23/11/2008 | 11:34
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The scene: a dilapidated apartment with no cupboards or closets, no washing machine and a barely functioning bathroom. The children sleep on the floor; the husband is ill and out of work; the mother, a diabetic, walks to the clinic for her check-ups to save on bus fare, and on the way home foregoes a snack so that she can purchase a roll for her children's lunch.
Without doubt, the most heart-wrenching stories are about abject poverty, especially if you project your own children's faces on those in the story. Suddenly, the nondescript becomes tangible, even if the mother's name (let's call her Rachel) is withheld.
One in four Israelis - more than 1.6 million people - live below the poverty line, and that's one in three of Israel's children. Today, Israel ranks 24th on the OECD's scale of social expenditure; unemployment benefits have fallen by a staggering 43 percent in 5 years, and more than 35 percent of all working Israelis live in poverty. The gap between rich and poor here is the second largest in the Western world.
All of these statistics boil down to a single word: Hunger.
14 percent of Israelis aged 20 and over - more than half a million people - have refrained from buying food in the past year due to financial difficulties. Nearly 19 percent of Jewish children in Israel go to bed hungry at least one night a week, and some 13 percent of them suffer from malnutrition.
But poverty is not just about food. Unemployment causes a breakdown in the nuclear family. Children drop out of school, and despair, illness, neglect and parental abandonment often follow. The road to criminal and socially dysfunctional behavior is just around the corner away.
There is nothing new here. The modern world is far from perfect, and yet, somehow, life goes on. When Rachel had another child, there was no carriage, crib or money for baby formula. She couldn't even nurse her child because of medical problems. In a modern, westernized state, a newborn infant faces starvation.
At this point, Yad Eliezer stepped in, purchased second-hand furniture for the family, and started providing them with monthly food parcels and formula, as well as a carriage for the baby. Suddenly Rachel felt that life was something more than a struggle to survive, that there was someone to lean on.
Today, it is evident that the government simply cannot afford to cater to the needs of an alarmingly growing number of needy families. As a result, NGOs and private organizations have begun to assume the responsibilities once the domain of the state.
Yad Eliezer has targeted the most basic need of all - food. The largest anti-hunger agency in Israel, it spends over $20 million each year to bring relief to tens of thousands of Israelis.
Originating in 1980 in the kitchen of the Weisel family of Jerusalem, the organization now encompasses 15 primary economic and social service programs. 10,000 volunteers ensure that overheads are minimal, and the fact that 92 percent of donated funds go directly to needy families has consistently earned Yad Eliezer the coveted 4-Star Exceptional Rating from Charity Navigator (charitynavigator.com ranks charity organizations based on criteria including the effective use of funds).
Every month, families with sick or unemployed parents receive food boxes. For more than 50,000 people subsisting from one day to the next, this is a basic means to ward off total despair. Then, there's baby formula, which is delivered to about 2,000 babies monthly. The Shabbat Chicken program ensures that families who cannot afford meat throughout the week can at least enjoy the luxury of chicken on this one special day. Special food packages are distributed on holidays - 275 tons of chicken to 11,000 families for Passover and Rosh Hashanah last year alone.
Equally unique is the unprecedented agreement between the organization and Israel's agricultural cooperatives, which resulted in the annual supply of nearly $1 million worth of excess produce to needy families, rather than its destruction to maintain high food prices. In Tzefat and Tiberias, Yad Eliezer operates state-of-the-art dental clinics, treating a total of 16,000 patients each year, where children are seen for free and adults pay NIS 20 per visit.
Yet Yad Eliezer's philosophy is not that of a soup kitchen. By delivering products directly to the homes of carefully screened families, often using the organization's dedicated fleet of refrigerated trucks, the organization aims to maintain family integration and parental responsibility. An array of programs provide short-term relief to facilitate long-term recovery, such as job training and adolescent mentoring programs - all so that the dependant can begin to see their route towards self-reliance.
Yad Eliezer's Jack Fogel Orphan Fund provides food, financial, medical and psychological assistance to orphans of terror, road accidents, illness and more. Another emergency fund provides spot assistance to families facing a one-time crisis that would otherwise mean eviction, food deprivation, or total financial, medical or psychological collapse. Job training and placement services are offered to many for whom charity is unacceptable. One such program includes certifying people as para-therapists in physical, occupational and speech therapy.
But we are not there just for emergencies.
Yad Eliezer caters weddings for couples who could not otherwise afford to celebrate their union. Brides receive wedding vouchers to purchase those little items that help transform an otherwise austere household into the foundation for a happy home. And through the Bar Mitzvah Twinning program, children in Israel who cannot even afford a new Tallit or Tefillin are paired with children abroad who help sponsor the entrance of their less fortunate "twin" into adulthood.
Perhaps more than anything else, initiatives such as Yad Eliezer portray the unique Jewish quality of Tzedaka (charity) and communal responsibility - a trait that is rare in today's fast-paced world.
A nation scattered throughout the world for so many centuries imbues endeavors such as these with a borderless quality that unifies us in more than just past and the future - but in the immediate present.
Throughout the world, Yad Eliezer volunteers collect food and donations, organize transport, connect their children with less luckier contemporaries, and help create a bond of Jewish communality. In Israel, adults, pupils and soldiers, farmers, drivers and community leaders, all join together to distribute to the needy.
Although Rachel's family is far from being 100 percent independent, they are now receiving the minimal assistance needed to be able to step out of the depths of despair and seek solutions to their most pressing troubles.
In some cases, people even surprise themselves with abilities they didn't realize they had, such as "V", who was a practiced seamstress. Yad Eliezer provided her with the sewing machine that eventually propelled her toward self-sufficiency.
In an age where the value of money seems to be decreasing, where the price of food and basic goods is on the increase, and requests for assistance keep growing by the day, Yad Eliezer is putting the needy back on their feet so that they too can once again walk proudly.
If you would like to help the work of Yad Eliezer, please visit our website: yadeliezer.org
Or call:
U.S.: 718-258-1580
Canada: 416-7822197
United Kingdom: 208-4558394
Australia: 039-5328350
Israel: 02-5813370 ext. 132
