Clowns, with their prominent red noses, painted-on smiles, and funny costumes, are expected to make people laugh. But medical clowns – trained professional performers who use music, improvisation, puppetry, and physical comedy to bring physical and mental well-being and hope to patients – are just as likely to elicit tears. These tears, however, are of relief and consolation, especially when their audiences are adults and soldiers or civilians who have gone through hell.

Menahem Ben Halifa, a 23-year-old paratrooper, severely wounded in an arm and a lung on October 7 as he watched six of his fellow IDF soldiers killed on Kibbutz Kissufim, will be the first wounded soldier in the world to become a medical clown. 

Read more here.