Brightening up the festival for widows and orphans

The Chesed Menachem Mendel program is open to Israelis of all religious and socio-economic backgrounds.

By ORIT ARFA
Hanukka (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Hanukka
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
On the surface, it appeared like a regular, happening family Hanukka party: a DJ playing electro-Jewish music, children waving foam light sticks, and adults dancing, with a Lego hanukkia towering above them. Yet upon closer inspection, something was clearly missing: husbands and fathers.
The hundreds of women and children at Jerusalem’s Ramada Hotel on Tuesday night were widows and orphans, guests of Colel Chabad’s annual Finger Family Hanukka Retreat, which offers three days of fun in the capital for families whose loss can still cast darkness over the Festival of Light.
Among the widows was Ronit Angel, whose husband was the first casualty of Operation Protective Edge. He was killed by shrapnel from a mortar while delivering care packages to soldiers along the Gaza border. Colel Chabad made contact with her immediately.
“I don’t even know how they got to me, but I guess it was ‘from above’ that they got to me,” Angel told In Jerusalem in the hotel lobby, sitting with two good friends, also widows, from her community of Beit Aryeh in Samaria. All have children around the same age, ranging from two to 16.
The Chesed Menachem Mendel program, as it is named, is open to Israelis of all religious and socio-economic backgrounds. Colel Chabad often learns about the newly bereaved through the Welfare Ministry, which has limited resources to provide for them. Sometimes, Colel Chabad simply locates them through the news, as with the recent spate of terrorist attacks.
“Even here in the room we have widows from the last period,” said Rabbi Amram Blau. A veteran educator, Blau founded the program 12 years ago, feeling a special empathy for orphans. The Colel Chabad organization itself is the oldest charity in Israel, founded in 1788 by the first Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The program extends beyond victims of war and terror. Angel immediately referred her social worker to Ronit Hanin when Hanin’s husband died of cancer a year ago. Hanin, 41, then brought on her friend Vered Leshem, 39, after her husband died of the same disease.
“We drove together here in the same car,” Hanin said, with Leshem adding: “We talked about things we couldn’t talk about with anyone else.”
Having a social worker dedicated to the family relieves some of the practical and emotional difficulties of losing the “man of the house.”
“This burden falls on you and you have to show that you’re a pillar, that you can’t fall, you can’t break. Children need you,” said Hanin.
As part of the retreat, the 400 participants were treated to two nights at the Ramada, a trip to the Biblical Zoo, games and entertainment for the children, on-site babysitters and crafts workshops.
But the Hanukka retreat is more of a bonus to the plethora of ongoing social services that Colel Chabad provides. “When [a social worker] goes into a home, they serve as a shoulder for the mother.
They look at educational problems in the home. That’s our focus,” explained Blau. “Usually, when there is no father, the mother can’t control everything.”
Social workers follow the educational progress of the children, evaluating report cards and dispatching tutors as necessary. To provide incentive for academic excellence, students are rewarded with merit- based scholarships. The program offers extracurricular activities as well, requiring each child to develop a hobby. Widows receive professional training if they’re suddenly required to be breadwinners.
“If a woman wants to go out to work, we encourage her to go to work and not close herself up in her mourning,” Blau detailed.
Colel Chabad provided a lifeline to Hadass Mizrachi of Modi’in, who made headlines when a Palestinian terrorist who had been released during the Gilad Schalit deal shot 45 bullets into her family’s car en route to a Passover Seder in Kiryat Arba. Her husband, a department head in police intelligence, was killed. She and four of her five children were wounded; she can still feel two bullets lodged in her back.
“I feel like they’re my second family,” Mizrachi said of the people around her. As with Angel, Chabad Colel called her unexpectedly after the shiva. Shortly thereafter her daughter participated in the bnei mitzva program, which organizes festivities and programming for children undergoing the Jewish rite of passage. “You feel like you’re not alone.” •