Sderot Teens Raise NIS 50,000 to Aid Northern City After Visit

A group of tenth-grade girls from the Be'eri Ulpana in Sderot is raising NIS 50,000 to fund a three-day volunteer trip to Kiryat Shmona. The students visited the northern city earlier and saw new families moving in alongside ongoing challenges. They return this week to work in schools and local businesses. Their proposal outlines spending on board games that will stay in Kiryat Shmona schools, purchases at local shops, and a project to interview 20 longtime residents. The students will publish a newsletter featuring those interviews.

The girls framed the effort around their own experience. "Precisely because we know what it means to be resilient, to be evacuated from our homes, to miss home, and to cope with hardship, we want to come and help from the south to the north," they wrote in their proposal. Donations are being collected this week to cover the costs of the trip.

A separate effort at ALYN Hospital has produced about 3,000 posters for patients. The project began after Dr. Eliezer Be'eri, who directs the Rehabilitation and Respiratory Care Department, suffered a cardiac arrest while playing squash. His wife, Shira, found that he had been admitted as an "unidentified patient" because hospital staff did not recognize him. She placed a photograph and a short account of his life beside his bed. The first nurse who saw it told her the poster was inspiring. After Dr. Be'eri recovered, the couple began promoting the idea. Volunteers now sit with patients and their families to gather details for posters displayed beside hospital beds.

A third project reached a milestone on October 7. Rabbi Moshe Shachor of the Ein Yehudit organization in Sderot said a ceremony was held that day to write letters into a Torah scroll at the Keshet School in the Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council. The scroll had been commissioned several years ago by Ofir Libstein, who was head of the Regional Council. Ofir was among the first people killed on October 7, and the project became his final wish.

Rabbi Shachor said the ceremony took place three years to the day after Ofir's death. Schoolchildren wrote letters into the scroll in memory of Ofir and others from Kfar Aza who were killed. The scroll will be brought to Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

Uri Epstein, the new head of the Regional Council, attended the ceremony. He is Ofir's brother-in-law. Uri's son, Neta, was killed on October 7, as was his mother, Bilha Epstein. Rabbi Yehuda Alon of the Sulamot organization worked on the scroll project with Rabbi Shachor. The Otiot Shel Ahavah organization, which sends Torah scrolls to Jewish communities worldwide, also participated.

These accounts were published after Israel's elections. The column that carried them noted that the Hebrew word for elections also means choices, and applied that idea beyond the ballot box. The Rambam wrote that a person should regard themselves as half meritorious and half guilty, and that a single act can tip that balance. The Torah portions read in recent weeks describe Avraham and Sarah making choices about family, neighbors, and enemies.