The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has partnered with various government integration agencies in Israel under a new initiative ahead of the Rosh Hashana holiday, with the aim of providing some 10,500 gift cards to 5,000 families who arrived from Ukraine in recent month.
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The gift cards, whose total worthy stand at some five million shekels ($1.5 million), are part of the IFCJ's drive to help the elderly, lone soldiers and others in need ahead of the High Holy Days, using a budget of some 28 million shekels ($8 million).
The upcoming initiative is aimed at helping Ukrainians who fled the war and will have each family get as much as $435-worth of gift cards. Organizers note that they are mindful of this rising cost of living and the uptick in the number of those who have turned for help.
Yulia, who arrived from Ukraine in recent months with her seven-year-old twin daughters and five-year-old son, will celebrate her first Rosh Hashana in Israel. She had long considered making aliyah, and after the Russian bombed a military base near her village she had to hide with her children in a basement for two weeks, after which she decided to realize her long-held dream. "We boarded a train to the Polish border, with the ride taking more than a day," she told Israel Hayom. "We sat on the floor of the car wrapping ourselves with clothes to keep warm. I was worried for my children's lives, I wasn't sure we would survive," she recalled.
She says that the children, who now live in their new home in Petah Tikva, learned in school that "Rosh Hashana is also a holiday of hope; I hope that my family who stayed behind in Ukraine will join me this year, and that we will embrace and won't separate ever again."
The organization has helped Jews who had been displaced by providing them with food, medicine, and critical equipment using emergency grants worth $18 million.
"In the wake of the war, the IFCJ has been active in the Ukrainian Jewish community, setting up an aliyah facility near the border through which immigrants continue to pass through on their way to Israel," IFCJ's President Yael Eckstein told Israel Hayom. "We are proud of having the privilege of helping them thanks to more than 600,000 Israel-loving donors who once again stepped up to help Jews in need," she continued.
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