With only a few days left until Purim, I wanted to remind you all about my Purim Mitzvah Challenge.
Please, won’t you take a moment to donate canned goods or other non-perishable items? Toiletries and over-the-counter medications are often in great need by emergency shelters.
If you don’t know where to donate, you can find a list of food pantries here. Many grocery stores have donation barrels by the exit doors; and our sons’ school and preschool both collect canned goods as well. Some communities also have kosher food pantries – ours is called Yachad and is run by Chabad.
For every item that you donate, my husband and I will donate $.10 to Meir Panim in Israel. Did you know that one in four children in Israel live below the poverty line? Meir Panim does amazing work feeding the hungry, including the most vulnerable in Israeli society – children and the elderly.
I am being joined in the Purim Challenge by two wonderful bloggers, Houston Ima and In Our Small Garden. Both amazing women will also be donating $.10 per item to Yad Sarah and Leket Israel, respectively. After you leave your total number of items donated on my blog, please be sure to visit their blogs and leave your totals there, too. Yes, your donations can be “triple counted”!
In light of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, my husband and I have decided that we will also be matching your canned goods contributions by donating to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for Japan/Pacific disaster relief. (This isn’t technically “Matanot l’Evyonim”, but the need is profound and we feel compelled to help as much as we are able.)
And finally, while I know this isn’t why you come to my blog, I can’t not comment on the incomprehensible and horrifying murders of five members of the Fogel family. Like you, I am heart-broken by their brutal killings and by the magnitude of loss for their surviving children/siblings, their extended family, their community in Itamar, and all of Am Yisrael.
I don’t want to talk politics here – and I hope you won’t either. I know we all must find our own ways of coping with and attempting to comprehend the evil that lives in our world.
One small, yet positive act I have decided to consciously take on in my home is saying the Modeh Ani prayer with my three children each morning. Too often, the mornings get away from us, and I don’t do this.
In the memory of Udi (36), Ruth (35), Yoav (11), Elad (4) and Hadas (4 months) Fogel, I will stop and say thank you for my family’s immense blessings each morning that I wake up to my sweet babies.
Hashem Yinachem.
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