Lifestyles Magazine
May, 2004
Food for Thought

By Aviva M. K. Sieradski

A dash of childhood dreams. A handful of business sense. A cup full of volunteers and 150,000 families going hungry every day. It’s a pretty heavy recipe that adds up to over 120,000 meals a month. Hazon Yeshaya, founded by child-refugee-turned-successful-businessman Abraham Israel, is providing those meals as well as a host of other services for Israel’s needy.

Israel was born in Egypt, where it became very bad for the Jews with Nasser in power. Compounded by the fact that Israel completely trounced Egypt in the Sinai War, the threatening atmosphere forced his entire extended family to flee to France with nothing but the clothes on their backs. There the family held a meeting to decide where to go as refugees. There was immediate entry to Brazil, Israel and Italy, but Israel’s father held out to go to the land of opportunity, America.

“Thank God we did because that it was, the land of opportunity,” he reminisces. His uncles and aunts argued that they would need to wait four years for visas, but the father said, “We don’t care, we’ll stick it out,” and they did for two and a half years, surviving poverty by eating in soup kitchens.

Israel recounts, “You should never know what it is to have to depend on other people to feed you, but on the other hand thank God that there are these places that do give us nourishment in order to survive. As a result, I waited my entire life to pay back society and to help people who were in the same situation as us.”

In America, Israel learned accounting and business administration—“the best topics because I used it for my businesses that I opened.” After graduating Baruch College in 1969, he landed his first job with David Tawil, the in-house accountant for a national chain of department stores with outlets from New York to California. There Israel learned a lot about distribution and expansion, “expertise I utilize today when expanding all over the country in my soup kitchens.” He became a shoe importer and did very well.

He says that “the success I have is, of course, from the Almighty, not from the strength of my hands, but He wants us to extend all of our efforts.” Israel did.
 

“I never thought there was this kind of poverty. After all, I stayed in five-star hotels and visited all the sites. You would never think there was poverty, that this was not Africa. But I was dead wrong.”
-Abraham Israel


Eight years ago, he decided the time had come to fulfill his lifelong dream of helping others. “So I came to Israel. And it fell from the Almighty in my lap, literally.” Walking down the street in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Geula (right next to where his main distribution center is now), he saw a young woman with a cane trying to cross the street. He helped her across. She told him she felt wobbly, so she asked if he could walk her to her apartment just to make sure she wouldn’t fall.

When he got there and opened the door, he couldn’t believe what he saw. There was no refrigerator. Her sink was a bucket on the floor under a faucet. There was no electricity. She had cardboard windows—she couldn’t afford to change the windowpanes. The first thing in Israel’s mind was “What are you going to eat today?”

“If I’m lucky, I’ll have yogurt,” was her reply. He told her, “I don’t understand. You are sick. You are not well. How is it that the government doesn’t help you?”

She answered that the government was giving her (at that time, now there have been even more severe cutbacks) 1200 shekels a month. She used it to buy her medicine, which though subsidized was still very expensive, so she had no money for food. Her name was Ronit. She has multiple sclerosis. Now in a wheelchair, she was the first client of Hazon Yeshaya and still is to this day.

Recounts Israel, “I was flabbergasted, to say the least, because I always came to Israel, to Europe, to the Far East for my work as an importer. I always stayed on the way for one or two days in Israel. I never thought there was this kind of poverty. After all, I stayed in five-star hotels and visited all the sites. You would never think there was poverty, that this was not Africa. But I was dead wrong.

“I asked her if there were any other people in this neighborhood living in this kind of poverty. She told me she had a neighbor across the street. I said, ‘Let’s go visit.’ They didn’t want to let us in but I went in. And I was stunned again to see a family of six living in a room of nothingness.

“I immediately took it upon myself to open, with my own funds, a tiny kitchen with a stove like we have at home and took an elderly woman to cook meals for 17 people, three families. They would come every day to pick up the food from this cook. By word of mouth, the 17 became 50, 100, 200, and today we are preparing nationwide 5000 meals a day. We are looking into further expansions—of course all  dependent on future financial support.”

