In Rishon LeZion, volunteers spent half an hour trying to find the family of a fallen soldier only to be told that they had moved years ago. After being directed to another part of town they found the soldier’s mother sitting on steps, surrounded by soldiers who had come to comfort her. “Sleep? Now?” she replied when Rachel Greenblatt urged her to rest a little. “I haven’t slept in weeks. How do you expect me to sleep now?” “You cannot look these mothers in the eyes,” says Rachel.
But as the words of one mother of a fallen soldier show, there is no doubt that Ima LeIma is a success. “It’s natural that when such a disaster happens, your family and friends are there to support and strengthen you,” said the mother of twenty-year-old Staff Sergeant Bnaya Rubel of Holon, who was killed in a battle with Hamas gunmen in southern Gaza. “But when people who don’t know you go out of their way to show you they care, it helps catch the little fragments of a broken heart, sliver after sliver, helping it to become whole again.”
The Next Step “We have an obligation to show our thanks for the sacrifice made by the soldiers and their families and therefore we intend to nurture the connection that was made,” says Rav Shlomo Raanan, director of Ayelet Hashachar. As one of the first steps, together with Rav Simcha Kook, chief rabbi of Rehovot, Rav Raanan will be setting up the wounded soldiers with learning partners. Mothers of fallen soldiers will also be paired up with women who have suffered a similar loss. “Ima LeIma is about building images. It wasn’t a one-way giving – both sides were moved. As we see the impact, perhaps more such organizations will be set up throughout the country,” says Dr. Landau. Indeed, several projects that perpetuate the memory of the fallen soldiers while broadcasting a message of unity are in the pipe-line: a sefer Torah, a shul and an organization that will offer aid to the many women in Israel who lack a support system to see them through the months after giving birth.
“We saw that we, as charedi women, we are able to give hope and breathe life into broken souls. We learned that the fear of how people will look at us and what to say is not real. When we come to love and share real pain nothing can stand in our way,” says Rachel Greenblatt. As to the trepidation of the volunteers, several of the mothers told the volunteers, “Every Jew has his own role to play.”
* * * * *
Letter Included in Every Ima LeIma Package
My precious sister,
We haven’t spoken for many years, far too many years, but now it’s important to me that you know that I think about you day and night. Our lives are entwined with one another. We share a blood relationship, blood that never dries. We share a neshama and I want to let you know that I am with you through your struggles, both silent and loud, always embracing you, always loving, even without words.
I hold your hand now, my sister. Your tears fall on my shoulders and my tears moisten your hair. I feel with your pain, a pain too terrible to bear, the pain of losing a child. The light in your home has been put out but the flame of light and the charm of youth that is left in your world will always shine like a thousand suns – a light that will never go out.