Hello everyone and welcome back to People Juwan and O podcast.
I've got a really special conversation planned for you
today with Shy Klein. Shy is a Canadian Israeli
photographer and public speaker. In October 2023, Shy survived
the Nova Music festival that was attacked by Hamas in the South
of Israel, which was a defining moment that reshaped Shy's
artistic vision and personal mission.
Beginning the following day, he committed himself to advocacy
through education and first hand testimony, using his voice and
photo documentation from that day to confront anti-Semitism
and share realities of that experience.
Shai has spoken in over 250 cities in the US, including
universities, synagogues, and community organizations focusing
on awareness, empathy, and the human cost of violence.
He has also collaborated with ESSEC to curate the ESSEC Nova
collection as a way of supporting Israeli small
businesses owned by Nova survivors, while continuing to
advocate for Expanded PTSD, mental health care, and long
term structural support, emphasizing the need for a
sustained institutional responsibility beyond initial
awareness. It's always sensitive to chat
with survivors about their experience, and I'm so grateful
to Shy for giving us his unfiltered testimony.
There's a lot we don't know or don't realize about the on the
ground reality for Israelis. For starters, the aid system in
Israel wasn't ever designed to accommodate such a large volume
of survivors. As Shy alludes to in the
episode, there were people who had tickets to Nova and never
attended and could still qualify for benefits.
Unfortunately, there is fraud for those who survived in need
care. The bureaucracy of the Israeli
aid system makes it incredibly difficult to operate as a
survivor. You have to take meetings,
advocate for yourself, follow up.
For example, Shy was telling me about a system by which a
survivor qualifies for different levels of aid depending on their
level of disability. This conceptually makes sense.
Someone who is an amputee, for instance, needs different levels
of aid than someone who is physically fine and suffered
maybe only psychological damage. There's a certain point system
in Israel by which someone asking for aid provides the
status, quote UN quote, of disability.
That status has to be updated with the government over time to
continue to receive benefits. A survivor might have to find a
therapist who can validate their status, and then the survivor
would appear in court or in an office on a certain day to
confirm their status and standing with the government.
These appointments are not easy to book, so if a survivor is
traveling for speaking engagements, they would have to
ask for an extension on the appointment window to retain
their benefits. Can you just picture somebody
who has experienced severe PTSD having to navigate this
administrative burden alone? It like it's incomprehensible.
Additionally, Shy also discusses how difficult it has been for
survivors to find jobs, especially because a lot of jobs
might trigger their PTSD TSD symptoms.
Yes, it's been over 2 years since October 7th, but we can't
look away from the actual reality of the situation.
Please continue to engage and support our people.
This episode will give you a ton of perspective and remind you of
the incredible strength of our survivors.
Now let's hear from Shai. Shai, welcome to People You want
to Know podcast. Thanks so much for being here.
Nice to see you again. Again, it's just been such a
privilege to get to know you and, you know, feel kind of your
energy and get a glimpse into your world.
And I'm so grateful for the conversation.
Please tell us about yourself. What do you do and how did you
get there? So I am from Toronto.
I lived in a place called Etobicoke for about 13 years and
then when I was 13, give or take, my family moved to the
north of Ontario in a town called Ennisville.
You know, in Ennisville in Etobicoke, there's like known
Jewish population. Etobicoke, the Queens were in
Royal York where I grew up. It was like mostly like Polish
Orthodox, Ukrainian, Italian, Greek Orthodox neighborhood.
And Innisfil is mostly just like non Jews, you know, Christians,
Catholics and anybody else who might want to live up there.
And there's Jewish community, but only during the summer when
it's, you know, cottage season. You know, my family, my mom is
Israeli. My dad is a secular Canadian
Jew. And I was raised, you know,
knowing my family's Israeli, knowing I'm Jewish, knowing
about the holidays and like the basic stuff, knowing what
Shabbat is. You know, we did Hanukkah and
Passover. But, you know, the only Torah
portion I ever read was on bar mitzvah.
You know, I did fill in. I could count it on one hand.
It was almost 0 times at all. You know, I owned maybe 30 or 40
keepers. That's only because my grandma
keeps giving them to me every time I see her and I wear them
more now. So for me, my Jewish upbringing
was really not the norm for a lot of people.
You know, after October 7th, I was introduced to basically
everything for the first time. Didn't know what Hillel was,
Didn't know what Stand With Us was.
I mean, I don't understand what else was, but not exactly what
they do. Didn't know about SSI, didn't
know about all these student organizations, didn't know about
all these nonprofits like the UJA.
So it was. All you know, like.
A huge amount of information to absorb post October 7th.
Because for me, not having that Jewish community in Canada and
moving to Israel was like, well, that's all I need.
I'm here in Israel. What more could I want?
You know, it's, it's like everyone around me is a Jew.
Not everyone. But it was really like, I don't
know, I hate to say the term like going back home, you know,
and I feel much more at home in Israel than I do in Canada.
And not to diss Canada, it's just I don't get along as well
with Westerners as I do with. People from Israel.
I was going to ask you what made you, what brought you to make
aliyah? So my mom's family is from there
on my cousins on her side, grandparents, etc.
