Har Zion has multiple prayer services every day (click here for more info), and these are important opportunities to offer and receive support – just being together is a much needed blessing during this time of trauma. We encourage everyone to reach into your networks to support family, friends, and colleagues both here and in Israel. If you’d like to pray occasionally in an expanded community, you may
find meaning from the opportunities below:

• Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center invites you to join them in daily prayer services for Israel at 9am PT, 12pm ET, 5pm UK, and 7pm Israel. You can register here to receive a Zoom link to join.
  
  
• We can also hold people who have been affected in our prayers for healing and for redeeming captives. Submit names here, and we will add them to Har Zion’s list of people being kept in our prayers.

Each of us wants to give every ounce of comfort, love, and energy that we can to our brothers and sisters in Israel who are suffering, but we cannot always be caregivers – sometimes we need care as well. This is a devastating time in which we are witnessing true horrors, and we will all need support as the war continues to unfold. Har Zion wants to embrace and care for Israel, and Har Zion wants to embrace and care for you. To schedule a time with Rabbi Haaz or Cantor Herman, please reach out to Gina Caplan
(ritual@harziontemple.org or 610-667-5000).

We thank everyone who has already made a pledge or payment to our Annual Fundraiser, and we invite everyone else to please consider supporting Har Zion if you can. Har Zion has always needed fundraising beyond dues and tuition to support our programming, and this year we have additional security expenses as we work to keep everyone safe and secure in our facility. We had a listing of early participants on the High Holidays, and we’ll have a complete listing later in the spring.

There are also opportunities to support Israel. As we’ve recently publicized, we have set up an Emergency Israel Fund at Har Zion, and contributions there will go to address immediate individual needs in Israel as those needs are identified by Har Zion staff.  And there are two larger projects in Israel that Har Zion’s leadership has identified with the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia as areas where our congregation could focus and make a significant impact on the lives of our Israeli brothers and sisters who are suffering. These projects are in our Philadelphia partner communities of Netivot and the surrounding S’dot Negev which happen to be only a few miles from Gaza and have been devastated by the ongoing attacks since October 7.

1. The region is without adequate power and needs large emergency generators. Each generator, which costs $18,000, would provide emergency power to an individual neighborhood in Netivot or to a community in the surrounding S’dot Negev. Rockets continue to rain down on this area, and the generators will help make sure that those communities will continue to have light and power for emergencies even during an outage.
2. The suddenness and intensity of the attack on Israel severely affected a considerable part of Israel’s population, especially those living in the south. The daily lives of thousands of households were impacted. Latet, the largest NGO combating poverty and food insecurity in Israel, is requesting funds to support 1200-1500 families in Netivot and S’dot Negev at a cost of between $42,000-$50,000 a month for at least the next two months. Latet has already launched a large-scale operation in the south, providing food and hygiene boxes to citizens in urgent need with limited access to food and resources – those still in the south and those who have been evacuated to other locations, families in need, elderly people, Holocaust survivors and reservists operating in the field.

Har Zion is collecting to fund these two larger projects, smaller individual needs in Israel, and our needs here in Penn Valley.  Send a check (payable to Har Zion), donate online, or just call our office (610-667-5000) and we’ll bill you. When sending your pledge to Har Zion, please make sure to note how much you would like directed towards these two large projects in Israel, or to smaller individual needs in Israel, or to meet our needs here. 100% of funds that you specify for Israel will be sent to Israel. If you have questions about any of the opportunities above, please don’t hesitate to reach out.