Begging To Do a Mitzvah

by Sara Yoheved Rigler, Mishpacha Magazine

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Rabbi Yaakov and Hadassah Weisel had no qualifications for founding Israel's largest anti-hunger organization, except for a burning desire to do mitzvot. From the early years of their marriage, Hadassah would go to the Western Wall almost every day and beg the Almighty to let her merit to do mitzvot. "I wanted to do good," recollects Hadassah, "but I had no idea how to build an organization. However, as it says, 'In the way that a person wants to go, in that way he is led'."

Twenty-six years ago, Rabbi Weisel, who had learned in Ponevezh and Hebron yeshivos, was a Talmudic lecturer (maggid shiur) in Yeshivas Mercaz HaTorah; Hadassah was a 34-year-old mother of three and a teacher in a school for orphans. One day, Hadassah heard that a neighbor in their Jerusalem neighborhood was sick. Alarmed that the woman was so weak that she couldn't even hold a cup, Hadassah took her to a doctor. After thoroughly examining her, the doctor reported that the woman wasn't sick at all; she just lacked "gasoline to keep the car running," or, in other words, food.

The Weisels couldn't believe that there was abject hunger in Israel in 1979. They started to go from door to door in their neighborhood asking for food for this and one other family. To their consternation, in many homes they approached, the people gave them not only food, but also names of other families who lacked basic foodstuffs.

The Weisels thus started Yad Eliezer, named for Hadassah's father, Eliezer Lipa, z"l, with the simple intention of delivering monthly food baskets to hungry families. Two-and-a-half years later, the Weisels were feeding 360 families from their one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment. A photo from those days shows the Weisels' three children sleeping on the baskets of food that filled their small apartment.

When the need became much greater than what the neighborhood children could collect by going from door to door, the Weisels started to raise money and to buy greatly discounted food directly from the factories. Both Weisels continued to work at their jobs, while spending every spare moment laboring for Yad Eliezer. Neither Yaakov nor Hadassah has ever drawn a salary from the organization to which they have devoted their lives.

Today Yad Eliezer comprises nine economic and social service programs that impact on the lives of 12,000 Jewish families in Israel.

How has Rabbi Weisel's involvement with Yad Eliezer changed his life? "All the meaning in my life changed because of Yad Eliezer. I began to understand what it means to be a needy person, and how much we can help him."

During the early years, when Yad Eliezer operated out of the Weisel's apartment, people knew that considerable tzedakah funds were kept there. One night, four thugs burst into the apartment and demanded that Rabbi Weisel turn over the tzedakah money. As they threatened him with knives, Rabbi Weisel thought to himself, "If I give them the money, families won't have food. They'll starve."

When he refused to hand over the money, the assailants stabbed and slashed him over 20 times. The next day, a friend went to visit the injured rabbi in the hospital. He found the irrepressible Rabbi Weisel sitting up in his hospital bed and talking on the phone. He was arranging food distributions to hungry families.