Colel Chabad in the Dark

By COLlive reporter

Israel’s 10,000 social workers are still on strike this Tuesday, as they are demanding higher pay, which as of yet they have been unable to obtain following negotiations with the Ministry of Finance.

The strike includes all those working at welfare offices, and social workers at hospitals, health care organizations, the Ministry of Health, mental health institutions, as well as juvenile and adult probation officers and children’s investigators.

Aside from the immediate toll from the strike due to the lack of services, the charitable organization Colel Chabad has warned that thousands of families might not receive their holiday food gifts.

“We will not receive the list [of needy families] because of the strike,” says Rabbi Mendy Blau, director of the Jerusalem branch of Colel Chabad, referring to the list of families who need extra assistance that social workers pass on to charities before Pesach.

Blau told the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonot that Colel Chabad, Israel’s oldest continuously operating Tzedakah organization established in 1788, is planning to distribute some 10,000 boxes of food, which take 3 weeks to package.

Each “basket” contains over 70 kilos of food, including vegetables, fruit, canned food and meat.

But packages are prepared according to the names they are given by the municipalities.

“Our only chance to pull through with this would be if the social workers will consider the baskets for the needy as an emergency,” – then, their committee can make an exception for the strike and pass along the lists of names.