Behind the Scenes
Talia Eckstein
Christina Johns
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Every morning at 7:30a.m., the 4Zion-funded soup kitchen Carmei Hair opens its doors to welcome in the poorest of Jerusalem’s population. Many of those standing at the entrance in the early morning hours waiting eagerly for the doors to open have slept on park benches or the sidewalk, and during the winter they sometimes walk into 4Zion’s warm and friendly soup kitchen nearly frozen.
After breakfast is served, the kitchen staff goes into high gear in preparation for lunch, when nearly 300 people pass through their doors hungry, only to leave well-fed and relieved from their pain, if only for a short time.
Uzi, who was born in Jerusalem and whose family goes back seven generations in the Holy City, is one of the more unfortunate of the city’s poor. He has no roof over his head, and…
On May 20, Rabbi Eckstein and Yael Eckstein attended a cornerstone-laying ceremony for a 4Zion-funded trauma center in Eshkol, a rural region in southern Israel frequently targeted by terrorists’ rockets.
4Zion is providing a grant, with the Ministry of the Interior providing matching funds, to build a Fellowship House Trauma Clinic. This will be a new reinforced building attached to an existing social service center and will be used to help victims of terror deal with psychological trauma and stress.
Rabbi Eckstein poured the cornerstone cement along with Eshkol regional council official Chaim Yellin. Then, along with all of the social workers in attendance, each placed small stones inscribed with words like “security” and “peace” on the pile so the rocks, like their messages of shalom (peace), would become a permanent part of the new structure.
Tamar Auerbach, director of the Eshkol department of social services,…
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Shalom,
For many years Ethiopian Jews’ journey to Israel was filled with fear and danger. When I hear stories of the immigrants who survived the long and strenuous voyage, their faith inspires me. In years past, they set out on foot from remote Ethiopian villages in search of what God promised to them thousands of years ago – a prophetic reunion with their people and homeland.
In Ethiopian villages life is very simple. People spend their days tending to their animals, praying, and being together with family. For generations, the Jewish community in Ethiopia – which traces its roots back to the lost biblical tribe of Dan – has focused on purifying itself in order to be worthy of rejoining the Jewish people. Their return to the Holy Land is now coming about thanks in part to donors to…
The Maleeva family lives in their own house in a village near Moscow. Usually, home ownership is a source of pride. But when five children and two adults live in an old, deteriorating house that has only two rooms, no central heating, and no plumbing, there’s not much to brag about.
During the summer, all the Maleeva children were adequately dressed. But as the autumn and winter approached, it became apparent they needed warmer clothes. Unfortunately, both of their parents are sick with various illnesses and physically disabled, so it’s difficult for the family to survive on the small grant they receive from the government.
The five children – 16-year-old Julia, 12-year-old Timothy, 10-year-old Constantine, 6-year-old Aglaya, and 2-year-old Eva – could not purchase the clothing they so desperately needed for the winter. They barely had warm enough clothes…
Yemima, a 35-year-old single mother in the central Israel town of Pardes Chana, is raising her three children on a meager salary of $900 a month. Yemima does not receive any money from the government and is committed to working hard for her income, yet too often she is forced to decide between buying food for Shabbat (Sabbath) or paying the electric bill.
Since she began receiving weekly food packages from 4Zion partner Ohr HaPardes, Yemima’s children have had food to eat every Shabbat without fearing that their electricity will be shut off. “There are not enough words to say thank you,” Yemima says. “To have food and electricity is not a given, and my children and I are blessed with both because of 4Zion.”
Yemima’s parents were from Yemen and raised her on the traditions of their Jewish forefathers. “We never had an…