Volunteers bring warm food, cold drinks, phone charge

It started in 2004 when David Landau sent pizza to soldiers guarding checkpoints.

As Jews around the world are slammed by anti-Semitism and torn by the attacks on Israel, they are searching for ways to help and show gratitude and support for the IDF.

Landau’s Standing Together provides food, drinks, clothes, undergarments and toiletries directly to soldiers at staging areas near the front lines.

Volunteers travel late at night with a truck and trailer equipped with a generator, oven, coffee machine, freezer and cell phone charging station and hand out items that are generally not available at the front. They have also recently added computer and mobile Internet service to the truck, facilitating Facebook and Skype conversations between soldiers and their families.

Miriam Gottlieb, a Cedarhurst native who made aliyah with her husband eight years ago, works out of her home in Neve Daniel in Israel and has been making the rounds in the U.S. Last week, she spoke at a parlor meeting in Lawrence to raise awareness of the soldiers’ needs. “Rabbi Billet (of the Young Israel of Woodmere) has been out with us,” she said.

The Army “provides the soldiers’ basic needs, their budget is life and death focused,” she said. “We provide extra underwear, pillows, dry-fit tzitizit-regular tzitzit disintegrate from sweat.”

“It’s an amazing experience for the volunteers,” Gottlieb continued. “(The soldiers) believe the world doesn’t care about them. They are very grateful.”

She said she planned this trip to the U.S. after they found the bodies of the boys, hoping to “turn the intense emotion and energy into a positive.”

“The message on this trip is that the only thing protecting us from that hatred and evil is the soldiers and they need to know we’re with them and that they’re not alone,” Gottlieb said. The cost for sending the truck and trailer fully equipped with supplies is $10,000 a day she said.

Recently a woman wanted to celebrate her husband’s 50th birthday so she sponsored a BBQ for the soldiers instead, she said.

Another effort raised money to provide soldiers with memory foam mini pillows that attach to their backpacks. She pointed out that “the army feels very strongly about not singling anyone out for economic reasons and donations have to be brought for an entire unit or base, so as not to single anyone out.”

For more information go to stogether.org.