History | How we started
Our Director, Rabbi Y. Y. Rottenberg began the work of Lev U’Neshama in 1994 when he became aware of the financial problems facing Tzfat’s young families. Tzfat, one of Israel’s four holy cities, has been classified as a development town. It is located high in the mountains of the Northern Galilee about 24 Kilometers south of the Lebanese border. Approximately 25,000 citizens from countries throughout the world call Tzfat home. There are few industries here and jobs are hard to get. Even if a person desires to work, often there are no available jobs.
Political tensions, a drastic decrease in tourism and escalating unemployment have caused a downturn in the Tzfat economy. Local social workers have reported to us that there are at least 3,000 files in the city hall that represent people needing some kind of help. If each of these files represents even four people that could be as many as 12,000 people in need assistance - at least half of the city's population.
As a result of this downturn in the economy, it has come to our attention
that more and more Tzfat families are unable to pay for food. As a result,
many small grocery store owners are subsidizing their customers by extending
credit. Some are even at risk of losing their businesses and personal livelihood.
One storekeeper who is personally known to us told us he was feeding 25
families from his store’s profits. He has told us that there are
probably as many as 100 families who shop at his store who he could help
if he had the money. Sadly one small Tzfat store has gone out of business
because he allowed too much credit shopping and was unable to pay his bills.
As of December 2002, Rena Cohen, Yaffa Smolensky and Faga Weiss became involved and the program was expanded as we began to focus more on the increasing needs of families in the community in general. There is no food shortage in Israel; just a shortage of cash with which to buy it.
