“When I was a baby, my parents abandoned me in the stairwell of an apartment building. I know in my heart that it was a blessing: I was adopted by the most amazing parents in the world. My mom and dad raised me as if I were their own, and I missed nothing in childhood. When they died in a car crash, I felt as if I had lost my real family, because I had. Now that I am getting married I’m shocked by all the little inevitable expenses and how they add up. I had thought that I could pull it off on my own with just my simple job, but now it seems impossible.
My friends urged me to apply to the Kupat Ha’Ir orphan wedding program – it’s for people like me who are missing their parents, and need help to cover the basic needs of making a chasuna.
If this campaign succeeds, I’ll be able to get a dress, an oven for my new apartment, all sorts of things my parents would help me with, if they were here.” Keila*, 20
This is just one story, but each of the 36 orphans being married off this month has their own unique journey of loss, grief, and struggle. That is why Rav Galai, and in previous months such gedolim as Rav Gershon Edelstein and Rav Chaim Kanievsky, have taken personal responsibility for the campaigns.
Those who donate this month will receive Rav Galai’s unique bracha to “merit, midah k’neged midah (measure for measure), to see all of their children go in the way of Torah, and be blessed with nachas from them.”
It is a particularly powerful bracha to receive nachas from your children for this act of generosity, as the children involved in the campaign are counting on donors to do what their loving parents would have done if they were still in this world.
Donations are being accepted for a limited time.
*Stories have been changed to preserve the orphans’ privacy.
