CBN Israel, Jewish Agency Team Up to Aid Elderly Refugees, Holocaust Survivors Traumatized by War

TEL AVIV, Israel – The danger and fear of war can be felt across Israel. That can especially weigh on the elderly. CBN Israel is working with key groups to help lessen the trauma.

One Tel Aviv apartment complex is jammed full of elderly refugees, Holocaust survivors, and folks who are too needy or too cash-strapped to be on their own.   

With volley after volley of missiles sent their way – almost daily – from Gaza, they face the very real threat of death, should they be out in the streets.  

CBN Israel's National Director Dan Carlson explained, "Israel is a very small place. Everything is close. Bombings that have happened out of Gaza have reached Tel Aviv almost every day."

Danielle Moore, from the Christian Friends of the Jewish Agency, asked, "If you are a person in your 80's or 90's – very frail – how are you even going to manage when there is a siren and you're outside? How are you going to reach a place of safety?"

So, what is happening here is that places such as the Jewish Agency, combined with CBN Israel and others, are providing huge food boxes and water to make sure the residents can stay right here in the building, right near shelters.

"Not to be out on the street to do shopping and errands, and risking that they would be hit by a missile or shrapnel, and caught off-guard when there is a siren – we want to keep them safe," Moore stated. 

And feeling cared for.

"It's just also interacting, smile, hug, just allowing people to know that they're not alone," said Carlson.  

He says Israelis rarely feel safe with enemies surrounding them, and the October 7th fallout has multiplied that sense. "It's like the nation is in trauma right now – the whole nation," Carlson noted.

"And when you think about the elderly, many of them Holocaust survivors, and all the traumas and hardships that they went through in their life, now, being in the situation of siren after siren – understanding that their life is at risk – is something unbearable," Moore said with empathy. 

Tel Aviv residents like Helen Malun say they're very grateful to be cared for to this extent.

"Oh, it's very helpful! I'm about to cry from excitement," she exclaimed.

Resident Valentina Borodin even broke into song. In it, she asked God to bring peace – shalom – to Israel. 

Borodin, who sang in Hebrew, also sings in 11 other languages.

In times like these, the line between Christian and Jew disappears.  

Moore described it this way for CBN partners. "We know that CBN is there when it matters, and that you are there to bring the story of Israel to millions of people that care and support and pray at this time. So it's very important for us to have this friendship with you."  

Though these are trying times, CBN Israel's Ithiel Buehler felt joy prepping and passing out these care packages.

"It doesn't feel good to stay at home and watch TV and the news; and when you go out and do things for the people, and  you see their smiles, and everybody's happy, it just makes me very happy to see that, really," Buehler told us.

And being helped makes many of these cash-strapped elderly people also want to help.

"When they know that they are cared for, it gives them a sense of pride and it gives them also a desire to help others," Moore said. "We've had residents that –with their meager, meager allowance, collect food and packages, and ask us to send it to the soldiers – that they give their five shekels, their two dollars, so that we can also give the care packages to the soldiers at the front.

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