NORA

It was almost 2 pm when Nora, accompanied by a deafening dogs’ barking, got out to meet me.
She looked totally sleepy. "Oh, sorry, I completely forgot about our meeting!"
In a minute, she was already smoking a cigarette, holding a can of energy drink in another hand.

Nora Lifshits, a 36th year old Israeli, devotes herself to rescuing animals, specifically bats.
In 2015 she founded an association ATALEF - bats’ help and care.
The association is mostly financed by Nora, and supported by donations of volunteers, who, among other duties, deliver wounded bats from all over the country to Nora, and also take care of sick bats and baby bats.

Nora’s obsession with bats started with one accidentally rescued little bat, named Emily. Soon she shared her small apartment in Florentine, Tel - Aviv, with 70 bats. There was no one in the country who would be rescuing bats, so Nora decided to start a rescue service and moved to a place more appropriate for this purpose.

Currently Nora lives in a small cabin, in a small town not far from Jerusalem. She shares her place with 500 bats, and with many others rescued birds and animals.

Nora almost always walks barefoot, ignoring the risk to step in animals’ poop.
I couldn’t figure out when she was wearing shoes.
- I do it sometimes so I don't injure my feet.
- Aren’t you disgusted by walking in poop?
- But it’s not human!

"I have no hobbies. I don’t go to the movies or to concerts. I have to be available 24/7. I go to sleep at 5 in the morning, and at 6.00 somebody calls about bats they have found."

Several times a week Nora sees a veterinarian.

There are tattoos of different animals on her fingers, and the number of lines equals the number of animals she wasn’t able to rescue.

Nora is an adopted child. She grew up in a well-off family, in a three-story house in Jerusalem’s suburb. Her parents used household help. Her view on life changed when she got into the apartment of a family with little money and many children.

Since early years, Nora collected stray animals and brought them home. Her parents didn’t like it, and, after another scandal, 11 year old Nora ran away. After that she lived in a boarding school for troubled kids, until she was 18. She ran away from school a number of times, and was only getting back to avoid trouble with police.

"Imagine that a 13 year old attacks a man who is beating his dog, and starts hitting him with all her might! And - (Nora laughs) steals his dog!
I didn’t think I would be arrested for that, they could have just talked to me!
I was a normal child."

"I am not ashamed that I lived on the street, and I don’t hide the fact that I spent time in a juvenile colony. I’ve done a lot of stupid things, I take responsibility for it."

When she was 18, Nora went back to the street; she categorically refused to return home.
Once a stray dog got attached to Nora. She called her Cooper.

"I realized that I can’t drink, get wasted, and be brought to the police. Now I had someone to take care of!
I found a job.
Cooper saved me, and I saved her."
For Nora this dog became something she was deprived of for all these years.

I met Nora several years after the death of her dog.
Honestly, it looked like she was able to get over her loss, but Nora told me that she is constantly thinking of suicide, and that she is depressed all the time.

Once she said: “You see Nora, and you think if she is smiling, laughing, working - she is okay. Now imagine that the skin on all of my body is burning. That’s how I feel every day and every minute.”

Most of her tattoos Nora had after Cooper’s death, adding Cooper’s ashes to ink. There are paw prints, poems and songs for Cooper. The date of Cooper’s death is tattooed on Nora’s neck.

"I don’t have a man; whatever he says and promises, at the end of the day he will want to occupy first, or maybe second place in my life.But for me he will be number 100.000 - after all animals who need my help, after Holocaust survivors, after kids at risk and criminalized teenagers, after sex - trafficked girls and grown up prostitutes, etc…"

P.S.
From the start of war of 10/7/2023 in Israel Nora has been rescuing animals whose owners were killed, kidnapped, or evacuated from destroyed towns and settlements. She helps to reunite pets with their owners. Answering the question of the reporter - aren't you afraid under constant rocket fire? - Nora said: Army is saving people’s lives, and we are the army of saving animals.