His education, coupled with his business experience, laid the foundation from where to launch his dream into reality and apply business acumen to nonprofit necessity: Hazon Yeshaya, the operation that has become the largest soup kitchen in the country.

“Experience is everything. I feel that a lot of institutions started are by people with no knowledge of business, especially as regards budgets and monetary things. I use my business experience to be able to meet my responsibility, to keep the nonprofit organization afloat. Hazon Yeshaya, through its seven branches, four of which are in Yerushalayim, provides over 120,000 hot meals nationwide each month.

Israel makes clear that Hazon Yeshaya is the only institution that serves meals 365 days a year. “No exaggeration, including fast days.” It is also one of the only 8% of Israeli nonprofit organizations that have a tax exemption in Israel because it has passed the rigorous checks required.

“The government sees that we’re 100% on the up-and-up,” Israel beams. Hazon Yeshaya also has tax exemptions in America and England with Canada pending.

And recently, Israel and Hazon Yeshaya were honored with a special award from the World Zionist Organization at its annual dinner in Jerusalem. Some 600 community and organizational leaders, rabbis, educators, media professionals and public opinion makers from Israel and abroad participated in the event. The award recognized Hazon Yeshaya for its ongoing humanitarian work to combat  hunger and poverty throughout Israel. 

Hazon Yeshaya may have the reputation, but because of its limited finances, Israel is very careful about to whom his organization provides services. “It would be nice if we could feed everybody,” he smiles, “but we can’t.”

The organization has yellow notebooks full of case files where it checks every man, woman and child to make sure that he’s really in need. Says Israel,  “We do it with dignity; we don’t embarrass them, but we want to ascertain that we are feeding the right people. The process of checking each individual is so tedious, time-consuming and difficult. This is total dedication we have over here. And our donors, God bless them, are thrilled that we are doing what we are doing because we know then that the money is going to the right people and not just anybody that walks in.”

One of the ways the organization does this is by working in close contact with government officials. Israel explains, “We work hand in hand with the city. The city and government refers to us desperate cases. There are five levels that determine one’s need, and one is the worst.” Hazon Yeshaya gets a lot of those cases including people with cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and the mentally ill.

“We also give to many abused women and to women that became close to Arabs and are now pregnant. We work with the organizations that get the girls out of the Arab villages and put them in hiding places—we supply these organizations with hot food for the girls.

“When government funding cut into educational budgets, Hazon Yeshaya stepped in to work closely with the needs of individual schools. We now provide hot meals to poor children with Down’s Syndrome who attend a special needs school in the Central Region of Israel.”

Government budget cuts have caused a vast increase in Hazon Yeshaya’s clientele. Israel elucidates, “I’m on my third phase since I started. The first stage was taking care of the sick and 80 - 90-year-old men and women who were unable to cook for themselves, to tend to themselves, to literally help themselves, so I was feeding them. Then, three years ago, with the intifada, I started having a new type of clientele, the suits and ties, people who lost their jobs in high tech or tourism who would come between their job interviews to get food for themselves and their children.

Now we’re in the third stage: The people who used to be middle income that have been pushed under the poverty line because they lost their jobs. Because of the poor economy and the cutbacks in child allowances and social benefits that the new budget the government passed created, someone who was getting 4000 shekels a month is now getting 2500. And with the passing of the last budget, that has been cut down even
more. That causes severe problems.”

Israel believes that one of his most integral programs is the after-school extended day programs. School ends very early in Israel, so these programs keep the kids off the streets. The necessity of this is made evident by his description of a 7-year-old drug dealer. One day, when the program was ending for the day, the girl held the foot of one of the volunteers, begging “Please let me stay here another hour. I don’t want to go out to the big fish (what she called the big children) because they will take advantage of
me.”

“It seems like we’re only giving them a meal, but what we are doing is saving society a lot of problems, present and future.”

