Urgent Answers to Burning Questions
by M. Wyzanski, HaModia Newspaper
Sunday, November 29, 2009The official at the Yad Eliezer headquarters picks up the ringing phone, but the woman on the other end is so utterly hysterical that she is barely able to get her words out. What she does finally manage to verbalize in between heavy sobs could melt a stone heart.
“There is not a penny in our household. Our living conditions are unspeakable. My children go hungry. And worst of all, perhaps, I am not even able to nurse my starving little baby...”
Another phone call is equally as pressing, as it is grave. It tells of a Cancer-stricken mother so weak that she cannot even get herself home from the chemotherapy treatments. There is no money. The children cry. And she is terrified that the state social services will take her children away because of her inability to provide for them.
Yet a third call for help paints a chilling picture of extreme afflicting poverty. In today’s globally inspired weak economic climate, the kollel checks to this poor family have stopped coming for months. Eleven needy souls now confront an unprecedented desperate crisis. From where will the money for food, clothing the very basics of survival come?
In my mind’s eye I can visualize the floating images of suffering innocence: the faces of men, women, children and infants who bear the awful ramifications of poverty. I perceive the pain of their fearful challenge, the aches of their throbbing humiliation, the muffled cries of their very, very deep feelings of anguish and complete despair.
Cringing, I innately realize that here there is no room for apathy or indifference. After all, these are familiar faces. They belong to Am Yisroel a part of me my own suffering brothers and sisters.
And then I hear the burning questions of confusion by the misinformed.
Poverty? Why would poverty be so rampant in Israel, the global leader in high technology? Why don’t these unfortunates just get a job and better their own lot?
If only solutions could be so uncomplicated and simple! But they are not.
Here, in Israel, the complex nature of the economy evolves somewhat into the very framework of society. Israel has become a have / have-not culture, furthermore, the divisions between the secular and the chareidim are enormous, encompassing social, as well as blazing political issues. In the vast majority of cases, it is not that people do not want to work, but the blatant fact that there are colossal obstacles that block the path to securing a decent job with adequate pay. [Editor’s note: Yad Eliezer does not discriminate on the basis of religious affiliation. HaModia Newspaper, where this article was originally published, is a chareidi newspaper.]
In Israel, for example, it is not popular or common for a chiloni to hire a member of the chareidi community, regardless of the fact that he may have the qualifications to perform the job. Additionally, here, childcare eats up much of any earnings a mother might make. Here, many are just not cut out to be career people. And of great significance, is the twisting maze of social stigmas related to many avenues of the workforce where, of those jobs that are considered suitable, there are far too many others that already have filled their positions.
As Americans, we may not be able to comprehend or, for that matter, be able to agree with all of the ramifications that go into each and every one of the rationales behind the problems. Nevertheless, THIS IS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND CHILDREN JEWISH CHILDREN ARE GOING HUNGRY! We dare not turn the other way!
Miri has ten children. Once, she and her husband were able to make ends meet with the aid that they received from the state child allowance. On three thousand shekels a month, equivalent to $500 American, it was possible to feed the family. Four years ago, that child allowance was drastically slashed to a mere fraction. At the current 800 shekels a month for food that costs as much in the United States, the situation has deteriorated to a critical point...
Can we fathom what it is to have real hunger pangs?
So, granted, there are problems. Can’t job training be provided so that, at the very least, these people will have an edge in a difficult environment?
Despite the overwhelming odds, Yad Eliezer does go above and beyond. Its job-training program provides men and women with the necessary qualifications to meet today’s job market. Some participants even receive monetary stipends to accommodate their physical needs while learning skills. Unfortunately, though, entry jobs are few and far between and the vicious cycle of the Israeli economic set-up does little to ease the plight.
I understand that there are needy people. But does the money I give really go to the right address?
Yad Eliezer has an impeccable reputation. Started exclusively as a food program, it has grown into a remarkable organization that embraces a mosaic of interrelated functions for those that need it most.
The Facts About Yad Eliezer’s Food Programs
At its optimum period, Yad Eliezer was able to provide food for 12,000 needy families. All this was done with the generous support of its sponsors. Then the blustery winds of the current economic downturn took its devastating effects. The American dollar plummeted tremendously, concurrent with the global rise in food prices an abrupt increase of 30 to 40 percent. The repercussions were epic. Suddenly, Yad Eliezer was not able to handle the extent of their load.
