For several weeks of this year, Ben Gurion Airport was not offering flights to incoming or outgoing passengers because of the increased activity of the war. . People from America and other countries were not able to return and people in Israel were unable to use their prepaid tickets to return to their home countries. Not that any country but Israel should be home to Jews, but that’s the way it is to many Jews from the diaspora. It seemed to me to be a type of “handwriting on the wall” showing that maybe the door of return will not always be open. Scary thought.
We had daily sirens during this time, sometimes twice daily and I turned off my phone at bedtime because I didn’t want a 30 second warning to get to the shelter. The city would sound the alarm a few seconds before the expected bomb or interception and since I cannot run anywhere with my injured leg, we sit in a corner of our living room that has no windows or outside doors. This is what is recommended for those who cannot make it to a shelter. Kind relatives in America have asked me why I don’t escape for the time being. Well frankly, I am not interested. There is a sense of protection all about me. I can’t speak for others, though.
After the bombing started up again, my neighbor asked us if we could use food. (Hot trays of prepackaged kosher food that comes from a school five nights a week.) And did we know anybody else? So we sort of “enrolled” in the volunteer job of delivering food to those who want an evening meal. I am still not sure where all the food comes from. We know that part of it comes from a high school down the road. Part comes from the army. Sometimes there are meals from a Kosher catering restaurant. And there is a lot of food!
My husband and I drive our golf cart around the town delivering to people who have requested an evening meal. Some people have several children so they get several trays of a protein, a vegetable and a starch like rice, couscous or potatoes. Sometimes we have 50 or 60 meals to deliver.
I have asked myself what the Eternal had in mind in getting us involved in this. As I watch and think, I see a lot. There are people who are poor but their kids won’t eat the healthy food we deliver. They want Schnitzel or hamburgers. Too bad, so sad. Mom will just have to keep working to put food on the table for them. I see kids who have never been disciplined and parents who are run ragged trying to please them. Same generational problems here as in other countries. Others, perhaps widows who live in a two room apartment in a high rise, or russians who are elderly and have no pension from Russia, or even South Africans, are grateful and never complain. One dear Ukrainian woman is still working her fingers to the bone to provide for herself and the older woman she lives with. She sends me a thank you every day and once a week buys us a chocolate bar to sort of “pay back” what we do for her.
So what does all this have to do with Manna? Remember the manna? –How people would go out on Shabbat and look for it? Well this manna comes only on the 5 working days, sometimes a bit on Friday morning, but none on Shabbat. So on Thursday, we try to give them an extra meal to help carry them over. Some put up extra trays in their freezers. However there are a lot of them that are hoarding food. Some tell me their fridge and freezer are stuffed. I wonder if it will go rank and grow worms like the Biblical manna. (And yes, I too put things in the big freezer! Sometimes I can send extra food to people this way or have a Shabbat meal already prepared for us so I can take things a bit easier on Friday.)
But how is today different? And what is HaShem saying to us? That there will be provision. That He is looking out for us and as we help others, we get a double blessing. Imagine! Free Food! And you don’t have to pass a poverty test to get it. You can just accept it because you ask. Wow!
Also I find that people who used to see us as non observant, or non practicing Jews because we don’t respect all the traditional rabbinic rules are showing tremendous respect. They comment about what a great “mitzvah” we are doing and nobody has even questioned the fact that in our house we do not use separate dishes for milk and meat or other things and we drive an electric golf cart on Shabbat! Yet when people receive a blessing like this, the importance of all this tradition seems to dim. So maybe this is what has been stewing in Heaven’s pot!
Of course I do not use the excuse of their ignorance to force them to break the rules. Every dish we distribute is either sealed in it’s original packaging or packed into a new disposable plastic pot. We want to honor them as they honor us. (Even though we believe that their tradition is completely out of line with the Bible, still it is not us to decide other people’s standards).
Have there been trials? You bet! We get pretty disgusted when people tell us that their kids don’t like certain things. And others who do not say thank you! But that seems to dim a bit when we remember Elena, the Red Hat lady who gives us a chocolate bar each week! And by the way, we never forget her and Masha, the little old widow whom she lives with! Then there is the 11 year old that comes to help us. He loves to meet new people and go out on the golf cart with my husband. Last time I told him that I would reward him with a bowl of ice cream when he got back. So it was 5 o’clock when they left and he was starved, so he told me that in order to eat ice cream he would have to eat a non meat meal. I suggested he take along one of the vegetarian meals and a plastic fork. He was delighted and when he got back he ate two bowls of ice cream! I call him my little priest because he is so kind and he has priestly DNA. (He is a Cohen).
Something that irks me is people who will not read their messages and then expect me to call them at the last minute. Just imagine– I have 35 families on our list, don’t they care enough to check my general message which I send out and give me a thumbs up if they want something? And there is another lady who never answers me but expects me to open her door and put the meals in the inner stairwell!
So we are learning about humanity! Entitlement, complacency, go along to get along…but then others who have suffered and show real gratitude and fresh innocence! Overall, I am grateful for the tremendous insights into how people tick and how and why things happened in the Torah, things that maybe we didn’t fully understand before! Were the Israelites in the wilderness any different than the Israelites today?–Even though we are in the Promised Land?
