[COMMUNICATED] When tragedy hits children, they want to go back to normal as much as possible. They don’t want others to feel sorry for them. They just want to be kids. This applies to orphans as much as any other children whom tragedy hit.
At no other time of the year do orphans feel slighted more than summer time. They see their counterparts getting on minivans and tour buses, headed for the beach or pool, horseback riding, water parks, and other amusement parks.
But orphans do not get these outings. Their orphanage caretakers are pained for them: They want so much for their orphans to have happy childhoods, too. They simply do not have the funds to take them.
HaRav Baruch Mordechai Ezrachi, the prominent Rosh Yeshiva of Ateres Yisrael in Yerushalayim, is also pained at the plight of orphans. Desperate to see them get the happy childhood they deserve like all children, the Rav initiated a Kupat Ha’Ir Special Urgency Campaign to help these orphans have a good summer, too. In particular, the Kupat Ha’Ir orphans did not have family to go to, and are therefore under the auspices of a reputable Kupat Ha’Ir orphanage. Watch the heartfelt Rav Ezrachi statement here.
Here are some case studies of orphans:
1) Shmulik, 8 years old, whose parents passed away in a car accident, struck by a head-on collision with a truck.
2) Rivki, 12 years old, whose parents died of terminal illness one year apart from each other.
3) Twins, Ephraim and Naftali, nine years old: Their father passed away while their mother was pregnant with them, and then, this past year, she contracted an infection in the hospital and sadly, didn’t survive.
All of these children are orphans. All of them have siblings who are of course, also orphans. They see other children happily getting on buses to go to the beach, swimming, horseback riding, and amusement parks. They suffer, because they can’t go, an outlet they even more so need because they are orphans.