“It is such a difficult situation,” bemoans a Yad Eliezer official with a deep sigh. “Mothers come to me, crying for help. What can I offer them if there is not enough money to go around? A smile, a good word...If only we had the funds necessary to help all those that come knocking at our door...”
With the sudden slump in the economy Yad Eliezer had no choice. Winnowing down their list to only those that absolutely need it the most, Yad Eliezer currently services between five and six thousand families within its various food programs.
In its Meals on Wheals program, hearty, nutritious, cooked meals are delivered to those, such as the elderly and infirm, that can benefit the most from it. Oftentimes, it is this interaction with the outside world the meal delivery accompanied by a caring smile and a warm, uplifting greeting that further serves as an indispensable lifeline to a lonely homebound recipient.
In yet another program of Yad Eliezer designed specifically for families, only basic uncooked food staples are delivered to the door. Much like the boxes anyone might receive from the local grocer, these unassuming lifesaving packages serve as a means to preserve the dignity and core family life. Ima uses the ingredients to cook her own satisfying meals to her family. Together, they sit around their private table as a unified family and eat a hot home cooked meal just as in any other household.
But of all of the food programs that Yad Eliezer involves itself with, perhaps it is the baby formula program that touches anyone who hears about it most. Beginning at the behest of a desperate mother, this program provides cans of baby formula to hundreds of families with hungry babies.
She came into the state-run pediatric clinic with her skinny baby. After weighing and examining the infant, the doctor turned his anger at her. “What kind of mother are you?” he shouted. “Your baby has lost weight again! This is totally unacceptable!”
Frantic and deeply humiliated she turned to the Yad Eliezer office, weeping. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked. “My baby is hungry and cries. I cannot afford to buy sufficient formula for him. With little choice, I ration the formula watering it down so that he can be satisfied for a bit and stop wailing...”
There is no doubt that nursing a baby is the best option. However, nursing a baby requires time, space and a calm, loving and stress-free environment simple luxuries that many women, especially the very poor, just do not have. For the most part, these women live in cramped quarters with no support system at all. Some, unfortunately, must endure the effects of social ills, such as an abusive husband or lack of education. Most suffer from malnutrition themselves. Coupled with fatigue and the pressing anxiety of not knowing where their next meal will come from, there is little wonder why these poverty-stricken mothers do not have the physical and emotional wherewithal to nurse their babies!
While individual mothers can purchase cans of formula for about $12 each, Yad Eliezer obtains them at a nominal cost of $6 per can. Distributing them to needy families, it literally saves Jewish babies from the devastation of hunger.
A mother walked into the Yad Eliezer office with a peculiar request. Instead of the six cans that the organization usually provides a sufficient amount for infant nutrition she pleaded for eight. When prodded for an explanation, the woman shamefully depicted the extreme poverty in her home. Her hungry two-year-old was taking the bottle away from his infant sister and drinking from it. She needed the extra formula to provide for the toddler, as well...
Indeed, with an open eye, ear and heart turned towards the poor, Yad Eliezer’s sterling reputation has expanded beyond the realm of the ordinary.
Yad Eliezer Branches Out
The Big Brother and Big Sister Program
As the Yad Eliezer volunteers traveled across the country into the many different homes of poverty-stricken families, they became aware that, although the lack of food was a very big chunk of the problems these families faced, it was not the only problem. They witnessed the dark lives of lonely boys and girls who had lost a parent through death and become orphans, or children who didn’t have tangible father figures because their fathers were in jail or had simply walked out of the front door and their responsibilities...or were abusive. And while the mothers generally never abandoned their families, providing the emotional stability in a home with such sorry circumstances was generally a feat too overwhelming for them to address.
Born out of this awareness, the ‘big brother’ and ‘big sister’ program of Yad Eliezer takes underprivileged boys and girls who otherwise would not have the proper direction in life and literally changes their world. Suitable mentors that serve as role models and virtual father or mother figures commit themselves to supervising and overseeing the progress of these children. Taking them into their homes and their very lives, they give those that otherwise would not have it, an opportunity to observe firsthand what it means to be part of a normal family atmosphere, ensuring that one day, they, too, will lead balanced and productive lives.
The heartrending story that Yad Eliezer tells of five young sisters sends shudders down one’s back. After their mother died suddenly in her sleep, these girls were left in the care of their father alone. Three months later, this father was arrested for child abuse. The children were put in the care of an uncle who had nine other children of his own. There was no way these girls could deal with the double blow of losing a mother and father on the heels of one another. Rising to the situation, Yad Eliezer provided each girl with her own mentor, giving them the opportunity to heal their shattered emotional states and blossom under the direction of loving attention.
