Rockets Fall & A Mayor Arises!

A Guest Post by Shalom Lerner for Mayor (a.k.a. David Morris)

Hizballah fired over four thousand rockets and missiles, raining death & destruction upon the whole North of Israel.

It was the summer of 2006.

Danny Vaknin, the Mayor of Bet Shemesh, was on a city-sponsored trip in China.

I was in the Mayor’s office, with Shalom Lerner, Deputy Mayor, who was at the head of a table of distinguished council members and community leaders.

“What can we do,” Shalom asked us, “to best help our brothers from the North of Israel?”

The team of the Bet Shemesh Municipality, together with Lema’an Achai, which spearheaded a group of local and national charities, put together and implemented an emergency “City of Refuge” program, which successfully housed, fed and even entertained Over A Thousand Refugees from the devastated cities and towns of Northern Israel.

What is more, Shalom successfully united all those people around that table, representatives from chiloni, dati, chareidi, sephardi, Ashkenazi, Russian, left wing and right wing – to roll up their sleeves to help a similarly cross-spectrum population of refugees – so that each group, family and individual were given the care and support they desperately needed – even to the level of numerous special hechsherim on the food, to providing facilities for the Russians to watch cable TV and play chess!

Bet Shemesh was the ONLY city which responded at this level to the refugee problem of the Lebanon War. The City of Bet Shemesh and Lema’an Achai were spotlighted & commended in the post-war Ben Gurion University Report on “The Response of the Non-Profit Sector to the 2nd Lebanon War”.

Seeing Shalom in action – his immediate and unwavering desire to help Am Yisrael, and his efficient and deeply sensitive management, helping to get the job done quickly and efficiently, cutting through any obstacles, even in a National Emergency (read: “National balagan”) environment – made a deep impression upon me.

If he cares this much about the residents of Kireat Shmona, Naharia, Safad, and Tiberius, I reckoned, how much more so he must care about his neighbors and constituents from here in Bet Shemesh.

I have since worked with Shalom on several other projects, in my role as Chairman of Lema’an Achai.
He has always been there for us as an organization, and for the many individual families we help, who have also needed his help. From helping us to obtain a site for Lema’an Achai’s new building, to helpling a poor family, who can’t pay their bills, to immediately get their water switched back on.

I will be voting Shalom Lerner for Mayor of Bet Shemesh – because he cares, he’s capable, he’s straight.

Shalom will clean up our city (physically and politically), and propel it, from being stuck somewhere in the 1950’s, to being the cream of Israel’s cities. Shalom will preserve & encourage the very best from our rainbow populations, creating a better, more prosperous & united city for all of us.

I know, because I have seen with my own eyes how, given the reins, Shalom can achieve what no other mayor in Israel can do.