Anyone who paid a visit to the Western Wall before dawn on Sunday morning might have been surprised to find more than a dozen young yeshiva students praying the Vasikin service.
But staff from the Nefesh B’Nefesh aliyah organization would have simply smiled.
One of the organization’s staff members is married to an alumnus of Yeshiva Netiv Aryeh in the Old City of Jerusalem – and she had reached out to the yeshiva for help with a special, urgent project.
The aliyah organization had made a special collection for the new Ukrainian immigrants and refugees, but never expected the overwhelming response to that appeal.
A truck was scheduled to arrive at the NBN office by 7 am to take the massive amount of donated items, but at least 15 people were needed to get everything on to the truck in time.
“We got more donations that I ever imagined and didn’t know how to handle it all, but I knew I could ask Yeshivat Netiv Aryeh for help,” an NBN staffer said. “The shuk shleppers were here before 7 am and they had even davened first!”
The yeshiva students arrived in plenty of time to get the job done.
“For two hours they worked non-stop in a massive – massive – room full of all good stuff for the new olim chadashim (new immigrants) arriving from Ukraine,” yeshiva administrator Rabbi Chanan Bina told JewishPress.com.
“It was a beautiful chesed from the students of Yeshiva Netiv Aryeh, who came together with Nefesh B’Nefesh for the new Ukrainian immigrants,” he said.
