We Are Your Children – Rav Yissachar Meir, zt”l

How many yekkes do you know who move to Morocco in order to strengthen Yiddishkeit there? How many Rabbanim do you know who would think to establish a yeshivah in Sderot at a time when the city was under a constant barrage of fire, in order to bring merit to the town and give its inhabitants spiritual succor? How many Roshei Yeshivah do you know who brought over Jewish children from Chernobyl after the nuclear event and established educational and social programs for them?

Rabbi Yissachar Meir zt "l, affectionately known to his students as “Reb Yissochor”, did all of the above in addition to establishing his flagship yeshivah, Yeshivas Hanegev, in the town of Netivot. In the course of time, he built other yeshivos and communities of thousands of Torah-observant Jews throughout the Negev.

To the Moroccan immigrants that inhabited Netivot, he was a father. To the hundreds of students in his yeshivos, he was a father. Sadly, Reb Yissochor and his wife Yehudit never had children of their own.

After his petirah in 2010, his yeshivah was renamed Schar Sachir in his memory and in memory of the sefarim that he authored under this title. Today there are 520 students in its institutions in Netivot alone. The yeshivah is enjoying a tremendous upswing in enrollment but is turning away students due to lack of funds to support and house them.

With the blessing of gedolei yisrael, we are currently running a crowdfunding “matching” campaign to raise 4 million shekels for the yeshivah. Generous donors will “match” 2 million of their own, so we turn to the public to help raise the first 2 million shekels (approximately $550,000). As is the rule of such campaigns, if we don’t reach our goal, all the money will be returned to the donors.

Reb Yissochor never had children but the yeshivah and its students were as progeny to him. To this day, Rebbetzin Meir’s primary thoughts are of the yeshivah. We are all his children – not only the families of the students in his institutions, but any Jew who understands how privileged we were to have such a loving father who cared about everyone without judgement.

Over the next 36 hours we have the opportunity to say to this Aba: “We are your children – and we want to say ‘Thank You’ by ensuring that your beloved Schar Sachir continues to flourish.”