Originally, these programs just started in public schools, but then other teachers began seeing that kids didn’t eat and that their grades were suffering. Israelis are doing very poorly on international exams and Israel firmly believes that there is a correlation between these test results and having over 600,000 children living under the poverty line.

Teachers tried to bring sandwiches from their own homes for the kids, but there were so many without food. So they turned to Hazon Yeshaya. Meals are being provided for students in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Yaffo, Sderot, Bat Yam and Rishon L’Tzion. And there is no way that a child from a poor home can pay for a private kindergarten, so Hazon Yeshaya established nursery schools where any child in need can get two meals a day and a basic education. They even have a “Bnei Mitzvah” program. Orphaned children, children from abusive or very dysfunctional homes, or others that would otherwise not have had the opportunity to commemorate their bar/bat mitzvah, get that chance. They participate in a ceremony at the Kotel (Western Wall), enjoy a festive meal in a banquet hall and receive personal gifts to honor the special event.

Israel asserts that these programs are integral for the future of the country. “It seems like we’re only giving them a meal, but what we are doing is saving society a lot of problems, present and future. By keeping these kids in the after-school programs, we’re saving society from them getting into trouble. They’re concentrating on their education. It’s the key to success. If not, they’re not going to be a positive asset to society. They won’t get into the army  or get a good job because they’re drug addicts or thieves. So what we’re doing is ensuring that these kids will grow up, go to the army, hopefully continue their higher education, get married and bring up a nice family. It’s a whole win-win situation for the country and for everybody around.”

A study done by the Brookdale Institute in conjunction with the Israeli Ministry of Health and the National Insurance Institute revealed that 22% of Israel’s population doesn’t get enough food to be healthy. Twenty percent of these families are new immigrants. And 24 of Israeli families have to choose between food and electricity or food and medicine. Hazon Yeshaya is doing its best to provide for them with what limited resources it has.

Some examples of a normal work day at Hazon Yeshaya illustrate Israel’s point more and more. One woman from Neve Yaakov comes and feeds 20 kids from abusive or dysfunctional families. She has to supervise the feedings. We have volunteers that actually go in to the homes to make sure the parents don’t steal the food from the kids.

“And one day, as I was leaving for an overseas trip, a lady call, begging, ‘Please bring me six meals now.’ I told her that she needed to be registered and what’s the urgency? She answered, ‘My neighbor has six kids and they haven’t eaten in two days.’ In Geula. It happens in every neighborhood. People are too embarrassed to tell people they need bread.”

The organization has volunteers from all over the world that comprise 95% of its workforce. One lady from Sao Paulo said she thought there was nothing in the world worse than the Brazilian slums until she came to Jerusalem. She is delivering 50 meals a day.

The soup kitchens are full of smiling volunteers of all ages from all over the world. They make healthy meals with meat, pasta, soup, vegetables, salads, and bread. It’s the only meal most of these people get each day.

When Israel comes to the door of his main center in Geula (which also serves as the distribution center for clothes, shoes, as well as holiday packages), his clients greet him warmly. Just on the way into the interview, a toothless old Sephardi lady blows him a kiss. In the kitchen, an Ethiopian girl is checking the rice in accordance with Jewish law.

Israel stresses that it’s important people are fed with dignity, “not to just say, ‘Oh they’re poor and pathetic, just throw it in the pot.’”

Israel is looking to expand his operation into Beer Sheva and Netanya. He shudders, “You won’t believe how the Ethiopians live over there in the south of Netanya: barefoot, kids not going to school. The same is true in southern communities like Beer Sheva Ofakim, Netivot. I’m hoping, with modesty, that between my expertise and this article we will open up more doors to help other people. I emphasize I take no salary or compensation for the work that I do; I do this on a totally volunteer basis. I put in 15-18 hours a day and I’m traveling six months a year all over the world to get the word out. It’s hard to believe that there is such poverty in Israel, and that the government is not helping because it can’t.”

Your donation means a lot to the poor families of Israel who rely on Hazon Yeshaya for assistance during these difficult economic times.

For more information, contact:  or call +972-2-538-1411 or visit www.hazonyeshaya.org.