After reading this article you will never forget the name Avigdor Ben-Ari. Ben-Ari is the very embodiment of Mi ke’amcha Yisrael. It’s hard to hear his story of his last two months and not feel deep gratitude to someone who upended his life for the sake of our brothers and sisters in Israel.
Ben-Ari runs a Jewish art gallery, the Ben-Ari Art Gallery in Flatbush, but on October 10, while continuing to run his business, he left his home to spend the next 60 days in Israel, with his primary day job being providing much needed supplies, warm clothing, protective gear and over 150 pairs of tefillin to soldiers all over Israel. And when I say all over Israel, I mean literally from the border fence in the North, to closed-off areas near Gaza.
Ben-Ari put close to 20,000 miles on his car in a matter of eight weeks! To put that in perspective, according to Google Maps, the drive from Teaneck to Miami, Florida is about 1,300 miles. That’s the equivalent of close to eight round trip drives from Teaneck to Miami in eight weeks. But Ben-Ari’s destination wasn’t relaxation on sandy beaches; it was risking his own safety, day in and day out, for the benefit of our amazing soldiers protecting Israel.
As I listened to Ben-Ari tell me what his last 60 days were like, my feeling of astonishment just kept growing. Soldiers near Gaza had requested tefillin to wear. There was only one problem: every road to their base was blocked off. It was immediately next to an active combat zone and no civilians were allowed anywhere near it. For Ben-Ari,this simply meant that roads wouldn’t be the path he would take to get to them. After driving through open fields and navigating by map in areas where GPS was blocked, Ben-Ari arrived to provide tefillin for these soldiers. The soldiers were in shock. They couldn’t believe he was actually able to get there.
In another instance, soldiers near the Syrian border told him that because no one could get to them, they weren’t receiving any of the packages other soldiers were receiving. They were freezing, and it was frequently pouring rain; they lacked the proper gear to keep them warm. So, Ben-Ari packed up his car with coats, fleeces and thermals, and navigated his way, once again by map, since all the GPS was scrambled, through abandoned roads and at one point driving between two mine fields to finally arrive at the soldiers’ base and provide them with the comfort and uplifting care they needed.
On one of his less rogue deliveries, he was brought in an armed vehicle with full helmet and vest to a base on the Lebanon border to deliver supplies. In that instance, it was less than an hour after his visit that the exact place he left was hit by an anti-tank missile.
Ben-Ari represents the Israel side of a simply amazing grass roots effort that began in Englewood to provide soldiers with everything they could possibly need to make their lives safer and easier. The organization is Bergen County Lev Echad (bclevechad.org) and the name tells you everything you need to know about the people who are running it. A handful of people including Brian Nave, Donny Knoll, Daniel Malka, Chagit Hadar (Ben-Ari’s sister-in-law), Yael Ben-Ari (Ben-Ari’s wife), Scott Wittenberg and others went from being everyday professionals to being sourcing, pricing and logistical experts who can get virtually anything, from anywhere, directly from suppliers at wholesale prices to make sure the soldiers in Israel are fully taken care of. I have personally been on calls with Wittenberg and a commander in an elite unit in the IDF as they discussed the merits of one vest over another while the commander happily considered his advice regarding which protective gear may be most helpful. Others have shared with me the voice notes they’ve gotten from mothers of soldiers saying that the protective gear they provided saved the lives of their children’s unit. And for this group of tireless volunteers, that is all the compensation they could want.
Lev Echad has managed to deliver over 6,000 duffle bags of critical supplies to Israel with an efficiency that is hard to fathom. Their bags never see a warehouse. They don’t get held up at customs. They aren’t weeks behind the actual needs. They are daily. They are exhaustive. And they are just in time. Their US volunteers are so embedded in the logistics that they have become almost a part of the staff at the El Al counter, allowing for quick and easy processing of the bags.
In Israel, Ben-Ari has developed close personal relationships with Meches and the employees at Ben Gurion to the point where they will often pull the bags they know to be his off of the conveyor for him and have it ready to go when he arrives. His constant contact with Meches means that they are fully prepared with the proper documentation to make sure that the goods have no issue leaving the airport the same day they arrive.
With all the amazing work Ben-Ari and Lev Echad have done, there is still so much that is needed. As I spoke to the leaders of the organization, I asked what their bottleneck is. What is preventing them from helping even more? The answer was simple. They need more funds. They need our community to continue to step up to provide those who are actually taking physical risk with their needs. There are soldiers lacking the proper protective glasses and suffering eye injuries from shrapnel, and others lacking the proper warm gear for an extended winter war.
Importantly, while the needs are endless, the scope of BC Lev Echad is very defined. It’s well known that the specialness of our community comes through most clearly in times of crisis. Lev Echad is a shining example of this, and I am personally thankful that they are providing the rest of us with the privilege of being able to be a part of their amazing work with our donations. They are a paradigm of efficiency both in terms of their shipments and in terms of the use of the donations. There is no overhead, and no objective beyond helping Israel and Israelis get through this incredibly difficult time, feeling the love and financial support of their family here in America.
Please visit bclevechad.org to donate and to learn more about the profound help they are providing.
