Collecting Diamonds with Yad Eliezer
by Sara Yoheved Rigler, Mishpacha Magazine
Wednesday, December 28, 2005Eric Bost, the Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services at the Department of Agriculture in the United States, visited Israel recently in order to advise top Israeli officials on successful American strategies to combat hunger. According to an eyewitness, one top official looked Mr. Bost in the eye and told him: "There is no hunger in Israel."
No hunger in Israel? Ask Yossi Kaufman, director of Public Relations for Yad Eliezer. He was contacted by Shloime's new teacher, who noticed at lunchtime that Shloime wasn't eating. The teacher asked him why. "I ate lunch yesterday," Shloime replied. "Today is my sister's turn to eat lunch."
No hunger in Israel? Ask Rivka Weintraub.* She applied to Yad Eliezer's Second-Hand Furniture Distribution Program for a refrigerator. Her family's refrigerator had broken down three months before, at the beginning of the summer. The Yad Eliezer employee in charge remarked to Rivka that it must have been terrible to go through the stifling Israeli summer without the use of a refrigerator. "It wasn't so terrible," Rivka replied. "We had no food to put in it anyway."
No hunger in Israel? Ask Milcah Benziman, Yad Eliezer's social services coordinator. "I visited a home yesterday," Milcah relates, "where a leak in the roof caused terrible dampness. Slugs covered the walls. The nine-year-old boy's body itched all over from a rash caused by the dampness. The father, who is mentally ill, was walking around wearing blankets to stave off the cold. This family has five children and no food."
No hunger in Israel? Ask Motty Birenzweig, Yad Eliezer's administrator of agricultural surplus. A supermarket manager in a chareidi town contacted Yad Eliezer and told them about a seven-year-old boy who comes every morning and asks for one liter of milk and one loaf of bread. The family's debt had now reached 3,000 shekels ($700). "I asked the boy his address," the manager related, "and only his sad eyes answered me. Now I've got the address, and I think Yad Eliezer better go and check out what's going on there."
Motty and Milcah went the next Sunday, late in the afternoon. They had tried to phone ahead, but the phone line had been disconnected. When they knocked on the door, eight children, ranging in age from three to fifteen, let them in. "Where's your mother?" the Yad Eliezer staff members asked.
"She works in Jerusalem, cleaning houses," one of the children answered. "She should be home soon."
"Where's your father?" None of the children answered. Motty found out later that their father was in a mental hospital. The apartment was getting dark, so Milcah asked them to turn on a light. "We can't," one of the children replied. "They turned off the electricity." Another child added: "The downstairs neighbor had mercy on us, so they ran an extension cord from their apartment to ours for the refrigerator." In the dim illumination, Milcah could see that the children's faces were spotted with white blotches, a telltale sign of malnutrition.
Trying to sound upbeat, Milcah suggested, "Let's surprise your mother and prepare dinner." The oldest daughter gazed down on the floor in silence. The ten-year-old explained, "There's no food to make dinner with." Milcah walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door. It was completely empty except for a half can of corn.
At that point Milcah, who had seen so much in her years at Yad Eliezer, broke down and wept. Motty, holding back his own tears, fled from the apartment to cry on the stairwell.
No hunger in Israel? Ask Ram Lavi, a social worker in the Negev town of Dimona. In August, 2004, Mr. Lavi wrote to Yad Eliezer: I turn to you to ask if you may be able to assist the Municipality with donations of food items to needy families for the upcoming and rapidly approaching festival of Rosh HaShanah. Our department is dealing with so many families, that recently it has become increasingly difficult to purchase sufficient quantities of basic foodstuffs, such as rice, sugar, flour etc. Due to the drastic economic cutbacks of the National Insurance Institute and the general economic downturn, more and more families have become dependent on us, relying on us to provide the basic food staples they require for daily survival. The welfare department has a very small budget and we are unable to fulfill the requests of the many individuals in difficult financial situations who approach us for food.
No hunger in Israel? Ask Suri Rosenfeld.* She applied to Yad Eliezer for food because her husband was suffering from terminal cancer and the family had ten hungry children. When Milcah Benziman came to verify the need, she found the entire family living in one cramped room. A rickety table filled the center of the room, surrounded by an odd assortment of chairs. Mattresses were piled up against one wall, to be spread out for sleeping at night. Chana was holding her infant daughter. She asked Milcah to guess how old the baby was. "Three months?" Milcah ventured.
"She's nine months old," Chana corrected her. The baby started to cry.
"I'll hold her while you get her bottle," Milcah offered. Chana disappeared into the "kitchen," located on the balcony. Many long minutes later, she came back. Instead of a bottle, she was holding an empty can of formula. She began to cry and scream. "I'm a liar! I've been deceiving my own baby! Instead of giving her what she needs, I give her diluted formula. That's why she looks like she does!" Milcah could hardly hold back her tears.
"I promise you, in the name of Yad Eliezer," Milcah declared in a choked voice, "that your baby will know no more hunger." Chana's baby started receiving a regular monthly disbursement of six cans of formula the following month, the same month that her father died.
Poverty and hunger are the bleak reality for one out of every five Israeli adults and one out of every three Israeli children. And it's getting worse. Due to draconian cuts in government income supplements, child stipends, and grants to single mothers, 61,000 children joined the ranks of the impoverished last year. Nearly 19 percent of Jewish children in Israel go to bed with an empty stomach at least one night a week. Some thirteen-and-a-half percent of Jewish children in Israel suffer from malnutrition. This is a sure-fire recipe for long-term disaster, as malnutrition causes both physical and mental developmental problems. To our disgrace, Israel now leads all other Western countries in terms of child poverty.
"We are the wealthiest generation in Jewish history," declares Sori Tropper, director of American Friends of Yad Eliezer. "How can we not afford to feed our children?"
*All the names of Yad Eliezer beneficiaries have been changed.
