019ve been carrying for so many years.\u201d (photo from Shai DeLuca)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since its inception in 2016, Danny\u2019s Farm has become a refuge for Israelis grappling with trauma, be it from war or terror. At first glance it looks like a ranch \u2013 stables with dozens of horses and many small animals about \u2013 but amid the pastoral view is a clinic, recognized as a leading Israeli centre for holistic, animal-assisted trauma care. Treatment rooms for art, music, bodywork and complementary medicine sit alongside the barns, and a multidisciplinary staff of psychologists, social workers and emotional-therapy instructors anchors the work with patients. The farm treats some 1,500 people each week.<\/p>\n

Even before Oct. 7, the farm was treating children with special needs, survivors of sexual violence, and adults with complex trauma, filling a gap in an under-resourced mental-health system. Since the Hamas attacks and ensuing war, it has become a safe zone for reserve soldiers, evacuees from the south and north, and families coping with loss, dislocation and rocket fire.<\/p>\n

For Stirin, the farm grew out of his own brush with crisis and a decision about what kind of fulfilment he sought professionally. \u201cIt\u2019s like there\u2019s a point in your life when you\u2019re looking for a purpose,\u201d he said, adding that he wanted the farm to be a tangible example for his children: \u201cso they can see that somebody is going with his heart, all the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

A deeper motivation, though, was to help other people with their pain. \u201cI felt that I have to hold the hope for others having a crisis, as I did,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stirin\u2019s choice to place animals at the centre of this work came from his childhood. \u201cSince I was a boy, I had a long attraction to animals. All my life I was near them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Born in Argentina to a grandfather who worked as a \u201cgaucho,\u201d or cowboy, he grew up with horses and dogs and carried that bond into adulthood. \u201cI realized in the best way, the very powerful way, I felt the energy of the healing, just being near the simplicity of these creatures,\u201d said Stirin.<\/p>\n

On the farm, that idea has been formalized into a program that pairs equine therapy with group and individual treatment, and specialized tracks for traumatized children and families. The model, developed in partnership with the resilience organization Tkuma and supported by various funders, is designed to give long-term structure to people who might otherwise never access, or have access to, sustained care.<\/p>\n

If there is a single principle guiding Danny\u2019s Farm, it is that trauma is both ubiquitous and intensely personal. \u201cThe human soul is very fragile, and very different from one to one,\u201d Stirin said. \u201cThe trauma \u2026 it plays with you. It can come in all kinds of different ways, shapes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because the nature of trauma depends on a person\u2019s personality, history, physical and mental structure, he said, therapists must approach treatment with \u201ca lot of flexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEach one needs something else. That\u2019s what I believe,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For veterans like DeLuca, who was told to tough it out, the encounter with this kind of care was \u201cliberating.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coming back to the ranch last month to introduce visiting media to the farm, he said he found at the farm the space to see his injury \u201cthrough a different lens,\u201d as part of a story that \u201cdid not have to end in silence.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He said, \u201cWith PTSD, the challenge is not closing the door, but opening it, and dealing with it. And what Danny did was [tell] me that I don\u2019t have to keep that door closed.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dave Gordon<\/b> is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world. His website is davegordonwrites.com<\/a>. His trip to Israel was co-sponsored by the Or Ofir Foundation.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Danny\u2019s Farm is a leading Israeli centre for holistic healing, offering animal-assisted trauma care, among other services. (photo from Danny Stirin) After Canadian-Israeli media personality Shai DeLuca was critically wounded in 1996 during his service in the Israel Defence Forces, the instructions from his peers were as blunt as they were unhelpful: be a man, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48398,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[24632,24631,3225,4330,22499,7581,23089,5412],"class_list":["post-48396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-danny-stirin","tag-equine-therapy","tag-health-care","tag-israel","tag-ptsd","tag-rehovot","tag-shai-deluca","tag-war"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}