Monday, May 19, 2025
Ron Segev was attending the Nova music festival in Israel with his friends on Oct. 7, 2023, when gunfire erupted. He and his brother fled for their lives, but when Segev looked back and saw the rest of his group caught in the violence, he found a vehicle, returned to the chaos, and rescued them.
Since then, Segev’s heroism has been recognized across Israel and the United States, but there was another lasting effect: trauma.
Segev’s experience with posttraumatic stress disorder and mental health will be the focus of his upcoming talk at the Merrick Jewish Center on May 14.
“We brought him in to speak last June,” Allison Sussman, executive vice president and acting president of the Merrick Jewish Center, said. “He shared his full testimony last June at the Merrick Jewish Center, we had about 250 people there to see him and hear him. Everyone was inspired by his story and by his heroism.”
Sussman is part of the center’s Israel Connection Committee, which supports initiatives for Israel and brings congregants to connect with Israel.
“It’s our duty, our obligation to support our brothers and sisters in Israel,” Sussman said. “We need to be loud, we need to advocate for them, and we also need to advocate for our safety and our freedom as Jews.”
Segev’s upcoming talk at the Jewish center will focus on his mental health journey, as well as the mental health of survivors of traumatic experiences.
“I had over 50 treatments with a psychologist and another at least 10 with psychiatrists,” Segev said. “There’s a huge crisis right now, in many ways. First, we don’t have enough therapists to take on all the survivors, both from the music festival but also from the south of the Gaza envelope.”
Over the past two years, the effects of war have put a large amount of stress on people, Segev said.
“Israel is a tiny country,” he said. “Everyone knows someone that got hurt, everyone is somehow related to this and, unfortunately, not everyone can get the same treatment.”
As an honorary member of the Merrick Jewish Center, Segev told the Herald he wants to take this opportunity to encourage people to take care of their mental health.
“I understand that everyone can suffer it, and it doesn’t have to be, you know, like you don’t need to be part of a terror attack to suffer trauma,” he said. “We can have problems in our life, and we can take care of them by going to therapy, by volunteering, by doing so many things — but if we are not open about, it will lead to other problems.”
Register to attend the event at MerrickJC.org.