I'm much closer with her side of the family, my dad's side of the
family and my grandparents are still alive on my mom's side,
not my dad's side. And they live in Israel.
They live in Natanya, which is a very, very nice city on the
beach. And so that's the reason, you
know, to be closer to my grandparents who are in their
late 80s, to be closer to my cousin, who now has a baby girl
and closer to like majority of my family.
You know, everyone in Canada is my mom, my brother, my dad, and
that's it. And that's, you know, a lot
easier to manage at a distance than the other half.
You had made aliyah just like a mere maybe weeks before.
You attended the Nova Music Festival on October 7th with
your family and friends. You were just settling in and
immigrating to another country. Can you take us back to that
time in your life and how everything played out?
Yeah, I came to Israel on vacation.
It wasn't like I didn't plan to move.
I didn't have some sort of Zionistic urge that said go back
to your homeland. It was just I have a Canadian
passport, I have an Israeli passport, so those are my
options of where I can live. So I chose Israel.
I figured I'm 26, I'm going to go on vacation and spend a month
in Israel and that'll be my birthday gift to myself, see my
family, see my grandparents and have a good time because I've
never been to Israel as an adult, only like 15 years old,
14 years old, not the same trip when you're over the age of 18.
So I go there and I go to my first party, I go to my first
rave, I go to my first nature party out in the woods.
You know, my cousin convinces me to do acid for the first time,
doing all these things for the first time that are totally
opposite to who I am. When I was living in Canada and
you know, at the end of my one month vacation I decided you
know, why not? You know, I brought with me
everything I cared about, which is mostly my camera year and
that was it. You know, clothes you can buy
more of. Anything else I don't really
have ties to? So I figured I'm just going to
stay. I froze my return ticket back
home, which means you can use it in a year if you pay a fee.
And I just stayed. And I slept on my cousin's sofa
for like 4 months. 4 1/2, five months and I was just, you know,
looking for work, trying to get an apartment, trying to set
roots. Just made Alia in June 2023.
So just a couple months after I arrived and it was amazing.
And then in September, my cousin's neighbor, who is one of
the producers of the Nova, he comes over and one floor above
us, he comes over and he says, guys come to this music
festival, it's going to be amazing.
And I'm like, no, maybe I don't want to go.
Maybe I do want to go. It's music festival.
It's going to be allowed. There's been a lot of people,
you know, I've got like, anxiety issues.
So I'm like, on the fence. But my cousin says yes right
away. His girlfriend says yes right
away. And a bunch of our friends
slowly, slowly say yes, say no. We're a group of eight people
total. And maybe like 2 1/2 weeks
before I decide, OK, I'm going to get a ticket, I'll go.
And now I'm part of this group as well.
And this is my first time going to a music festival in Israel in
a country I just moved to. Well, I don't speak the
language. You know, I started the old pond
like a week before. So my Hebrew was not good.
You know, I like to say my favorite thing in Hebrews to say
is, you know, Anilo Metaber, beef wreaths, liha anika Nadi.
It's just like. You know I live in Tel.
Aviv for a reason. And I know I have to find Hebrew
and I'm going to, but, you know, under normal circumstance, it's
hard to focus and learn them. And so, you know, I'm just
taking my time with it and focusing on different things
right now. After we were invited and we put
together our little cohort of people who are going to go to
the festival, it was a friend's birthday party.
And my cousin and myself, we all coordinated rides.
You know, two friends are already there.
They got a camp spot picked out for us.
The festival starts at midnight. And so me and my cousin and some
friends. So I'm going with one car, my
cousin and another car, and then the third vehicles are there.
We're driving down that night from Tel Aviv.
It's like an hour drive from my friend Scheer's birthday party,
which is the 7th of October, unfortunately.
And on the drive down with my friend Dor, my friend.
Now, I didn't know him before. He's the first time I met him
and he doesn't speak any English at all.
And I don't speak any Hebrew really.
So he just communicated by playing music that we liked in
the car and being like, yeah, tov Yolfi, that's a gift.
And it was really fun drive and we get there and we pull up the
dirt path to the parking lot. And the first thing that I
noticed, besides the music, besides the lights, besides the
immense amount of people, there's like 3000 people there.
Something who knows is that there's just a huge line up.
But usually you see the line and you're like, you're dreaded at
the sight of it. But you know, you're gonna get
in the festival, we're all gonna get in the same place.
We're all gonna dance to the same music in the same party.
So I'm not in a rush because it's going until 4:30 in the
afternoon the next day. So we have so much time and I'm
seeing people on the line. They're having a good time in
the line, which is not something I feel like you'd see in other
places. And so we get in the festival,
we get our wristbands from the security, we check our bags.
Now we see guys with guns, they have handguns, they have rifles.
But it's like festival security, not a top secret IDF base here.
And so we get in the festival and you can see in the camping
area, the overnight area, everybody is having a good time.
You look around, I swear to God, of the thousands of people
there, the only people who were not enjoying themselves had not
arrived yet or were taking a nap because they're sober, you know?
And it was a really crazy variety of people.
You know, the oldest. Person there was 70.
Five years old, like your grandparents age.
