Wednesday, June 22, 2011

An Important Note From Layla and Rachel

June 25, 2011 marks the fifth anniversary of Gilad Shalit’s captivity. Last Night, we went to a showing of a documentary called “Family in Captivity,” which showed how the Shalit family has been coping with Gilad’s capture throughout the years, but instead of the political/media perspective that we are used to seeing, this film had more of a personal agenda and focused on the emotional aspects of the Shalits’ day-to-day lives.
After the film, the filmmakers Tal Goren and Tamar Pross were available for a Q&A session. One question asked that stood out to us was “What can we do to help?”  Tamar Pross mentioned that donations for the Shalit family are always welcome, since they left their jobs to devote all of their time to promoting and protesting for Gilad, and are basically living off of donations now, but more than making donations, we have to raise awareness about Gilad. Many Americans, even Jews, haven’t heard of Gilad Shalit and they are unaware of his captivity (which violates the red cross’ international guidelines for prisoners of war).  We left with the question of what can we do to help? How much of an impact can we make, and how many people can we influence to help make a change?
While we are pondering these questions ourselves, we wanted to pose them to the Ma’ayanot community as well—what can each and every one of you do to help Gilad Shalit and make a difference?
--Rachel Ullman and Layla Blenden

This film is being showed for a limited time in a limited amount of places, however, if you are able to see it, we strongly recommend!

To see updates, photos and videos of Gilad Shalit’s cause, and to donate, go to http://www.gilad.org/eng

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Alumnae Yom Yerushalayim Video!!

Thank you to Rena Levin '10 and her fellow Ma'ayanot alumnae at Midreshet HaRova and Midreshet Amit who put together a fantastic video (both meaningful and hilarious) about what it's like to be in Israel for Yom HaZikaron, Yom Ha'atzmaut and Yom Yerushalayaim, which was shown at today's Student Appreciation Breakfast. It gives me a great sense of pride to see our alumnae's strong Zionist beliefs and how connected they are to Medinat Israel! Check it out below!