Israel's Medical Clowns Bring Serious Relief to Children Healing from Trauma

In the lobby of Tel Aviv's Dana-Dwek Children's Hospital, a pint-sized clown named Shorty blows and eats bubbles between wisecracks, drawing giggles from young patients waiting for care. Behind the baroque lace cravat and disco-themed baseball cap is Shira Friedlander, one of seven Dream Doctors clowns stationed at the hospital, part of Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. Her pin says it all: “Life is short and so am I.”

Over the past two and a half decades, Israel has become a global leader in medical clowning, home to two major organizations and the world's first full bachelor's degree program in the field, offered at Haifa University. The volunteer network Simchat Halev fields some 500 therapeutic clowns focused on morale and emotional relief, while Dream Doctors, founded in 2002, places roughly 100 salaried clowns in more than 30 hospitals. There they work as trained paraprofessionals alongside medical teams, even entering operating rooms, oncology wards, and transplant units.

In the three years since the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, this uniquely Israeli craft has taken on renewed purpose, helping wounded soldiers, evacuees, and traumatized families find moments of laughter amid grief. Atay Citron, who founded the Haifa University program, has written that nowhere else in the world did he find clowns to match the Israeli teams' “audacity and insane courage.” It is a portrait of a nation that, even in its hardest hours, keeps finding ways to bring healing and joy to its children. (TOI/VFI News)

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