The victory of the Menashe Family – Newsletter of Parashat “Vayakhel-Pekudey” ›

A protest for public housing. 11.3.2012. Jerusalem. photo by: Hamaabara / Alon Sherf

Parashat “Vayakhel-Pekudey”: the weekly newsletter of “Rabbis for Human Rights”

Although Israel is in a state of war with Gaza, we have not left the social struggle of the families in public housing. We volunteered to fight for the Menashe family from Givat Shmuel and called the Prime Minister, the Housing Minister and Amidar’s director to stop the eviction of the family into the street which was due to take place March 14^th. Itzik Menashe was refused the right to continue living in his parents’ Amidar apartment. Itzik and his wife are unemployed and their financial situation does not enable them to rent an apartment. Recently, after long and painful treatments they had a son. Let’s work together to prevent their eviction into the street. An Important Update: The eviction of the Menashe family will be frozen for the next half year. Thank you all for the help! Shabbat Shalom.

Rabbi Idit Lev, in her Dvar Torah of “Vayakhel Pekudey” which deals with the building of the Tabernacle, finds a connection between the people of Israel’s contributions to the Tabernacle to the taxes modern Israelis pay to the State. She asks how we lost the joy of paying taxes and what the social connection is to the trust we have in the State of Israel today?

Donate and volunteer

• We need urgently Volunteers during the day to our rights center in Hadera – to help in promoting social justice issues. Please contact Nico: 050-2003979, nocosoco@gmail.com

• Urgent! Donate to the charity fund for those whose human rights were violated – in order to build animals’ pen and save the sheep of Ta’ale owned by the residents in South Hebron Hills. Please call our office: 02-6482757.

We got diffrents responses to the post “What do we learn from the massacre in the Book of Esther: a public appeal“:

• Purim is joy ›Dudu Palma 
• The Book of Esther – The Sub-Text version › David Sperber
• The evil in every one of us › Rabbi Dubi Hayun
• Prohibited murder › Rabbi Yuval Sherlo

Israel grants public housing for two groups as whole societies – for worthy social purposes: it grants the agricultural sector with cheap land of the Israel Land Administration in order to encourage agriculture; and it grants few of the weaker populations with public housing for reasons of social empowerment (Adv. Bekki Cohen-Keshet’s article was first published on “The Marker” Newsletter).

On Monday, March 12th a hearing on the issue of Hushiya family took place in the Supreme Court. We submitted an appeal against the army and the settlers of Susya in South Hebron Hills for preventing the Hushiya family access to their lands and for harassing them. In the response, the army tried to shirk its responsibility and to pass the discussion on to the civil course. We opposed this and referred them and the court to an article in “Haaretz” written by Haim Levinson from the above date. The State asked for a deferment of a few months in order to check the petitioners claims. The court will give its decision within a week.

To this day, Palestinians are being legally evacuated from their properties in East Jerusalem due to the application of a racist 1950 Israeli law. This piece was originally published in Hebrew on on Haoketz and English on 972 Magazine.

Shabbat Shalom