In a story of Tzedakah that makes you weep, AP reports that a Holocaust survivor who passed away this week in New York at the age of 92 bequeathed $100,000 to Hebrew University to fund medical research scholarships. But that’s not all – she was homeless. It seems that she saved every penny she owned in order to give back to the Jewish people and to her community.
According to the New York Daily News, the mystery Holocaust survivor (her name has not been revealed) fled Austria and the Holocaust in 1939 with her mother. When she became homeless, she kept her thousands in a bank account, and only her possessions in the shopping cart that she lived out of on the Upper West Side of New York. She was given warm meals and a place to sleep in the last few years of her life by a Manhattan accountant and his wife, and she left him $100,000 as a thank you.
A story like that makes one pause. If a woman who has survived such atrocities can act with such an open heart, and can sacrifice so much of her life that she barely lives in order that others may one day live better, what more can we do to help our Jewish community?
The Minneapolis Jewish Federation and United Jewish Fund and Council in Saint Paul need your dollars (whether they be $10 or $100,000) to support the essential work they do educating our children, maintaining and strengthening family life, bringing comfort and care to the elderly, and reinforcing and sustaining our connection to the worldwide Jewish community.
Click the links above to learn more about how our local federations support and strengthen our community, and then donate. Because you can. Because we should.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
