Land of Little Auction Book

Land Little of

home of tiny people and big dreams

Land of Little

There once was a couple who, in their journey through life, chanced upon Land of Little. It was a charming place; unlike any they had ever seen before. Everything was tiny. The people were six inches tall; the homes, like tiny dollhouses; the parks, perfect toy-like landscapes that looked like such fun for those who fit.

“Ooooh,” said the woman, as she knelt to gaze into a miniscule storefront display of tiny outfits; and pined for an entire drawer filled with mini clothes.

“Ahhh,” said the man, as he placed a suddenly-giant foot gently between slides and trees; his heart aching with an irrepressible urge to lift just one Tiny Person, so he could swing him up high and make him giggle. But they were outsiders, and though they would have done anything in the world to enter, they could only gaze from above at the tiny marvels that made Land of Little so wondrous.

Make Land of Little come alive.

You can grant couples entry to a world where tiny clothes and playthings fill real homes; where Tiny People swing over their fathers’ shoulders; where giggles and laughter turn every day into a Big Dream come true.

Enter Land of Little.

LEtter from our founder

Dear Member of the Montreal Jewish Community,

Few things touch my heart like the sight of a new baby.

But every day, I speak to couples who long for the chance to have a baby of their own. They want to experience the joys of parenthood - to look into a baby’s eyes, to play with a toddler, to know that they will leave an imprint in this world. The pain of these couples is unfathomable. They endure crushing disappointments and terrible fear, day after day after day.

Yet in the past 20 years, waiting couples in Montreal have found hope. They’ve been warmed by Bonei Olam of Montreal – a rapidly growing branch of our organization that gives me great personal satisfaction.

I am writing today to invite you to join Bonei Olam of Montreal, by participating in the Land of Little auction. All funds raised will stay in Montreal and will support local couples, including many you may know personally.

The Montreal Bonei Olam office has become a beacon – a lifeline – to waiting couples. It accompanies Montreal couples struggling with infertility along every step of their journey to parenthood.

Bonei Olam’s counselors walk couples through every step of treatment. Their 14 volunteer mashgichos are available literally at all times – even Yom Kippur and Pesach. And their medical network includes virtually every fertility center and specialist in the region, and includes an inhouse clinic where couples are treated in a profesional and sensitive way. All this points to an organization that is cutting edge in expertise, medical knowledge and service. But that is not all.

Bonei Olam understand the need of emotional support throughout a couple’s journey.

The “Cocoon” program envelops couples with care by arranging wondrous gatherings with worldclass speakers, and providing emotional support, special care packages during treatment, and so much more.

Bonei Olam of Montreal stops at nothing to help couples. They spend whatever it takes to fund treatment, and will not let dollars stand between a couple and their dream. With an average treatment starting at $18,000, and many costing way more, the numbers are astronomical. The annual budget is over $750,000. I ask you this:

Can we put a price tag on a Jewish child?

As you are transported to the world of so many in our community, stranded on the outside of the dynamic land of little, yearning for the opportunity to enter, let your heart become one with theirs. Remember, empathy goes a long way toward sharing, soothing and ultimately relieving the immense burden of pain, destress and longing. Join us as we carry on our mission, of leaving no stone unturned on behalf of every couple that needs us.

Regards, Schlomo Bochner

Ticket Packages Early Bird

Web Orders: Boneiauctioncanada.ca

Phone Orders: 514.658.8899

Fax Orders: 514.658.8899

Text/Whatsapp Orders: 514.658.8899

Email Orders: Orders@boneiolam.ca

Mail Orders: Bonei Olam 5670 Hutchison Montreal, QC H2V 4B6

Live Drawing date: January 23, 2023

The winner of some prizes shall be responsible for the payment of all applicable Federal, State and local taxes.

No purchase or donation necessary to enter or win. A purchase or donation will not increase your chances of winning. For more info call : (518) 203-2587.

Some of the prizes are not as pictured. Some gift certificates may expire 6 months after date of drawing. Restrictions apply to some gift certificates.

