“Open my fridge in the middle of the week, it’s empty.”
His neighbors don’t have enough to buy bedsheets.
His chevrusa can’t afford a wedding hall. (READ MORE)
OUR STORY:
We’ve all grown up on stories about tzaddikim who study Torah amidst deprivation, but if you’re the avreich in Eretz Yisrael, poverty isn’t romantic. It’s intense. It’s harsh. It’s demeaning.
“I wonder if I can push shopping off for another few days, maybe another month, maybe somehow money will come in,” relates one avreich. “I think two, three, four times if I really need to buy new shoes when they’re in shreds.”
Even with a wife who works a full-time job, child support payments from the socialized Israeli system and stipends from the Kollel – which only the lucky ones receive – the money is nowhere near enough to cover rent, utilities, clothing, and food for the entire family.
It’s a lot harder when you are a ba’al teshuva or made aliyah: you lack the support of family and the community you grew up in. In the words of another avreich: “I don’t know exactly how we live. Hashem provides. Don’t ask me how. It’s a miracle every time.”
Changing Their Lives
When that miracle does occur, every aspect of these families’ lives changes. It’s not just the stuff you suddenly have, the full fridge, the bedding, the wedding in a hall. It’s the sudden self respect you feel when you walk down the street wearing good garments: “My wife felt respectable. Neighbors noticed she was no longer wearing tattered clothes and treated her better,” recalls one avreich. More essentially, it’s the relief you feel when your family is provided for.
Tensions within the family, shalom bayit issues and fierce fights between children evaporate. “I know a case where two of a local mashgiach’s children went off the derech. The poverty was too much for them,” another person related. Too many times, children of avreichim associate poverty with religiosity, and think that if they are no longer religious, they will be secure and taken care of. A full fridge and parents who are not constantly harrowed because of financial anxieties can make all the difference.
Transforming Their Torah
“You can’t imagine the intensity of the financial burdens. I myself didn’t feel the extent of it until it lifted from me and I was able to learn with joy,” one avreich recalls. They all relate that they could suddenly study Torah and fully engage, fully focus, be excited, be creative, be animated.
“I could listen to what my chavrusa was saying, actually listen, and not worry about the rent that is due in a few days,” another describes. Yet another avreich says that receiving aid “is like a smile from above. Hashem is saying, I see you, I care, I’m looking out for you. There are shlichim in my world. It’s a tremendously good feeling.” It gave him just that much more chizuk in his studies and emunah.
Protecting Their Self Respect
Even when you desperately need the money, it’s not simple to receive it. As one avreich related: “When I counted the banknotes in the packet, I was in turmoil. I prayed I would one day be one of those giving, not those receiving. But my joy was intense. I could now buy food for Yom Tov.” Another avreich doesn’t even tell his wife about the money. He wants to provide for his family without the shame of her knowing he cannot.
Our program does everything to ensure their privacy and protect their self-respect.
Join us. Change their lives. Transform their Torah.
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