And there's people who are lawyers and doctors and nurses
and teachers and, you know, people who started their own
high tech companies and, you know, it's like no one
demographic. And it was really interesting to
see. And it was really amazing
because everybody is, you know, inviting you over to smoke with
them or drink with them or offer you to sit down and some food.
And you know, who are you? Where are you from?
And you know, everybody's like really wants to be your friend.
And it was probably like one of the most amazing parties I had
experienced living in Israel and me.
We get to the we get to the campground that our friends had,
you know, locked down for us. And we all get settled in.
We get our bags unpacked. And then we make our way into
the main festival ground where it's like, you know, we're
presented with everything that's like, wow, Oh my God, you know,
it's like. Wow, my first music.
Festival this is so crazy because when I picture in my
head is like North American style music festivals like EDC
or Coachella, I just pictured like 8000 people crowded against
one single stage and like 2 dirty toilets with no toilet
paper and hot dogs or something that costs like 50 bucks each.
And you know, just that's it's totally opposite of what I had
as a mental image in my mind. And you know, all throughout the
night, I'm either I'm dancing with my friends or I'm like
taking a break and I got my camera and I'm walking around
and I'm using that as an excuse to make new friends and take
pictures and just document my first music festival.
I'm not working for the Nova or anything.
It was a great way to make friends, right?
Yeah. You could take portraits of
people and chat with them. Yeah, well, I chose to use a
film camera on purpose because it's like, OK, I got your photo,
but now I want to talk to you like in an outside party
environment and maybe hang out and get to know you better.
So sorry I can't give you the photo tonight.
You got to wait, you know, like a week and a half, two weeks
till I develop the film and scan it and then I'll send it to you.
So it's like a positive form of manipulation.
I don't know how to describe it, but it's like a secret tool to
make friends, you know, I feel. And it's only ever worked out
and, you know, because of it, I have some really amazing friends
that I wouldn't otherwise have. And you know, on the on the
night and the day off, you know, from at 2:00 AM when we arrived.
At the festival. Until we got back home to Tel
Aviv at 9:47 in the morning. The entire time in between, I'm
walking around and taking photos no matter what's happening.
The only time I'm not taking photos is if it's an impediment
to my safety, you know? So halfway through the night, a
little bit more than halfway, actually.
Like around 5. AMI, get a friend a text, my
friend Ellie, and she says shy. Everybody went back to take
acid. You know, we're a group of eight
people and of our group of eight, everybody took MDMA at
like 2:00 in the morning. We arrived and five of our group
of eight took acid at like 5530 in the morning just before the
attack began. And so it's me and my friend
Eleanor and my friend Dor who did not take acid.
And Eleanor doesn't drive. So now it's just me and my
friend Dor who are in a place where it's like I'm confident
and I feel like I can drive us home safely.
And so again, this is before anything happens.
And so she texts me, Everyone want to take take acid.
I'm at the mainstage waiting for you.
We'll head back together, you know, come find me.
We'll head back together. And I go to the mainstage and
it's to the mainstage. It's as busy as you can imagine.
Anybody who wants to have a good time, they're here.
And you know, I'm not like some 7 foot tall basketball player
who can just look above everyone and spot my friend.
And she's also not huge, so it's hard to find one person in this
crowd. But eventually I find her.
But it's only because the music, it's stopped now.
And the producer came over the speaker and says, you know, so
have a Dome code red, the party's over, there's rockets.
And then the security started ushering people towards the camp
area, towards the parking lot, just doing their best to make
sure people knew the party was over.
And so the Rockets started before 630, like the seconds
before. But 630 is when everyone noticed
the music stopped. And so I find my friend Eleanor.
We head back to our friends and it's like total chaos.
You have people who left right away, people who were like left
the second the Rockets began and got home safe.
And you have people who left just a minute or minutes after
them and didn't make it home at all.
And the main way people were going, not everyone but majority
of people was north on Road 232, which unfortunately there was
Hazmataz terrorists. And people encountered these
terrorists. Many of them did not survive,
but somebody who first went down that road and encountered them
turned around and warned the security and warned the police.
And so from like, I don't know, 7:00-ish, 7/30, I don't know.
But at some point the police blocked the road to the north
where we wanted to go. So we get to the parking lot
from the main festival ground. We're done packing up our stuff.
We're next to the car, loading it up.
We decided who's going to drive. You know, we came in three
vehicles, but we don't care. We're going to leave in 2.
We're going to just abandon one and we'll come back and return
it when everyone's sober. So it's me and my cousin
Mordecai and his girlfriend of eight years.
And my friend Ellie and my friend.
Yeah, Al in one vehicle, and then my friends Barack, Doraz
and Almog in another vehicle. And so we're loading up, getting
ready to go and like exactly between 7:45 in 8:00 AM, like in
that 1520 minute window, Hamas shut up and we were in the
parking lot. So we didn't see them.
But you know, it's the machine guns, it's explosions.
You don't need a line of sight to hear these things.
And so we all look at each other like what's going on?
Oh my God, holy crap. And you hear words in Hebrew,
which I don't know, these are new words to me.
This is Pigua Mehabel Mehablim, which is like terrorist terror
attack, you know, danger words that you don't want to be
hearing. And when we climb in the car,
noticing like, OK, something bad is going on.
