75,000 elderly Holocaust survivors in Israel are living below the poverty line and struggling each day to obtain food, medication, and other necessities. Until recently, this group was largely forgotten, but now a coalition of ministries and agencies has formed to raise public awareness and provide immediate help. A key player in the coalition is Chevra International, with which the UMJC is linked through our affiliated organization Chevra USA, led by Dr. Michael Schiffman.

In Hadera, Michael Schiffman, Jamie Cowen, and I accompanied local representatives of the coalition as they met some new aid recipients. In the first apartment, one of the representatives reminded me of how much prayer and money and effort had gone out to help these people make aliyah. But now that they have made it to Israel, they have been forgotten. “We helped them get to Israel,” he said. “And now that they’re here we can’t abandon them.” The first couple made aliyah in 1997 and have been surviving on about 3000 shekels, or $750, a month for food, medicine, rent ($320 a month), and everything else. Recently the husband’s health has declined severely and his medicine is taking a larger and larger share of the budget. He sleeps on a child’s bed in the sitting room because they don’t have money for a larger bed. His wife, who is 80, has her arm in a sling because her husband recently fell and she hurt her arm trying to catch him. The social worker explained that their story is typical. The couple learned to get by on their minimal income until new challenges arrived, and now they just don’t have the reserves to meet them.

Later our group met a 97-year-old mother who is taking care of her 67-year-old son in a squalid apartment in nearby Givat Olga. Both are Holocaust survivors and barely surviving. Coalition volunteers work with municipalities and social workers throughout Israel to identify the most needy individuals and get resources to them. The coalition does not need buildings and offices, but keeps a low profile and channels funds directly where they are needed. In addition to the reduced overhead, this also means that Messianic Jews and other believers work directly with people who are not believers in Yeshua, letting their light in the public arena. Many Holocaust survivors are in Israel as a result of the miraculous aliyah from the former Soviet Union, mostly in the decade of the 90s. A smaller, but equally miraculous, aliyah took place earlier, as thousands of Jews left Ethiopia to come to the land of Israel. As with Eastern Europeans, their return from exile received tremendous support and publicity, and they have been neglected ever since. The UMJC is involved in this group as well, with the SMILE project, an effort we are launching to provide dental care resources to them. I met in the Haifa area with our contact, Avishalom Teklehaimanot, son-in-law of my old friend Eitan Shishkoff, and Fakado, another Ethiopian Jew who is working to provide health care and education to his people. As with the Holocaust survivors project, our goal is not to create some new program or facility, but to work with existing agencies (in this case a non-government non-profit organization) to provide help in the most efficient way possible. Again, this approach has the advantage of bringing together us, Messianic Jews in Israel, and Israelis from the wider community.

All of these efforts are acts of Tikkun Olam, world restoration, reflecting the power and compassion of Messiah himself. Russ

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