Hani Shlomo stood in front of a camera in Sderot, searching for the right words in a second language, and what came out was this: “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
That’s you she’s talking to.
Hani has four children. A daughter who’s 19, a son of 17 and a half, a daughter who’s 14, and a boy who turns 8 this Passover. Since October 7th, she has been raising them alone in Sderot, the city closest to Gaza, the city that absorbed years of rockets before the world started paying attention. She is their sole provider. She is doing it by herself.
Her husband, Command Sgt. Maj. Adir Shlomo, was 47 years old and Head of Logistics for the Sderot Police Station. He was the first person through the door on the morning of October 7th. He was also the first to fall. People who knew him said he always had a smile on his face and would do anything for anyone. He did, until his very last breath.
When Hani recorded her message of thanks, she didn’t dwell on any of that. She talked about groceries. She talked about feeding her kids. She talked about how your donations help her do the one thing she’s still able to do: take care of her children.
“Your contribution truly warms my heart,” she said. “It helps me look after them, to provide for their food.”
The Bible tells us that a righteous man “is a father to the poor, and the cause of him whom he did not know, he searched out” (Job 29:16). That verse was written thousands of years ago, and it describes exactly what you did. You didn’t wait to be asked twice. You gave to a family you’d never met, in a city most people can’t locate on a map, because you understood that standing with Israel isn’t a statement. It’s an action.
It’s easy to feel, after months of headlines and heartbreak, that individual giving gets lost in the scale of the crisis. Hani’s message is proof that it doesn’t. Your donation bought food for four children this week. It allowed a mother who’s carrying more than any person should carry to get through one more day without wondering how she’ll feed her family.
At the end of her message, Hani said something that stopped us.
“Come,” she said. “Tell Israel. Look at me and my children. Tell Israel: love.”
She wasn’t asking for sympathy. She was asking you to be a witness. To see her family and let that change something in you, in the same way that Israel, as a people and a land, has always called out to those with eyes to see and hearts to respond.
You answered that call. And because you did, Hani and her four children are not facing this Passover alone.
Thank you for standing with families like hers. Thank you for making “love your neighbor” something more than a phrase.
If you haven’t yet given, or if you want to continue supporting Hani and families like hers. Every gift goes to widows and bereaved families who are rebuilding their lives.