And I'm driving at this point, so I'm not focused on my camera.
My camera's in my lap, hands are both on the wheel.
And we're like in this toy car. We're in like a Mitsubishi
Lancer. For anybody who knows cars, it's
a Honda Civic. It's a 4 door, 5 seater car,
teeny tiny. And I drive out of the parking
lot as fast as I can, slamming my brakes, honking my whore and
trying not to kill people because people are running
across the road. And from the parking lot to the
main road, there's like a little hill you have to drive down.
And anybody who's been there will know about this road.
For us, it was unpaved, unraveled, just dirt.
There was no parking lot that it's there now.
None of the construction that exists there now was there for
us. We had no shelters.
We had the trees, we had the cars, we had the stage, and we
had the dirt under our feet and that was it.
And so I see this traffic jam. If anybody has been to a concert
and they leave the concert, this is what it was like for us,
except now there's terrorists with Kalashnikovs and flip flops
and combat vests and hand grenades chasing us.
And so I just look at this traffic jam and I think, screw
this. I'm not waiting for anybody.
And I drive around it, around everybody, and I push my way
into the very front, the main road.
And then, OK, I look to the left and there's police.
I can't go left. And the police are directing
people to the right, which is South parallel to Gaza towards
Egypt. And I'm like, well, this is not
the way of Tel Aviv. I don't want to go here.
I didn't know there was terrorists that way killing
people. I just knew that I didn't want
to go and sit in more traffic because we just dealt with this
and there was machine gunfire. And I'm like freaking out
internally, you know, my, I didn't have any sort of.
Sample watch. But I'm sure would have said 270
beats per minute for my heart. It was really, you know, the
fight or flight. And so I drive into a field, you
know, I'm thinking, OK, in Canada, fields means, you know,
house, barn, shed, you know, road for farm equipment,
something, whatever. I just hope that Israel was
advanced enough to have come up with this sort of logistical
system for their farmland. And so I drive us into this
field and we maybe make it like 30 feet, 40 feet, like no
distance at all. And then somewhere from behind
us, terrorists were shooting at us like everybody in this field.
So there's hundreds of people in this field in car or on foot,
and terrorists in the main road with a line of sight to us and
just opening fire arbitrarily. And my cousin's girlfriend
screams like bloody murder to get out of the car and to run.
And for a second I questioned him like why run?
And then she's just like. Screaming get out, get out, gun.
I'm like, I'm like panicking. I can't decide what to do or
what not to do. So I'm like, OK, screw it.
I run. And then we're all ducking in
this field, holding on to each other, just making yourselves a
small target, not moving. And then my cousin, an acid,
comes back to the car, stops running, gets in the driver's
seat, comes back to us, says yell again.
And I say, great, you brought us the car.
Let me drive because I'm not an acid.
He's like, no, fuck you, I'm driving, I get in the passenger
seat, I don't care, I just want to go home.
And now there's nothing left for me to do except open up my
phone, pull up Waze, try and find the nearest Rd.
I have his phone in my left hand taking video, and I have my
camera in my right hand taking photos because now I'm in the
passenger of a car. What am I going to do?
Taking photos isn't going to put me in more or less danger, you
know? So that's what we're doing.
And we're driving through fields for like 45 minutes.
You know, the drive we made was from the Nova site towards
Netivolt. And then we made it to Main
Roads and made it towards Tel Aviv.
But driving from the Nova site to Netivolt took us almost an
hour. You know, in real life, when
you're not being chased by terrorists and you can drive on
roads, it takes you like 20 minutes Max.
And so only once we got to Netivolt did my cousin and I
start seeing like, serious shit because, you know, before we're
in the front seat focused on driving, focused on, you know,
what's in front of us and, and what's next and what our
objective is and how to navigate.
And the girls in the back seat who are not responsible for
driving are way more free to look around and see all the shit
around us. And so they saw a lot more than
we did up until Nettie vote. And now we're seeing zero
soldiers, no soldiers the whole time, only heavily armored
police reporters, you know, Magan Davida Dome people going
to help and other civilian cars. And we're starting to see cars
that are abandoned, crashed, facing the wrong way, facing the
right way, riddled with bullets, you know, broken glass, blood on
the ground, you know, all the belongings from inside the car,
outside the car, people hanging out of the car that are dead,
you know, body parts here and there.
And it's like the end of a Quentin Tarantino movie.
It's like, you know, Death Race, It's the most insane thing ever.
And we're driving down this road and the only time we stop is for
checkpoints by the police, you know, no soldiers again, just
police. And, you know, all these
checkpoints, we're thinking, we're thinking like, OK, do we
stop for these guys or do we hit them with the car and kill them?
Because we don't know if they're actually terrorists or not.
Because we know they stole uniforms.
You're like questioning everything.
We question everything because we don't know what's real and,
you know, not danger to us because we don't know where the
danger is. We don't know how far it is.
Like we've been driving for 45 minutes and now we're seeing
dead bodies on the floor. We saw so many dead bodies.
I learned that you can tell how somebody, if they died in motion
or standing still based on the way the body has fallen.
