This past week saw a tremendous surge of giving and kindness throughout Israel, as tens of thousands of sizable food packages were put together and distributed to needy families from the Golan to Eilat.
A fundamental Passover theme, as written in the Haggada liturgy for the Seder meal, is "All who are hungry, let them come and eat." Among the organizations involved in the tremendous logistics involved in helping fulfill this ideal were/are Yad Eliezer, Orot Chessed, Yad Ezra V'Shulamit, Chabad Houses, Masbia L'Khol Chai Ratzon, the Re'im Association in Hod HaSharon, and many more.
The Hasdei Naomi organization, for instance, with its 5,000 volunteers, distributed food packages to some 10,000 families this holiday season. The work was carried out around the clock throughout the week, and even before. Some 500 tons of fruits and vegetables, five tons of meat and chicken, five tons of cookies, 20 tons each of sugar and rice (for those who eat kitniyot), a ton of matza flour, 10,000 liters of grape juice, hundreds of tons of matzas and much more were distributed.
Some 50% of the products were purchased by Hasdei Naomi directly from the manufacturers, and the others arrived via volunteers who canvassed in supermarkets and the like.
Recently, following the annual charity drive on the holiday of Purim, a veteran charity fund distributor in one of the larger towns in Judea and Samaria said that he is amazed each year anew at the amount of money that changes hands in favor of the needy – "close to 250,000 shekels in one day, in one town alone! People can always find what to complain about – but what happens here on Purim shows what the residents are really made of!"