To Honor Slain Sons, Families Send 1000s of Purim Gifts to Diaspora

Published: 
March 15, 2017

Source: Times of Israel

 

Israelis departing Ben-Gurion International Airport last week delivered 2,500 Purim gift bags to Jews around the world as part of a project in memory of Gil-ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach. The three Israeli teenage boys were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian terrorists as they headed home from their West Bank yeshiva in June 2014. The project, The Jewish Connection, is an initiative of a non-profit organization founded by the boys’ parents to further and strengthen the international Jewish solidarity demonstrated during the weeks between the boys’ kidnapping and discovery of their bodies.

Ofir Shaer, father of Gil-ad, told The Times of Israel the families tracked deliveries of the gifts to destinations in 80 different countries. The figure is based on where travelers’ flights were headed, as well as social media reports by Israelis who had successfully delivered the packages.

High school students at the Yachad School in Modiin packed the Purim gift bags, or mishloach manot as they are called in Hebrew. Each contained treats, as well as a copy of the Scroll of Esther and a special letter from the families of the three boys.

The letter provides some background on the Purim holiday, as well as its attendant customs of giving gifts to friends and charity to the poor.

“Then and now, throughout the generations, and in every country where they have lived, the Jewish people were sustained by their exceptional unity, their obligation of mutual responsibility, their love, their concern for the weak and the defenseless,” the letter said. “Mishloach manot are an expression of a shared destiny, a legacy throughout the generation of unity, or the imperative to be there for one another, for the promise of ‘Am Yisrael Chai,'” the families wrote.

Read the entire article at The Times of Israel.

Updated: Mar. 29, 2017
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