So you'll see one 2-3 people all facing the same direction as if
they were running in the same way, shot in the back or
something like that. And it was really scary.
And we're at this stretch of Rd. between the Devote and Steroid
34, and we see boom, boom, boom, cars, bodies, bodies, bodies,
cars. And then there's no one in the
road alive. It's just us and these bodies.
And we see a silver car way down the road and next to it is these
two guys and they're wearing black jeans and cargo pants and
black T-shirts and black masks over their face and they're
holding machine guns. And we slid up because we think
it's a checkpoint. We hit checkpoint that all the
checkpoints have like between two and like 15 police officers.
That was like the least we ever saw was like 2 guys.
So we thought maybe it's a checkpoint.
And we're like this far from their vehicle.
They're standing next to a car and we're still in our car and
we're this close to them with our vehicle.
I can see the eyes through the mask of one of them.
The other guy, his back is to us so we can't see his face.
And his arms from the tips of his fingers are red with blood.
And the car next to them, all the glass broken bullet holes in
the door. And a young man and a woman in
the front seat who'd been killed.
And these two guys just standing there menacingly.
And one of them who does see us, his gun is lower and he draws
his gun and points it at us. And we're screaming at my
cousin, don't slow down anymore, keep going, like losing our
minds. And we drive by and he doesn't
shoot us and he doesn't yell at us and he doesn't throw a
grenade and he doesn't curse at us in Arabic.
He doesn't call for his buddies to do an ambush or anything like
that. And we don't know what the hell
we just experienced. There's no.
Reason. We have no processing power.
We're just like now. We're in the home, Tel Aviv, 947
in the morning, alive, all five of us in the car.
Don't know where our friends are, don't know what's going on,
don't know if the rest of the country's going to get attacked.
No idea. Anything.
And for 10 hours, over 7 1/2 hours, we learned nothing about
our friends. Our other three friends, my
friends Barack Almagondoras, they hid in a Bush for over 6
1/2 / 7 hours listening to the sounds of murder and terror
around them while terrorists did their thing in a field just
outside the Nova. But they survived.
We heard from one of the cousins or brothers of Dora that they
survived, and they're like, OK, thank God.
So all eight of us who went survived.
Amazing. And the next thing was like, OK.
So. What about all the people I just
met? You know, what are all these
people? Are they all alive?
Are they all dead? What's going on with them?
Because I didn't want to have to, you know, post on Facebook
and be like, hey, so if your friend or your kids dead, let me
know and I'll send you this last picture.
I'm smiling. And so I took from October 2023
until the end of December to find out what happened to
everyone. And of the 54 people whose
photos I did take on October 7th?
52 of them survived so. I got to see them again.
I got to hug them. I got to talk with them with,
you know, we hung out. You know, some of them are very
close friends of me now. And the two who did not make it,
Dora Avitan, who was 26 from a lot and Ran Shaffer who was from
Kibitz Berry, you know, I printed their photos, I framed
them. I had them scanned because it
was film. I had them scanned at a super,
super high resolution and give everything to their families.
Once I found them and I told them like, you know, if you need
new copies, I can get it printed for free.
I'll send you as many as you want, whatever.
And I've been in touch with their families and with
permission anytime I visit a community in Canada or the US or
a school and I talk about my experience, which is something I
do a lot. Post October 7th, I mentioned
Dora and R.E.M., again with permission from the families as
a way to sort of talk about what their experience like who they
were and what happened to them. And you know, I've been doing
this since November 5th, 2023, so just a month later.
And for that first year, from November 5th, 2023 until like
the end of 2024, it was just like a total blur for me.
I was just so motivated to help out in some way, to advocate and
speak about what we experienced in a non biased manner.
You know, I'm not telling people in schools to hate Palestinians.
I'm not telling people to love anyone specific.
I'm not telling people to love the Israeli government or this
politician or that politician or to hate this person or to hate.
I'm just talking about my experience as a matter of fact
and my perspective on things. You know, I tell students, you
know, I'm not going to answer political questions.
If you want to talk politics, we can talk privately one-on-one
after. But that's not what I'm here to
do. And I was super clear about
that. I'm my Instagram, I'll post
political shit because it's my Instagram and I can do what I
want there. But I don't do this in schools
and I don't do this in front of an audience.
And so for me, I just wanted to get to as many places as I could
and share this thing. And it was just like way too
intense. And a lot of people did the
same. I saw hostages who were released
do the same thing for the first period of time, super intense
and like, you know, get to a point of near burnout and other
Nova survivors. And you know, I'm not the only
person who did it, but I did it really early and I got to see
other people do the same thing. And so when I saw friends who
were willing to speak about experience, I told them like,
these are the mistakes I made. Just so you know, because it's
like really hard mentally, you know, you go on this speaking
tour. That's not like when some
influencer will go on a speaking tour and talk about who knows
what. I have no idea.
Like this is communities or schools will ask a Nova survivor
or. Raised hostage, they come talk
about your. Experience and this is asking
them, asking us to come and like RIP out a piece of ourselves for
an audience. And it's incredibly difficult to
do, even if you know. You see people.
Doing it a lot, it doesn't mean it's less difficult and the time
in which you start doing it from the Nova like distance from has
an effect on that. So because I started doing it
really early. And it was just like a form of.
