Sharon Evans founded Adopt-a-Family, a project of the Coalition Against Terror, a nonprofit organization that matches Jewish organizations worldwide.
In fact, much of this week\’s aid talk may be political playacting intended to give a boost to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in his reelection bid, not to produce real shekels in the Israeli treasury.
Imagine a cellphone ringing and ringing. Put it in a backpack. Put the backpack next to the wreckage of a bus mangled by a bomb. A rescue worker reaches into the backpack to turn the cellphone off because he cannot bear to hear the voice on the other end of the line.
With that image, from an account given in Israeli papers, I asked my congregants on the first day of Passover to help our sisters and brothers in Israel. We cannot win Israel\’s battles nor restore to life those who have died. But we can buy wheelchairs for the injured. We can pay for physical and emotional therapy for those whose lives are scarred by terror. We can provide social services for the shattered lives of the 400 children orphaned by the recent attacks.
On Sept. 28 the Jewish representatives agreed, after an emotional 45-minute discussion, to do something they\’d never before dreamed of: vote against foreign aid.
Never in his wildest dreams did Astrid Kuci believe that he would fall in love with Israel. In fact, he hardly knew anything about Israel.
There was, if you listened carefully, an undertone of anxiety beneath the hoopla last month,when Israel laid out plans to wean itself off U.S. economic aid.While politicians and pundits celebrated Israel\’s generous offer to give up its $3 billion-a-year entitlement, some Jewish activists werequietly wondering what it would do to Jewish political clout.\n
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