The Jaffa Institute dinner

On Sunday we were invited to the Jaffa Institute annual gala dinner fundraiser, held at the Airport City Convention Center, a big new development near Ben Gurion Airport, where many international companies have their offices.  The Jaffa institute is a charity that has for many years been involved with the education and social welfare of poor and deprived children living in the lower income areas of Jaffa and south Tel Aviv (see www.jaffainstitute.org).  This dinner was a huge affair with ca. 1,000 people and it must have taken a lot of organization. 

We and several others were invited to the dinner by Neil Davis, a wealthy London businessman, who with his wife Beryl has been a patron of the Jaffa Institute for many years and an organizer of the British Friends, and they were awarded the Nefesh Yedid Award of the Institute.  There were other awards including the Mizrachi-Tefahot Bank that was given the Social Partner Award.  Neil now lives in Herzliya and has made aliyah to Israel.  Apart from the usual speeches by the Director of the Institute David Portowicz and others and a promotional film, the entertainment was given by a children's orchestra and by David D'or, who has an amazing contralto-type voice, strong and operatic.

The Dinner was written up in the Jerusalem Post ( http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=299569 ) and it was stated that they raised NIS 1.5 million to help disadvantaged families and children.  It was impressive that most of the people assembled were of course Israeli, there were relatively few foreign guests, and this level of charitable support from within Israel is an indicator of the truly self-sustaining charitable impulses of the Jewish people. There is no doubt that the social and educational fabric of Israel society has been aided and fostered by such charitites as the Jaffa Institute.