3 Big-Hearted Israelis by the Lebanese Border
Posted by JewishMom on Oct 29, 2024 in Current Events, Featured, Inspiration, Israel | 0 comments
My daughter spent Shabbat in a gorgeous community 50 kilometers from Lebanon. She was surprised to see that life continues there pretty much as usual. There is on average only one siren a week. And the residents have mostly stayed put.
But there have been certain difficulties, including the fact that the kids can’t attend school because of the restrictions on large gatherings.
The community’s kids have been attending classes by zoom for a year now. But zoom education is (as we moms remember from the pandemic) lacking. So some people with big hearts from central Israel have been doing what they can to help.
My daughter’s friend (whom my daughter was visiting) decided that while her brother is serving in Gaza, she also wants to do what she can for Israel. So she’s taking a 2 week vacation from her job in Jerusalem to volunteer running an art program for this community’s children.
This Shabbat, my daughter met another volunteer, a retired English teacher from Herzliya. Over the past year, determined to do what she can to help to residents of the North, she’s been spending half of every week volunteering with high-school students to help them prepare for their Bagrut exams in English. “My family is scared for me. But I know it’s impossible to prepare for the Bagrut by zoom!”
On the way home, my daughter took a bus that has the most dangerous route in Israel, with stops in the communities and military bases along the Lebanese border.
My daughter was the only passenger who wasn’t a soldier. She asked the driver, a man in his 50s, how he likes driving this route. And this is what he told her:
“At the beginning of the war, I served in the IDF doing reserve duty for a few weeks. After the army released me I still wanted to help the country in whatever way I could. So I decided to become a bus driver for soldiers! I don’t live near here, I live in Afula, so every morning I take the bus for an hour to Kiryat Shmoneh, and the whole day I drive soldiers where they need to go.”
At that point, his phone rang, and he said, “Oh, that’s my daughter calling again, she wants to make sure I’m OK,” he laughed. “I’m OK…