After the horrific events of Oct 7, my family & many friends were volunteering franticly trying to do anything we could to help. From befriending & helping displaced families from the south to relocate & get settled in new homes, farming & picking fruit to help farmers, making meals for hostage families, baking healthy mufins, granola bars or vegan meals for soldiers, attending & organising challah bakes, raising funds to buy & distributing equipent for soldiers, everyone was trying to do something to help our country, our people our Nation came together. These are just a few things we were all doing, to help, amongst many other things. During this time my daughter had a classmate, and another friend kidnappen into Gaza & a friends son was also injured and taken captiveand. Ifelt i wanted to do something for the hostages but felt helpless untill I read about a project my friend Jo, in London had started called Youbetheirlight campaign and I really connected to it and decided to bring it to israel with a a few changes.
This opportunity to stand together and pray, take action and not let the world forget about the need for the safe return of our hostages really spoke to me! So I started the #youbetheirlight israel campaign. It’s a Candle Campaign for the innocent people stolen from their homes and from a peaceful music festival.
Every week candle packs with prayers for the hostages and for Israel together with 2 blue or yellow candles and photos of the individual hostages are distributed. The candles are a symbol of hope, a silent prayer for the safe return of our friends who cannot light candles where they are currently held.
With these candles we are not just pushing away the darkness, but igniting the divine spark that is within them and all of us.
The first week we packed 400 at my dining table, and now the initiative has gone global with over 100,000 candle packs being distributed worldwide every week.
Over the past months candle packages have been given out to masses of visitors and delegations coming to Israel.
The #youbetheirlight hostage candle packs have been given out
To Solidarity missions- Momentem, Mizrachi, J-Roots, UJIA, Birthright, Hillel, Emunah, JNF, U of Pen faculty trip, Harvard, Yale, Penn student trips, Auschwitz trips, synagogue trips, Canadian missions etc. hotels, hostage family tent in Jerusalem, Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, Nova Music Festival site, Sundance Film Festival, to Influencers, policymakers and other influential individuals such as Douglas Murray, Noa Tishby, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who then spoke directly about the hostages at the White House.
Most weeks we aim to send 100’s if not 1000’s of packets to the Nova Festival site, to hostage square in Tel Aviv & to the Jerusalem family hostage tent . 1000’s were given out at the Jerusalem Marathon & more than 1000 packages have been sent to Canada. The candle packages are always available to be collected in the Jerusalem family hostage tent , in the German Colony and other various locations around Israel.
We have created a document for anyone to replicate this project anywhere in the world and we hope that as many people as possible will contiue to light blue or yellow candles for the hostage untill each one is home safely. Our aim is to try to continue to produce and distribute candle packages until the hotages are all home where they belong.
The weekly cost for the 2,000 candle packs to be distributed is approximatly 2750 NIS per / $750 per week. Any contribution towards the total is greatly appreciated and will allows people to continue to light ON BEHALF of the innocent hostages.