“With Ahavat Chinam to the Residents of Bnei Brak”

The Backstory // Eliezer Shulman

At the height of the tense days in Bnei Brak last week, residents were surprised to find a truck dropping off tons of free agricultural produce next to the Be’er Miriam halls in the city. A large handwritten sign read: “With ahavat chinam to the residents of Bnei Brak, from southern farmers.”

The originator of the heartfelt gesture is Rikki Levitt, 60, mother of four and resident of Tekoa (a yishuv near Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood) who works in real estate development. Appalled by media demonization of the city’s residents due to the fringe violence last week, Rikki decided to recruit farmers from Kibbutz Alumim, Saad, and Netivot, to donate almost 14 tons of agricultural produce for free distribution to Bnei Brak families.

The videos of her effort went viral, but she told Mishpacha that this isn’t the first time she’s made the trip: “It started on Erev Pesach, when the city was cordoned off from the rest of the country by police, and I saw a headline: ‘Fear of Humanitarian Crisis in Bnei Brak.’ I was shocked. I said it’s unbelievable that an entire city is placed under siege like that. I felt I had do to something.

“The simplest option,” she says, “was to provide the city with agricultural produce, because it was Erev Chag and many families were in financial trouble. I started contacting fruit and vegetable farmers, and they promised to donate their best produce.”