'Ess, ess, mein kind'

by Elli Wohlgelernter
September 12, 2002

Every Jewish mother worries whether her son has enough to eat,
especially when he's serving in the army. This is the story 
about one such Jewish mother who did something about it. 

It is also the story of caring strangers she met who didn't 
hesitate to donate food for her son and the 35 hungry comrades 
in arms serving with him in Nablus. 

The soldier is St.-Sgt. Ari Weiss, 21, a member of a Nahal unit 
currently stationed in a house in downtown Nablus. He's a good 
soldier, and a good son, who calls his mom every week and 
certainly before and after every holiday.

So when he called his mother, Susie, in Ra'anana after Rosh Hashana 
to relate his holiday experience, he told of his 25-hour stakeout 
the first night and day, and the second day spent praying and 
sleeping. 

"He said he could only take with him for the stakeout what he could 
put in his pocket, so he took a halla, a bag of candy, and a 
mahzor," said Susie. "He said everything worked out well, but all 
I kept hearing is 'we're starving, we're starving.'" 

She asked what she could do, but her son said there was nothing to do. 

"I had one more question: How many are you? He said 35, and with 
that I hung up." 

Off she went walking down Rehov Ahuza, the main drag in Ra'anana,
wondering what to do. Suddenly she came upon Kippa Aduma, the shwarma 
hangout she knows Ari loves. 

"I went to the manager of the store, Roni, and said, 'My son is in 
Nablus. He's stuck in some hellhole with no fridge, and he's hungry.' 
He interrupted my sentence and asked the same question I did: 
'How many are there?' I told him 35, and he said, 'What time do you 
need it?' " After arranging for the pickup, Weiss walked down the 
street, satisfied she has done her motherly duty. Wandering into a 
wholesale grocery, she thought, Why not? 

"I gave him the speil, and he said, 'What do you want from me?' 
I looked around and I saw candies and chocolate, but I thought they 
would melt. Then I saw a case of drinks. He said, 'How many do you 
need?' I said two, and he gave me 80 drinks." 

Feeling empowered, Weiss continued down the street and walked into 
Balkan Bakery. 

"I started giving the shpeil, and he, too, interrupted me and said, 
'We close at 8, be here at 7:30 and I'll give you everything I 
have left.'" 

Amazed at the spur-of-the moment CARE package she suddenly found 
herself organizing, Weiss ambled farther down the street and into 
Meatland, a frozen meat and condiments grocery store. "I gave the 
same shpeil, though this time in English because they are South 
African. I said how about some cookies, and he said, 'OK, three 
cases.' I said they don't need so much, and he said, 'Each soldier 
needs his own.' 

"All this took place in the span of a half hour."
Was it a Rosh Hashana-Yom Kippur feeling that was guiding her and 
the shop owners? Was it another indication of the rarely written 
story of the real spirit of Israel, the near unanimous support for 
the tired boys in the trenches? 

"Everyone made it so easy," said Weiss. "I was gratified, it was a 
warm feeling. Israelis are always put down as being rude, and here 
I didn't even have to finish my request in my lame language, and 
they already understood what I wanted to say and were asking, 
'How many.' And they didn't know me from a hole in the wall." 

Weiss wife of Jerusalem Post columnist Stewart Weiss wasn't done. 
Later in the day she took her younger children to Roladin, a bakery 
in Kadima, which gives tours of the facility. 

"As they served cookies and cakes to the kids, I said to the girls 
behind the counter, 'You don't happen to have any extra stuff I can 
take to my soldier tonight?' And she said, 'Wait right here.' 
Five minutes later she comes out with 15 individual honey cakes, 
with signs decorating the top saying, "l'chayal tzava, shana tova." 

Chatting with her girlfriends during the day, she told them what 
was happening, and when she got home there were more bags of goodies 
left by the friends, "who by the way thanked me for the opportunity 
to do this." 

There was one more thing to figure out: this being an army operation, 
coordinating delivery to the soldiers required a military maneuver. 
Weiss spoke to her son, who said he was a half hour from Ariel, and 
that if she could get the food there between 11 and 12 that night, 
he would take care of the rest. 

"I told the head of my unit that my mother is getting us some food, 
and maybe someone can go to Ariel and she'll bring us food there," 
said Ari Weiss.

So from downtown Nablus an armored jeep drove to the temporary base
outside town, and there a driver took the unit's car and coordinated 
with Ari's sister, Penina. The two of them pulled into the gas 
station outside Ariel at the same time. "The driver freaked out, 
he though he was picking up a couple of bags of shwarma," said 
Susie Weiss. "He drove back to the base, switched the stuff to the 
jeep, and then drove to the middle of Nablus to their house, where 
a couple of guys in full gear unloaded and brought it in. 

"An hour later I got a phone call from Ari, with peals of laughter 
and screaming in the background. Not only was he king of the day, 
but I have 34 new boyfriends," she laughed. "Soldiers were grabbing 
the phone saying, 'Geveret Weiss, at lo yada'at ma at aseet lanu' 
(Mrs. Weiss, you have no idea what you have done for us)." 

For Ari, it was all about the pride of a proud son. 

"Everyone loved my mom, everyone was really thankful and 
gobbled it up," he said. "We didn't even eat it all, there's 
still some cake, pastries, and drinks left over. They asked if 
my mom paid for it, I told them that the stores donated it. 
I was smiling because I saw how my mother had organized it,
and that meant more than the food itself." 

For Susie, it was all about being a Jewish mother.
"My goal was for them to have enough to last through Yom 
Kippur," she said. 

Mission accomplished.
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I posted a picture of the Weiss family at the army base at:
http://www.jr.co.il/articles/israel.htm