Jerusalem — Ofakim, a development town in Israel’s Negev desert, has its share of problems.

But when families escaping rocket attacks in Israel’s northern region were looking for a place to go, the people of Ofakim opened their hearts and welcomed complete strangers into their homes.

Since the rocket attacks began over two weeks ago, more than 50 families from cities and towns across northern Israel have found refuge in Ofakim, which is a sister city to United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey under the Jewish Agency for Israel’s Partnership 2000 program. That includes 20 immigrant families from the former Soviet Union, who moved in with Russian-speaking Ofakim residents on July 24.

Ofakim Mayor Avi Asraf oversaw the effort to find enough homes, schools, and food for the visitors. Asraf spoke Monday at a festive rally saluting the families from the north that was organized by the Ofakim youth council at the town’s community center.

“After making such an effort to seek support for ourselves, it’s wonderful that we can also give,” Asraf said. “As hard as it is, you have to give without thinking about the price. I pray that we can continue giving. The way people here have opened their homes to strangers demonstrates the strength and the beauty of Ofakim and all of Israel.”

All together, some 300,000 Israelis from the north are being hosted by families in the central and southern regions of the country. United Jewish Communities, the national umbrella for North American federations, is raising money through its local communities to send some 7,000 children, via the Jewish Agency, to free summer camps. The Supersol grocery chain and the Osem food group donated food to the summer camps, and companies like Nike and Cellcom offered sponsorship money.

Television stations and newspapers published names and phone numbers of people in Arad and elsewhere who were willing to take in families of strangers from the north. Invitations also came from family members and friends and via social service agencies.

As a result, the streets of Ofakim were filled this week with Israelis from the north — from Haifa to Tiberias — many of whom had never visited Ofakim before the escalation of hostilities.

Tzipi Abergil, who lives in Ma’alot near Israel’s border with Lebanon, was watching television in her bomb shelter with her husband and three children when a list of people willing to host families came across the screen. She randomly wrote down the names of Ofakim residents Haim and Hannah Weitzman, called them, and received an immediate invitation to move in.

After a week living with the Weitzmans and their five children, Abergil said she and her children feel like members of one large extended family. She said that she had never been to Ofakim before, but it did not take her very long to fall in love with the southern development town and its people.

“We wanted to go as far away from the north as possible,” Abergil said. “The people of Ofakim are very warm. Everyone who meets us invites us to dinner. There are no words to describe how wonderful the people are. This shows something special about Israelis.”

Abergil said that five Katyusha rockets fell within two blocks of her home over the past two weeks. Until they left Ma’alot for Ofakim, the Abergils had not left their bomb shelter for one week except briefly to shower inside their house.

Haim Weitzman said it was important to him to help people from the north, taking them out of the bomb shelters. Since the Abergil family’s arrival, he has taken them touring around the Negev and brought them to the nearby town of Netivot to meet with respected kabalist rabbis.

“We wanted people to see that even though things aren’t all good in Ofakim that we can welcome people, open our hearts, and show them love,” Weitzman said. “What is happening in the north is so painful. The people from the north miss their home and the Galilee and they want to go home, but they shouldn’t leave until it is safe.”

Hannah Weitzman said there was plenty of space in her seven-room house for the Abergils and that they get along because both families are religious.
“They are part of the family now, and they are very nice,” she said. “Thank God, Ofakim is still safe.”

‘A hero’

The Kassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip on the southern development town of Sderot are too far away to reach Ofakim. But Yuval Diskin, chief of the Shin-Bet security agency, told the Israeli cabinet on Sunday that if Israel did not succeed in restoring its deterrence in the Gaza Strip, within two years long-range missiles could be installed there, just as they are in Lebanon.

Irena Luvinsky of the northern border town of Nahariya, her three children, her close friend Netalya Gerbovsky, and Gerbovsky’s two children all moved in this week with Luvinsky’s sister Svetlana Yusupov and her family of four in Yusupov’s tiny Ofakim apartment.

“Svetlana is a hero,” Luvinsky said of her sister. “She works 12 hours a day for minimum wage and comes home to a crazy house full of seven constantly moving children. It’s a small apartment but we got some mattresses and we put up a tent in the yard. For the kids, it’s an experience, but we wish we could give them better.”

Luvinsky’s husband is an ambulance driver in Nahariya, where more than 200 rockets have fallen. She said that he was working all day trying to save people’s lives, but that he would join the family in Ofakim on Shabbat. A Nahariya man whom Luvinsky knows was killed last week when he left the shelter briefly to get a blanket to bring to his child.

“Nahariya is such a pretty city, and we never thought we would be in such a situation,” Luvinsky said. “It is ironic that my sister wanted to move near us in Nahariya, and here we are taking refuge with them in Ofakim. I am glad that here the children don’t have to be stuck indoors. Every time they hear a door slam they go into shock because of the rockets.”

Another Ofakim resident, Ya’akov Cohen, said he was taking it upon himself to supply families who have come to Ofakim from the north with food, mattresses, and diapers. His private charity already regularly helps some 400 Ofakim families and he decided to add another 15 families from the north to his roster of recipients.

“They are overcoming trauma and they come with nothing,” Cohen said. “It was the least I could do to help them.”