Avoidance, I suppose. I was receiving therapy.
I was receiving therapy very early.
I haven't stopped receiving therapy unless it's for like
scheduling reasons, you know, bad timing.
My therapist, but I haven't stopped and I've received like
lots of different treatments, psychedelic assisted therapy,
which has been amazing, like the best I've ever done.
But even with therapy, going to maybe like 200 communities in a
six month period is very intense.
And you know, sometimes I would speak two or three times a day.
That's not including virtual interviews or phone interviews.
That's just in person speaking engagements.
And so mentally I wasn't there, you know, I was just like, I
don't remember the conversations I had.
I don't remember. Most of the people I met.
I don't remember some of the people who were very kind and
hosted me in their homes. Not because I don't care about
them, just because I was just so I don't know how to describe it.
And so after the first year, I noticed this and I took a very
long break, like 6 months, almost a year, but still doing
stuff in Israel. I would still speak, but I would
take people. I'd go to the South of people
maybe once or twice a month, not every single day, multiple times
a day. But you know, it was very hard.
You know, people forget that after October 7th, OK, UK war
with Iran, one war with Iran, 2, fighting with Hezbollah,
fighting with the Houthis, fighting with who knows what
other terrorists, you know, PIJ, Muslim Brotherhood, what all
this stuff that we have to think about, Not even talking about
what Jews and Da Aspah have to deal with.
I'm talking just Nova survivors of people who survived.
They have to deal with all of those things, whatever issues
they had in life prior to October 7th, which they probably
still have to deal with after. Now they might also have to deal
with finding a new job because they can't go back to their old
job. And it's just like everything
is, is, you know, it's really compounding and it's really, you
know, it's not talked about a lot.
And you know, there was a point where I was doing really bad.
You know, it was right after my first speaking tour super early.
So like N2025N December, like end of December 2025, I mean
maybe January. And I was doing horrible.
I was going to a party twice a week like every.
Weekend, two different parties from one to the other.
I would stay up all night. You know, I'd come back home
from these parties at like 7:00 AM.
You know, I was doing ecstasy and MDMA as like a form of
avoidance. I don't now because they're
terrible for you, but I was doing it, you know, multiple
times a month and it's not healthy.
It's terrible. It kills your serotonin.
And it was, you know, as a form of avoidance.
Again, I was still seeing therapy, but I was like, not
taking it as seriously. I was feeling really bad about
myself. I was like, you know, having a
hard time financially. And many other people are.
And, you know, it was very overwhelming.
And then I'm like, OK, give myself a reality.
Check. I'm like, OK, I got to.
Stop this. So I stopped going to parties as
much and stopped with all the drugs and the substances and
like, just focused on a bit more of normal stuff and a bit more
boring things, you know, more of my photography, more time in the
beach, less time in parties, that sort of thing.
And then I noticed, you know, as time went on, I need to do
something to help because there's like all these people
helping and all this money being thrown around, and the only help
that's really provided to Nova survivors is like superficial
nonsense. I want you to talk about the
reality for these survivors on the ground in Israel and the
lack of support they received today and how we in the diaspora
can support. Because I understand that aside
from the fact that hundreds of people, thousands of people have
been displaced. But in the survivor community,
even there are people living off of, you know, government aid,
and that's not enough. It's very different from the
people who are in the kibbutz. There's no survivors all over
the world, in Georgia, in Europe, in Los Angeles, in New
York and all over. It's not just in Israel
specifically, because it wasn't just a party for Israel.
The people who are not Israeli with Israeli citizenship, I have
no idea what they get. I don't think they get anything
from the Israeli government. Maybe that's changed.
Maybe there's a lawsuit that's changed things.
But the last time I heard, which was like a year ago, they get
like squat from the Israeli government.
It's just because they don't have Israeli citizenship.
They're not in the system. They don't live in Israel.
So it's like, how do you find that balance?
You know, it's like, it's very complicated situation.
But speaking for no survivors in Israel, again, they all don't.
Live in the same place. Not everybody has the same
trauma, you know. Even 5 people in the same group
of friends in the same car have varying levels of PTSD and
mental issues and a varying degree of strength in which they
can handle these issues. And again, everyone else has
their own issues on top of everything.
Whatever you dealt with prior to Nova didn't simply go away
because October 7th happened. So if you were in between
apartments before October 7th happened, well, you're still in
between apartments and now you have PTSD, you know, So a lot of
the resources that exist for Nova survivors are a little
superficial. Here's a field trip in the
Jeeps, you know, here's a surfing class.
Here's a party with some piece pizza and pasta and you know.
Band-Aid solutions. You know there are 4000 tickets
that were sold. To the Nova.
I think the number of dead is at like. 412 Which?
Includes suicides. Like it's updated.
Everybody who goes to these parties, movies, music
festivals, whatever. Not everybody shows up at the
same time. Not everyone leaves at the same
time. Some people just don't go.
I have friends. Who have tickets?
Who are in their name. They have AQR code and
everything associated with their ID number.
They never went. So there's also tickets out
there floating around that are in the hands of people who
weren't physically there and might also say they were there.
And there's no way to really tell these.
