Terror victims’ families receive help

On Nov. 18, a terror attack in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof in Israel left five people dead — four rabbis and a Druze police officer. Their surviving family members continue on in their absence.
As soon as news of the attack reached the Five Towns, Rambam Mesivta students gathered in an assembly to discuss the event. They decided they wanted to do something to help the victims’ families.
The sophomore class created a webpage equipped with links to click on for donating money to the family of Zidan Seif, the slain Druze officer who responded to the scene where the rabbis were killed. The Druze people are Arabs, they typically speak Arabic, but exist as a separate religious entity from Islam with its own courts and spiritual leadership. Since 1948, when Israel came into existence, the Druze people have served in the Israel Defense Forces and the nation’s border police.
It was amazing to see the immediate implementation of the humanitarian values that the school seeks to instill in their students, said Rambam’s 10th-grade religion teacher, Rabbi Aryeh Young. “Our educational model must inspire our students not only to think and to discuss, but when necessary, and most importantly, to act,” he said. “One must know that he or she is never too young to make a concrete difference in our world.”
One student who helped create the webpage, Gabriel Greenbaum, said that he was shocked when he heard about the attack. “My family has lived nearby that area where the attack happened,” the Woodmere resident said. “What hit home for me was the fact that there are now children over there with fathers who went out to pray and work in the morning and never came home.”
When the students went live with the webpage, Greenbaum said they weren’t sure how much money they were going to raise. “We weren’t sure who would contribute, but we had a goal of $25,000,” he said. “We shared the link to the webpage with our friends and family. From there it went viral.” Since then, the class has raised about $100,000.