Yaakov was in trouble in school. The principal had had enough and was not allowing him to return. As a single parent with more than her share of overwhelming responsibility, Yaakov’s mother simply did not have the power or self-esteem to convince the school authorities that Yaakov should be allowed to stay. Yaakov’s mentor, a chosheve avrech, stepped in, making phone calls and contacts with the determination that only a Yad Eliezer big brother can. At the end of the day, Yaakov was readmitted to school. Today, he is a happy, well-adjusted student who has a bright, beckoning future in front of him.
The overwhelming success rate of the Yad Eliezer mentoring programs have been so encouraging throughout all of Israel that practically every city council in the entire country, even the most poor, has agreed to subsidize the program, leaving Yad Eliezer’s expenses down to only $1,400 per child, per year.
But there are more expenses to be met. Stemming from the common occurrence of boys’ families not having the wherewithal to provide the basics for a bar mitzvah - the pair of tefillin, a new suit, the festive meal - Yad Eliezer has initiated a new Bar Mitzvah Buddies Program. Up until recently, boys who had benefited from Yad Eliezer in the program themselves may have contributed from their own maaser of bar mitzvah gift money. Yad Eliezer hopes to expand the notion with the greater public’s contributions. $500 can buy a young bar mitzvah boy a pair of new tefillin, $200, a new suit, and $300, a modest celebrating seuda. Sponsors interested can choose between paying for all of what the bar mitzvah boy needs, accumulating to the amount of $1,000, or any one of the three. Whatever the contribution, the one common result is the glowing joy that a sponsor brings to the face of a boy who otherwise would have gone without.
The Adopt-a-Wedding Program
As an organization that for years has been involved in providing food to poverty stricken families in Israel on an ongoing basis, Yad Eliezer knew that, on the occasion of a chasuna, more assistance had to be provided. But Yad Eliezer also realized that there were those certain families that managed somehow to put food on their own tables without resorting to tzedaka, yet making the bare ends meet was by no means an easy feat for them. After being faced with a major financial challenge, such as providing the funds necessary just to make a basic wedding party, many of these families too, would become so depleted and so utterly in debt that ultimately they would find themselves on the receiving end of the Yad Eliezer food list as well.
Putting the strength of wills and minds together Yad Eliezer developed a wonderful innovative plan that would enable families on both ends of the low-income spectrum to benefit in an honorable and respectable way. With two subsidized, elegant wedding halls of their own that are so much in demand that wedding parties must enter a raffle in order to determine who will benefit from them, Yad Eliezer offers struggling baalei simcha the opportunity for joy without the painful associated pressures.
Providing a further helping hand to kallos, Yad Eliezer has also paired up with the well-known hachnosos kallah organization, Yad Gittel, based in Har Nof. Receiving an additional 25% discount to the household items given away at cost prices, kallos receive valuable vouchers for such items such as pots, pans, linens, dishes, flatware, small appliances and other necessary objects needed to set up a new home.
“We received a call about an especially fine young girl who spent any free minute working at various jobs in order to alleviate the difficult situation at home. With the money that she earned assisting a new mother, and at a home for mentally disadvantaged adults, she helped pay for her own schooling and the necessities of her family all with a happy attitude. For her, the important matter was to help out her family. Now that she had become a kallah, we presented her with the voucher that would enable her to set up her new home. With overflowing emotions we observed how these items brought her so much personal joy...”
In what has become dubbed as the Adopt-a-Wedding program, families in America, who themselves are blessed with the occasion of making a wedding simcha, or those that wish to have a zechus for themselves, donate a specific sum of money so that a family without means can celebrate their own simcha with menuchas hanefesh and true happiness. Once the wedding has been celebrated, donors receive the authentic Yad Eliezer certificate of honor, with their name inscribed on it, as well as the date of the chasuna, for safekeeping.
Yad Eliezer and Us
It doesn’t take very much to visualize the floating images of suffering innocence: the faces of men, women, children and infants who bear the awful ramifications of poverty. It’s not especially difficult to perceive the pain of their fearful challenges, the aches of their throbbing humiliation, the muffled cries of their very, very deep feelings of anguish and complete despair.
In these especially trying economic times, Yad Eliezer’s tremendous acts of tzedaka and chesed are needed more than ever. Our own suffering brothers and sisters call out to us urgently. We dare not turn them away.
* This article has been dedicated l’iluy nishmas Yehuda Leib ben Nusson Nutta Yosef.
