Culture
The City of Life Congregation broadens its humanitarian activities for Holocaust survivors in israel
Michael Beener, Congregational leader at City of Life stresses that he and the other members of the Congregation have been helping Holocaust survivors for more than fifteen years and that until last year they never experienced threats or incitation against them. Beener, 43, married with two children, observes that last year harassment of the Congregation started for no reason at all.
By Itzhak Rabihiya / SNN, Space Network News
The City of Life Congregation broadens its humanitarian activities for Holocaust survivors, senior citizens and residents of Sederot despite threats and harassment by religious extremists in the city.
Hundreds of Holocust survivors, eldery and underprivileged persons will continue to receive steady humanitarian support by the City of Life Congregation in Sederot. The support includes medication, warm meals, groceries and diapers and walkers, electrical appliances (including fridges, washing machines, air-conditioners), furniture, house repairs, mental and psychological aid and more. Members of the Congregation regret the struggle and threats forced on them by religous extremists in Sederot.
The City of Life Congregation is a volunteer organization that seeks to support residents of Sederot and surroundings and aims its efforts especially at the elderly, at Holocaust survivors, veterans and the impoverished. The Congregation, that has been active since 2006, has lately widened its scope of activity and has recruited dozens of volunteers that presently support hundreds of people in need in Sederot, Netivot and the South, with the aid of funds provided by benefactors from Israel and abroad.
Currently members and volunteers of the Congregation have to cope with an increasing number of provocations against them, such as organized demonstrations against them, threats and harassment by zealots in Sederot.
For years members and volunteers of the City of Life Congregation have been helping the public from their base in a building they rented in the industrial zone of Sederot. They focus their efforts on a few areas of activity, such as giving humanitarian and psychological aid to hundreds of elderly people, to the poor and to Holocaust survivors in Sederot and surroundings. Volunteers of the Congregation frequently visit lonely elders in their houses and spend hours with them, talking and listening to their stories.
The Congregation also provides psychological support to those who suffer from post-traumatic stress following qassam rocket attacks from the Gaza strip by a clinic psychologist and helps people to go to a hotel or to the Hamei Yoav spa during rocket attacks on Sederot. They also organize concerts and musical evenings, provide professional counseling for couples with relationship issues and a wide variety of additional support, amounting to hundreds of thousands of sheqels annually.
The Congregation is presently developing more projects. It has, for instance, chosen tens of families of new immigrants in need that will receive meals on a regular base.
At the same time the Congregation holds community and cultural events in the building that they use as a humanitarian storage place, on shabbat morning, including prayer, torah studies and social gatherings of members of the Congregation, messianic Jews living in Sederot.
Michael Beener, Congregational leader at City of Life stresses that he and the other members of the Congregation have been helping Holocaust survivors for more than fifteen years and that until last year they never experienced threats or incitation against them. Beener, 43, married with two children, observes that last year harassment of the Congregation started for no reason at all. “All we want” says Beener “is to continue with our humanitarian and voluntary aid for the benefit of hundreds of Holocaust survivors and impoverished people in the area and to give them warmth, love, compassion and support during these hard times, without disturbances and threats against us”.
The City of Life Congregation has managed to work under the radar of the media from its storage place they rented in the industrial area of Sederot. The City of Life Congregation is an excellent example of modest and important social involvement and the Congregation collaborates with multiple social authorities. The Congregation has decided to expose its projects in order to enable more Holocaust survivors in Sederot and surroundings to benefit from their services.
Photo credit: The City of Life Congregation
Stories for you more +
