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Riva Nelli Joseph While visiting our homes for holocaust survivors in Israel, a man came up to us and started hugging and kissing us. I asked my co-worker who this guy was. He said, "Don’t you remember Joseph?" I said, "We have met over 100 Josephs. Which Joseph is this?" "He said Joseph from Belz." Joseph is a man we met in Ukraine several years ago. He was living in terrible conditions there. He had both legs amputated, had no teeth, and was living on the potatoes we were bringing him. His apartment was a dirty run down hole in the wall kind of place. The government had given him prosthetic legs, but he was unable to use them because they didn’t fit right. He had false teeth that also didn’t fit. He had no family. Everyone he loved perished in the holocaust.
Each house houses eight or nine residents and costs us about $2000.00 a month to operate over and above the money we get from the residents. Our goal is to have 100 of these houses. It is our hope that some would get behind this project financially so we can realize our goal of 100 houses. | back to top | Reb Naphtali I met Naphtali while he was selling matches and shoelaces on the steps of a building in a small mountain village in Azerbaijan. He was obviously poor, but was very kind and generous. We talked for a while and then he invited us to his home. We had to go down two steep hills to get to his neighborhood. He lived in a very humble home, that in America would be called a shack. He had a small sooty oven in the main room, in which he burned wood and garbage so he would have heat in cold weather. The floors were made of roughly hewn splintering wood covered by threadbare carpets. Dirt was everywhere. The walls looked like they had been painted decades before. He had an outhouse that had only a hole in the ground. He showed me pictures of his sons. One took a job in Siberia. He hadn’t heard from him in five years. Another immigrated to Israel. I asked if he speaks with them on the phone. He laughed because he said he had no phone. I asked if his sons send him money, and he said anything sent would disappear in the mails before it got to him. He ran outside and brought us pomegranates he picked off his tree. He was excited, because he never had a rabbi visit his home before. Pomegranates were his main diet. He told me he made about a dollar a day selling shoelaces and matches. It was enough to buy a loaf of bread. We brought him food parcels, which he received with appreciation. When I was leaving, he loaded me up with pomegranates to take home. I tried to leave him $50.00 as a gift, but he refused to take it. I pleaded with him to take it, but he said God was good to him and he had so much. I should give it to someone in need. It struck me that he was so poor, yet considered himself so rich. He was rich, but not in material goods. He found contentedness in having something to eat and a roof over his head. His sons were not with him, but they were safe. He was a simple man, with a simple life. There was a holiness in his desire to help others. Submitted by Dr. Michael Schiffman | back to top | Racheel — Her Mother’s Legacy While traveling through the Gomel region of Belarus, we stayed at the home of an elderly widow named Racheel. She was an elderly woman who reminded me of my grandmother. She had similar features, and was as sharp as a tack. She showed us kindness and hospitality, letting us all sleep in her apartment while she slept at a neighbors apartment. Her living room had pictures of her son as well as her now deceased husband, who was a factory worker. Her son was a doctor who lived in the same town. Doctors in the Former Soviet Union make a salary equivalent to 26 dollars a month. Racheel lived on about 8 dollars a month, the average pension for war veterans. She showed us a yellowed picture of a beautiful young girl in an army uniform. It was her, taken after the Russian army occupied Berlin during the Second World War. She didn’t have much in the way of furniture, so we slept on the floor in our sleeping bags. We had gone to the market and bought extra food so we could give her food without embarrassing her. She didn’t want to take it, but we told her it was for us, and we invited her to share it. We just left what we didn’t eat. In the morning, she brewed us tea, and we had some bread with fruit preserves. She told us she wanted to immigrate to Israel someday with her son and daughter-in-law. The situation for Jews was very bad in Belarus. Discrimination and even physical violence were not unusual in their city. I asked her why she didn’t immigrate now. She said passports cost 100 dollars each, and on what she and her son made, they could not afford to buy them. I took out 300 dollars and told her to buy her passports. She refused to take the money. I said it would be a blessing for me and she still refused. Then she started rummaging through old boxes and jars in a cluttered pantry. She came back to the table with a tattered, grimy knotted rag. She must have spent five minutes untying it. When she finished, she put three gold coins on the table with the face of Czar Nicholai II on them. She explained that when the communists came to power, they wanted everyone to turn in their gold, but her mother hid them in a torn off corner of her apron. She held on to them through the war years, as well as through the difficult times before and after the war. When her mother died, she gave the coins to Racheel and said, she should use them in a time of great need. She asked me to buy her mother’s coins for 100 dollars each, so she could buy the passports for her family. She said she wanted to use her mother’s gold, and not other people’s charity to get her family to Israel. She wanted to her family’s Aliyah to be the legacy of her mother. ‘ Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.’ Deuteronomy 5:16
Submitted by Dr. Michael Schiffman | back to top | How Rich We Are Two of our workers were inviting elderly people to a soup kitchen in one of the villages where we were starting to feed people. They visited one elderly woman and told her that she could come to the kitchen at 10:30-11:30 every morning. She thanked them and said she would be unable to come because her granddaughter lived with her, and she was in school at that time. Our workers said, "If your granddaughter is in school, then what would be the problem with you coming to the soup kitchen?" She said, "Well, my granddaughter has the shoes." She and her granddaughter had to share a pair of shoes. They were both not able to be out at the same time. A short time later, when the woman’s granddaughter returned from school, she told her grandmother that she was hungry. She was told there was some bread in the kitchen. She asked her grandmother if she had some bread now, would there be anything left for them to eat tomorrow. We saw to it that they had shoes, coats, and food parcels. In North America, we are so very rich. There isn’t a day that goes by that we go to sleep no knowing IF we will eat the next day, or the day after. We throw out enough food to feed an army, we give basketfuls of clothing to rummage or throw it in the garbage. Our children have food fights, and it seems like a joke. When we stop and give thanks for the meal, how thankful are we? If not for the grace of God, we could be wondering if we would have another meal today or tomorrow. My mind went back to my childhood, when my mother tried to get me to finish the food on my plate, telling me people were starving in Europe. I cavalierly told her to send it to them. She wasn’t wrong, but in a way, neither was I. We should send food to the starving people of Eastern Europe. Not our leftovers, but perhaps we should be more grateful for what we have, and do what we can to help others in their time of need. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? - Hillel
Submitted by Dr. Michael Schiffman | back to top |
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