Save a Cambodian Child

See Yourself As If You Personally Were There… Save a Cambodian Child

To me the greatest challenge of the seder has been the one to walk in our ancestors' footsteps as they were freed from slavery in Egypt. It is the same mitzvah echoed so many times in the Torah when we read: for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

The teaching is quite simple: We were there. We know what it's like to be treated as if we were less than human. We know how it feels when a whole society stands by and watches it happen to us.

That's what I felt in Cambodia.

One of the most poignant images that stays with me still is the picture of a boy looking over the wall into the school where we were distributing supplies and games. We had brought fifty backpacks filled with pads and pencils and erasers. The orphans who were receiving them took everything out, tried the pens, looked at the pads and couldn't believe that all of this was theirs.

And then there was that boy – the fifty-first orphan, the one not yet taken in by a foster family because Arun, himself an orphan from the same community, did not have the $600 to pay a foster family for ten years of rice, the entire time that the boy would be in school.

We wanted to give him things anyway, but Arun said that there were twenty or thirty more just like him. So we gave him $600 right then, and now there is one fewer eager child unable to go to school or to have a family with whom to live.

Thanks to many of you at least four additional orphans will now be adopted. I so appreciate your caring and your rapid response.

Passover is a time of tzedakah – right before the seder begins. Maybe, those at your table, feeling the pain and isolation our ancestors experienced, could help to save one more orphan so eager to learn and to have a future, to become the wise child himself.

Let's bring them all over the wall and into the school!

Cambodia: Hope from Despair

The flight to Thailand was seventeen hours; three hours later we were in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I never settled into the twelve-hour time difference. After returning home, it took more than two weeks for me to return to my time zone, but the trip has buoyed my spirit and touched my soul.

There were two parts to our experience: the sadness of the past and the hope of the future.

Everyone we met had a story of a family experience and loss during the Pol Pot regime, when the educated class was murdered and all the schools were destroyed, at the end of the 1970's .

Often, it was a tale of brothers. I was in Cambodia, in part, as a way of memorializing my brother, Barry, who died a year ago and who was an extraordinary high school math teacher in Buffalo. It was during the shiva period that I decided to pursue this project.

Our first guide, Sokha, lost his brother, Phoung, during the genocide there. We stood at the stupa building in front of twenty stories of human skulls and said the kaddish, remembering him. The parallels to the Holocaust touched our hearts, and there were tears in our eyes.

But there was also hope, so much hope. We saw the children learning and playing in schools like the one that we will sponsor. We played jump rope with them, gave them kazoos to create an impromptu band and backpacks filled with school supplies. The smiles on their faces were worth everything.

It was clear that education is the answer. Everyone is striving to learn and then to teach in an effort to slowly replace the educated class that was lost.

HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP:

1. SUPPORT THE BUILDING OF THE SCHOOL ITSELF with its computer center, wells and water filters, English and computer teacher and so much more.

2. SPONSOR ONE OF THE ORPHANS on the waiting list who can go to school only if his/her foster family receives $5 of rice each month for the ten years of classes ($600 per orphan – to save a child's future).

Ukraine Appeal

We have received an email from the Zvenigorodka congregation that the façade of their building has fallen off. They have raised $1600 to do the immediate repairs before the winter begins, but $1100 more is needed to complete the work. This is money that they do not have. Anyone interested in supporting this project and helping these 300 Ukrainian Jews restore their building?

Chanukah, 5768

Last year we spent Chanukah in New Orleans. This year we go down when it’s over. In the past we lit one candle and we kept the flames burning. Now we serve once again as the shamash to brighten up the darkness still felt by so many whose lives have not yet been restored. That shamash candle will bring them hope and a new beginning. More than that, we hope that it will restore their faith as well.

When my sons were younger, we would celebrate Chanukah in our own special way. Yes, there would be gifts on some nights, but there would also be two nights for “family” and two for “services” and one for tzedakah.

A night for family would be celebrated by using something we had bought for everyone to enjoy together – from a crepe maker to a ping pong table.

A night for services would involve each of us writing those things we would like other members of the family to do for us: chores, cleaning up, cooking, etc. We would each write three possible services for each member of the family to do, fold them up and put them in a cup. Then on two nights of Chanukah, each of us would pick one folded paper from the cup. If we were lucky, the third unpicked chore (the one we escaped from having to do) would be the worst!

And finally, the night for tzedakah would be the time we would contribute the money we might have spent for extra gifts and decide where it should be donated.

Why not try some of these ways of celebrating Chanukah and if you have a tzedakah night, donate it well!

Bonim Banim – Building our Youth

We just received the ninth application for the program. That leaves 11 more places for next year’s eighth and ninth graders. Teens from New Jersey and Maine are already on the list. Any eligible Reform teens are welcome. The DEADLINE for applications has been extended to FEBRUARY 1. Don’t miss this opportunity to spend August 17-24th in mitzvah heaven! For applications, see the program page on the website.

Micro-Loans: from Mexico to Ethiopia

Based on our very successful experience with micro-loans in Mexico (the first community “bank” is almost completely funded already), we are expanding our efforts to reach out to Ethiopian Jews in Israel and to help them in a similar way.

Today, Wednesday, we had a meeting with Avraham, an Ethiopian activist from Israel, who was very encouraging and helpful. He validated many of our assumptions about the community there. There is great unemployment, especially among the middle-aged Ethiopians and the elders. The community is composed in large part of separate enclaves within Israeli society and has not yet been absorbed to any great degree.

There would be the potential for small businesses created by Ethiopians to meet the needs in their own neighborhoods for food, clothing, and other items that remind them of Ethiopia. Indeed, there are already some such businesses in operation in areas like Jerusalem and an expressed interest by others to design enterprises of their own. It could be very feasible for us to apply the principles of micro-financing there. Avraham will help us to find a local coordinator who will go into a pilot neighborhood, after training provided by us, to identify and to begin to coordinate a group of potential borrowers.

While all of the details remain to be worked out, it is possible that we will have some representatives of ours in Israel in December to meet with Avraham and with people in various local communities as well as with potential coordinators.

This was a giant step forward.

Cambodia - Schools, Orphans, Human Trafficking, and More...

We are continuing to fill in the details of our Cambodia trip in January. We have multiple goals that need to be carefully balanced in the very short time – only five days – that we will have in country.

The possibility of funding the building of schools is very real. Yet, we have also had conversations with people who have businesses in Cambodia and who know of others working with poor orphans who are on their own. We plan to meet with them and to see firsthand what they are doing. There will also be discussions with people knowledgeable about the human trafficking situation as well as children in hospitals and orphanages. We plan to bring in hundreds of pounds of gifts/supplies for the children.

One of our advisors is in Cambodia now researching some of the places we will be going and connecting with the people we need to meet. We’ll have more details when she returns in December.

The six of us who are going are busy getting every shot known to man!