Things there's no really to tell these things because any most of
the supports that are available to Nova survivors.
The only proof they ask of us is were you there?
Do you have a ticket? Thankfully I have like so many
photos of myself there and. From.
People there, so I don't have. Issues proving me or my friends
were there. But I know Photoshop, I know how
to use AII can make a fake ticket I.
Didn't even think that that was possible.
And again and again. If you are in Israel, you're
Nova survivor. Unless you live in like the
middle of the country, you don't have as much.
Access to the resources that are available.
Like there's people from a lot. Way in the South near Egypt, and
there's people from the Golan, way in the north near Lebanon,
and there's people who live near Judea and Samaria, you know,
near the West Bank. And there's people who live in
who knows what other remote communities.
Like I have a friend. Who survived the Nova?
He was shot in the head. He survived.
He was in his Jeep escaping with my other friend Dora, who's one
of the first people I photographed.
And they're escaping and they're driving off road being chased by
Hamas terrorists on motorbikes. And one of them gets a bullet
off into their vehicle, hits him in the head, like superficial
wound in the back of the head, but it he got hit and he's
bleeding all over the car. He survives.
Then fights in Gaza who knows how many hundreds of days.
So served in Millim post Nova post being shot in the head by
Hamas terrorists, post his friend being kidnapped and
murdered by Hamas, a post losing who knows how many friends in
the Nova. But because he lives in the
South and doesn't have a car or a way to get to the center
reliably, well, he doesn't get much help with anything from
anyone because he can't access these resources.
And he's not the only one. He's lucky that he has his arms
and legs fully functioning, You know, he's lucky that he wasn't
hurt more. You know, there's people who
can't leave the house. Because they're just
psychologically it's. Too much, you know, I, I know
someone who they don't leave their neighborhood in
Florentine. She's like, yeah, this four
block area. I don't feel safe if I leave
this area and I can't. And it's hard.
You know, there's if you, my friend was shot in the head.
He was like a massage therapist. His job is to make people feel
good. And I was his primary source of
income. And now he doesn't feel good or
at a level in which he's, you know, and so he can't go back to
his previous job because how are you supposed to make others feel
good about themselves when you have?
All this bad. Energy in your body and you're
not doing well yourself. You know it doesn't work and
there's no resources to help people shift into a career that
has PTSD symptoms in mind. They'll say, OK, well here we'll
help you here's a career fair and then you look at like the
jobs available in the career fair.
It's like working in a hotel, working in a in a restaurant.
You know, these are like, not jobs that are appropriate for
somebody who might have anxiety. Chaotic environment.
Being in a really intense environment, yeah.
You know, I know a lot of people who stop going to parties
entirely. You know, I don't go to parties
anymore. Like, has to be really specific,
like a wedding or a birthday party or something where it's
like, I can't avoid going. And even then I tell people
like, OK, I'm going to come, but, you know, probably going to
step out half an hour hour into it and just, you know, take an
hour to breathe outside. And that's OK.
But there is like a spectrum of. How people are.
Where do you think the diaspora community can donate or support
so that survivors have the resources they need?
My number one suggestion. Everywhere I go for like the
last two plus years is safe Heart SAFEHEART safe.
Heart, I don't work for them. They don't work.
They are amazing. They had a therapist for me
before I was recognized by the government as a victim of
terror. They don't hire therapists.
They're not a mental health company.
They connect Nova survivors with the right therapist for them.
And if you receive a therapist through Safe Heart, you also get
access to the psychiatrist for free.
So you don't have to pay 700 or 1000 shekels out of pocket for
psychiatry. And so Safe Heart Alone provides
over 1000 Nova survivors with mental health care, which is
insane. And I noticed that nobody
outside of Israel knows they exist.
So safe heart. Is my number one suggestion for
people who want to, you know, put their money towards a non
profit that will actually help Nova survivors in a meaningful
way. The other is Selah, Selah.
They help more with things like, you know, if you can't pay for
groceries, can't cover your rent, you know, having trouble
supporting your means, they'll find you maybe an occupational
therapist, really meaningful support.
And then also it's not a non. Profit.
They're a for profit company, but ESIC which is.
A company in which I met the founder in December 2025 and I
learned that all ESIC does is if you're a small business in
Israel and you are struggling and you are having an issue
getting your product into homes and getting people to buy your
product, ESIC will work with you to get your goods outside of the
country. And so I met Andrew, who's the
founder, and I'm like, let's help Nova survivors.
Let's help them financially doing something they love as a
way to sort of build a routine which helps their mental health
and also have a little bit of financial stability doing
something they care about. And so he and I, we curated a
collection of art by, I think it's 10 Nova survivors right
now. Each one has like 2 to three
pieces which are in the collection.
It's, you know, mezuzahs, it's handbags, it's, you know, photo
prints, art prints, graphic design, oil painting, flower
art, really crazy, amazing art and everything goes to them.
So ESIC will buy from bulk. They make the sales upfront and
the sales that ESIC makes after goes to cover the cost of
operation, but also purchasing more art from these artists at a
later time. And so this is a way that they
will have a reliable income doing art, doing something that
they're really passionate about. And it's a way for people that I
ask for who maybe don't know where to donate or don't want to
donate to also get something back.
