Two nationwide organizations launch campaign to help people enjoy Passover
Yad Sarah and Magen David Adom are gearing up to help Israelis celebrate Passover.
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICHUpdated: MARCH 19, 2018 15:01Passover seder plate (illustrative)(photo credit: WIKIPEDIA)
Yad Sarah and Magen David Adom are gearing up to help Israelis celebrate Passover.Yad Sarah, a voluntary organization that – among other things – lends medical equipment to those in need at no cost, has purchased thousands of items for its more-than 100 branches around the country, including electric beds, wheelchairs, walkers and cranes for lifting patients, so that elderly, ill and lonely people can spend the week-long spring festival with their families.“We are happy to help everyone with our home medical equipment,” said director-general Moshe Cohen. “Volunteers in our workshops have also repaired thousands of items, including wheelchairs and walkers, and they were distributed among the branches for lending out.”This year it is also possible to borrow portable oxygen generators that enable safe mobility for three hours at a time and can even be charged from a vehicle’s battery. It also comes with a carrier and cart for moving about if necessary.Another new item is an electric scooter for people who have a leg in a cast or who can’t use one knee. The device provides excellent mobility and replaces the need for them to borrow wheelchairs or crutches.Yad Sarah asks the public not to wait until the last minute in order to apply to borrow the equipment. From past experience, Yad Sarah said, it expects to lend out three times as many pieces as it does during similar period in other months of the year.The department also supplies medical equipment to tourists who have difficulties getting around, by providing equipment directly to the hotels and guest houses where they stay.There is also a large demand for the Nechonit service vans that transport people in wheelchairs during the holiday, as many patients discharged from hospitals have no other way of getting home.For more information about Yad Sarah branches, call *6444 from any phone.Meanwhile, Magen David Adom (MDA) – the ambulance, first aid and blood donor service – has collected tens of thousands of food parcels from donors in order to distribute them to the needy. Thousands of MDA volunteers, including both teens and adults, are participating in the program, practicing the Jewish custom of Kimha D’pis’ha, providing food for Passover to those in need.This is the 14th year in which thousands of MDA volunteers, youth and adults are enlisting in a wide-scale campaign to collect food for a few families, in cooperation with the Orot Hahessed organization.The project, which began Sunday and will continue through March 29, has become a MDA tradition and is now in its 41st year.The public are invited to bring kosher-for-Passover food products – matza, wine, grape juice, oil, sugar, matza flour, chocolate spread, jam, coffee, soft drinks, canned tuna, pickles, canned vegetables and fruits, cookies, cakes, horseradish, juice concentrates, ultra-high-temperature pasteurized milk, potatoes and more – which will be collected by MDA volunteers, to the entrances of supermarkets and retail chains around the country, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. on weekdays; on Fridays between 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and on Saturday nights from the end of Shabbat until 11 p.m.