Grapevine: In another theater

IN EVERY war in which Israel is involved, the country’s entertainers unflinchingly risk their lives to sing to the troops and play music for them. But some entertainers are actually in combat units, such as Jerusalem-born-and-raised singer Idan Amedi, who is serving in the North in a combat unit of the engineering corps. “This is not the first time that we have learned that our fate is in our own hands,” he says.

Israeli supermarket deliveries come with swastikas

■ AFTER ALL the shocks to which we have been subjected over the past month, we’re still not immune to the sight of a swastika on an Israeli building, signboard, or packaging. Thus residents of Talpiot were shocked last Friday when their orders from Shufersal came marked with a swastika on the packaging. The management of the company was equally shocked.

Shufersal CEO Uri Wasserman, in a letter distributed on Sunday, said that there is zero tolerance for such behavior. The culprit, an employee, has been dismissed and arrested following an official complaint to the police made by the company.

Reminding employees that they have been working day and night within the framework of Shufersal’s contribution to the war effort, Wasserman asked them to take greater responsibility in order to prevent such criminal acts as the swastika incident in the future; and he apologized for the emotional hurt that had been inflicted on the store’s customers.

Making space for refugees

■ THIS WEEK, with the announcement by the Education Ministry that classes would gradually be resumed, Yad Vashem opened its International School building for Holocaust Studies to some 300 students from southern communities who are temporarily living in and around Jerusalem, so that their studies would not be disrupted by the war. Classes range from grades 1 through 12. The Yad Vashem Directorate’s initiative is in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and the Regional Council of Sdot Hanegev.

As praiseworthy as this is, there are areas in Yad Vashem and many other institutions in Jerusalem that could easily be converted into sleeping quarters. Not an ideal arrangement, but when there are not enough hotel rooms, other solutions have to be employed. People cannot be left sitting on their suitcases without a roof over their heads. In many instances, they don’t have suitcases. They left their homes with little more than the clothes on their backs.

When Nir Barkat was mayor of Jerusalem, he introduced a system whereby owners of apartments that remained unoccupied for most of the year would pay double rates and taxes.

World Zionist Organization chairman Yaakov Hagoel went even further, sending a letter to all overseas WZO members requesting that those who own apartments in Jerusalem make them available to the organization to allot to southern evacuees. He pledged that the WZO would keep the apartments clean and would be responsible for any repairs required as a result of damage incurred during the period in which evacuees lived there.

Nonetheless, many buildings throughout Jerusalem feature For Sale and For Rent signs, which would indicate that they are unoccupied. Moreover, not every apartment in the glut of high-rise residential buildings has been sold, which means that a lot are empty. Are they being used? If not, this might be a boon to real estate developers, in that if there are any faults in the apartments, they will be discovered by the initial occupants, namely evacuees, and these faults could be repaired before the apartments are sold.

Haredi businessmen help make apartments available for refugees

■ AS FAR as making apartments available goes, kudos to haredi businessmen Yossi Schwartz and Yaakov Lifshitz, the owners of Hutzot Yerushalayim, which specializes in residential projects for the haredi community as well as Evacuate and Build (Pinui Binui) projects for the general community.

The two partners have a building scheduled for reconstruction in which most of the owners have already moved out and handed over their properties to Hutzot Yerushalayim. The partners decided to delay work on the building and to make six apartments available to families from the South.

Though nowhere near as fancy as a hotel, each apartment is a private space with separate bedrooms for parents and children and a kitchen in which family meals can be prepared that are familiar to the taste buds.

Volunteers help out

■ THE MIND boggles at the many things that can be done by volunteers to provide for the needs of people from both the North and the South who have been displaced from their homes and communities. In Shabbat services at Hazvi Yisrael synagogue in Talbiyeh on Saturday, Marsha Wachsman, who chairs the board of the congregation, announced that there had been a request for the use of washing machines to enable evacuees to do their laundry. Apparently, laundry services are not included in all the places where they are being accommodated.

Praying for the hostages

■ AT THE Jerusalem Great Synagogue last Sunday, there was a virtual Bring Them Home ceremony, with the Great Synagogue Choir singing special psalms in honor of the hostages, and the name of each hostage was sounded aloud. There was also a candle-lighting ceremony in memory of victims of the Hamas massacre and the war – as flickers of hope that the hostages would soon be reunited with their families.

A delightful wedding

■ A DELIGHTFUL first-person story by Aviva Bahbut appears in the Chabad online magazine. The introductory paragraph reads: “You can wish me ‘Mazal Tov!’ Yisrael and I just got married in Jerusalem. You don’t know us? No problem! Neither did the 400 or so people who showed up at our wedding.”

It was a second marriage for both. Yisrael has spent most of his adult life in the military and had been called up for duty near Gaza. Although they had planned to marry in November, Aviva felt the need to tie the knot sooner.

They decided on a small basic affair in the office of the Rabbinate because relatives and friends were either in the army or living too far away. Yisrael was at his base, and all the preparations were left to Aviva. There was no need for invitations, meals, or even fancy clothes.

The one thing she needed was to follow the tradition of presenting her bridegroom with a tallit – a prayer shawl. The problem was that she didn’t know anything about choosing a tallit. So she turned to Rabbi Abba Marzel of Chabad of Har Hotzvim. They had never met before, but once she told him about the wedding, within a matter of hours he had arranged for her to have a tallit. Aviva asked him if he could bring a few people to the wedding to congratulate the newlyweds.

He did better than that. He posted her request on Facebook, and the response was overwhelming. Two people from Ramot helped organize a hall, food, photographer, musicians, and a DJ, and people came from all over to join in the singing and dancing. All this in the midst of a war – because everyone loves a wedding.

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