French Jews turn to crowdfunding in aiding victims’ families
People all over the world have donated, with money coming from as far afield as the United States, Spain, Israel and Italy.
By SAM SOKOLMOURNERS PAY THEIR RESPECTS at the capital’s Har Hamenuhot cemetery yesterday at the graves of the victims of the Paris Hyper Cacher terrorist attack.(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
French Jews have taken to the Internet to raise money for the families of the victims of last week’s terrorist attack at the HyperCacher kosher grocery in Paris, raising hundreds of thousands of euros in crowdfunded donations.Funds for the families of the four victims of the attack were started on the crowdfunding site leetchi.com. While funds for François Michel Saada, Yoav Hattab and Yoram Cohen garnered only €4,166, €13,204 and €683 respectively, the campaign for the widow and orphans of Philippe Braham had raised over €160,000 from 2,606 donors as of Wednesday afternoon.Bendayan Louis, a friend of Braham who attended the same synagogue with him, said that he started the campaign because the family does not have a lot of money and that, while what he raised seems like a large amount, “it’s small for a life.”“Philip Braham was our friend and one of the victims of the Kosher supermarket’s attack. He left a wife, Valerie, and young children. Valerie was a stay-at-home mother, she didn’t work. We need to show them our solidarity and help them lighten their financial burdens,” Louis wrote on the campaign page.Braham, he recalled to The Jerusalem Post, was “a very good man [and] always happy, smiling and generous.Last Yom Kippur he gave his chair to a young boy because this young boy wanted to be near his father.”The campaign, he said, showed both the strength of the Jewish community and of social media, which he has used to promote it.People all over the world, “Jewish, gentile and Muslim,” have donated, with money coming from as far afield as the United States, Spain, Israel and Italy.A campaign to raise money to write a Torah scroll in honor of Yoav Hattab, the son of Tunis Chief Rabbi Benjamin Hattab, garnered only €4,760, while another aimed at supporting the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the families of the employees who were killed there last week has thus far brought in over €147,000.