You know, it's because many people don't want to receive a
handout. And this isn't a handout.
This is, you know, well you said something yesterday which is
really which I liked. It was.
It preserves dignity for the P of the survivors who.
Are. Sharing their craft with you
rather than feeling. And you see them as people, you
know, you see the the human behind the the Nova survivor.
Because when people refer to us, they're like, oh, this is shy.
He's a Nova survivor who is from Canada.
I'm like, no, I'm shy, who's a photographer from Canada who
also survived the Nova. That's how I tell people to
introduce me. So Esik is an amazing company,
Safeheart, an amazing nonprofit, Sella Natal, the Trauma and
Resilience Center. Amazing, amazing.
And yeah, like Safe Art has helped me with this project that
I'm working on, which I want to mention in passing.
It's the opposite of what people might have seen in the Nova
exhibition. So in the Nova exhibition, you
have at the very end, 400 plus images of people who died as a
way to remember them and and tell their stories.
And I looked at that and I thought, this is amazing, but we
should also talk about the looming.
And so I am using my abilities as a photographer to do this
thing, which I called Beyond the Supernova because beyond meaning
after, because I want to talk about more than just October 7th
with this. And I have the goal of
photographing as many Nova survivors as possible who want
to participate. Not everyone wants to and that's
OK. But even if I get 100 or 200 or
whatever, I'm happy. Right now I have about 32
portraits done. Safeheart help me with producing
these back in Israel before I I broke my leg.
And my goal is to have an exhibition in Canada, in the US,
in Israel and show these portraits of people who are
still alive, who are still out there, who are doing their best
post October 7th post surviving the Nova.
And sort of use that as a way of as a tool of humanization and to
sort of bring dialogue back to, you know, how can we help the
people who are still here, who are still have to deal with, you
know, living post October 7th? Because, you know, not everybody
was a hostage who is going to get support from the government
for life, You know, and there is as time goes on, more and more
people with PTSD and the system becomes more strained.
And so, you know, we need help from the outside, from the
diaspora. And it's a terrible situation to
be in, to have to, you know, ask the Jews in the diaspora to help
us out because we're not getting it back home from the
government. It's very frustrating.
What do you think has helped to heal just some parts?
I know that healing is an ongoing process, but what sticks
out to you is helpful. Therapy and a healthy social
life and a routine and financial stability when I have it, when
it comes and goes. But, you know, when I'm there,
it's nice. Helps me in focusing on things
that matter, like my mental health, like, you know, looking
for work and keeping busy. And when I'm missing one of
those things, I immediately become, you know, doing not as
good. And it's the same for, you know,
many other people, again, just to varying degrees based on
their personal situation. Yeah, their baseline.
Thank you so much for giving us a glimpse of your experience.
How can people connect with you and keep up with your work,
including your project? So for people who want to
contact me or reach out or ask me a question or have a
conversation or have me speak in their community or whatever, for
any reason, they can reach me on Instagram, which is just my
first and last name. Shy Klein or my website
whichisjustmyfirstandlastnameshykleinormyemailwhichisjustshyklein@yahoo.ca and they can just yeah, it's
Canada. I made it when I was like 12
years old. And on my website and my
Instagram, I have ways for people to reach me.
Now. I got my phone number, I got my
e-mail, and on my website you can click on Beyond the
Supernova, which is in the menu somewhere.
And it will take you to a page where you can see the photos
that I've done so far and read about it.
And there's a GoFundMe link which people can share if they
would like to, but it's not necessary to donate to.
And they can also just look at the photos I took on October 7th
and read my full testimony there because I have everything in
chronological order. So the first photo as the first
photo, the last photo is the last photo, and then like 53
minutes of. Is a shaky.
Video that I filmed on the day of so people can see October 7th
from my own perspective. That's amazing.
And I have one final question for you.
It's one that I ask every guest who would you?
Like to nominate for people that you wanna know?
I definitely think it should be Andrew Keane, and he can talk
about one of his million flights.
Who knows where in the world he can talk about ESIC.
He can talk about being the first person to hit 2 million
miles with Delta Airlines or something else crazy like that.
Amazing. Thank you for this wonderful
nomination. I would be delighted to speak to
Andrew. Such a worthy Co contestant.
He's great in the Z3 contest. It was really a privilege.
And you can talk. About the Z3 awards, yeah, for
sure. Yeah, it was brutal.
The voting process was brutal. The people listening in, they
know because they voted. Thank you so much for this and
truly cannot wait to see what's next for you.
You are so strong and incredible and this is a new era and it's
going to be amazing. Right now I'm, I'm going to
Israel in early May and I'm just going to take time to actually
be present in one country and I, you know, properly settle in
because, you know, since October 7th, I had just made Aliyah,
went into doing this thing, speaking all these communities.
And I, I did the math. I counted the days in my
calendar and my Google Maps, like how it tracks you between
June 15th, 2023 and today. And I have been outside of
Israel in just abroad for a near equal amount of time as I have
been present living in Israel. Which is crazy.
Yeah, good luck, Shai. Thank you.
This has been amazing. If you've enjoyed this podcast,
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