No Entry

There’s a Land I long to enter, It’s under lock and key, My hopes and dreams are stuck inside, But the gate is barred to me.

It’s hard to grasp that almost all, Are welcomed in for free, While I am forced to view from far, For me, there’s no entry.

I weep, I beg, I bang on doors, Cry, “Don’t you understand?

I’m meant to be here - all my life, I’m dreaming of this Land.”

But I can only watch from far, Witness this wonderland, Where tiny boys and girls cavort, While I have empty hands.

So when you read my story, Won’t you help unlock the gate? Join the Bonei Olam auction, Before it gets too late!

And when I enter Land of Little, Full-fledged member of the state, And behold my Tiny Person, You and I will celebrate.

SPONSORED BY Friends of Bonei Olam

SPONSORED BY Meubles CDI

When a couple waits

Ah, the mailman,” Malky said, at the sound of jingling keys. A moment later, she was outside, bringing in the day’s stash. Her children joked about the way she waited for the mail. Like Elter-Bubby waiting for word from der heim, they’d say. As if anyone sent letters nowadays.

The fact was, going for the mail meant a break from the ho-hum ordinariness of her life. Besides, she liked to say, you never know. Maybe something interesting would come.

Today it was just the usual, and she sifted through the stack. Bill, bill, junk, invitation, catalog, junk. She checked the invitation and smiled. Raizy was making another chasunah. Nice! The wedding was in The Chevra, on Monday, March 1. Beis Adar.

Beis Adar! Hashem! Malky reeled. Five years ago, on Beis Adar, they’d danced the night away. And now just seeing the date in print was a punch to the gut.

Over the past five years, she’d watched Chezky and his wife go from starry-eyed bliss to edginess to stoic strength. She knew very little about what was really going on. Just that yes, they had seen a doctor; no, they didn’t want to talk about it; please, could she tell Cousin Eli that they didn’t want to be kvatter at his baby’s bris. But every so often, she’d see a chink in their armor. Her own armor was rock solid. At least in public. Only Hashem knew how she wept, with only her pillow as witness.

Toby, who’d gotten married three years after Chezky, already had an adorable baby, and she’d stopped inviting the two couples for the same meals. And now his fifth anniversary was coming up! Gevald! She didn’t know what to do. Should she mark the anniversary, or not? Celebrating would feel like rubbing the pain in their faces. But ignoring it would feel terrible, too; as if there was something wrong with them as a couple. Whatever she did, she’d be walking on shattered glass, shards cutting her skin and heart with every step.

Malky thrust the invitation under a pile on her counter, and went back to her peeler; attacking a spud with quick, forceful strokes. And the peels and tears fell together in a sorrowful cascade, a tsunami of anguish from a mother’s broken heart.

“Your niece is precious.”

“Does your sister let you hold her?”

“Who does she look like?”

No one noticed that Chana Leah had slinked off to her desk, blinking fast so her tears would stay inside. For the hundredth time, she studied her own loose-leaf, with its three-year-old photo of herself at her sister Esty’s wedding, and asked herself the question she’d learned never to ask anyone at home: when would her sister have a baby?

They came by car, by foot, by bus; lugging precious shapeless loads. Slowly, the room filled up, as one by one, they found places around the dining room table and in every corner of the room.

They were “the lebedige class,” the group that always had something to laugh about. But today, ten years past graduation, no one was laughing. The atmosphere was charged. They were here to do something – the only thing they could – for the one classmate who was missing. Baila was first. She uncovered the bowl in front of her, exposing a mound of dough, and tore off a chunk. Then she swallowed hard and began.

“Baruch atta Hashem,” she said, her eyes shut tight, “asher kideshanu…” – her voice cracked – “lihafrish challah” – and through her sobs, she whispered the final words, “min ha’isa.”

Around the room they went, forty friends, forty blessings, forty pain-racked “Ameins”; and their sobs and tears rent heavens and hearts.

When they were done, they gathered their bowls and bags and left for home, where, surrounded by babies, kitchen corners and the paraphernalia of family life, they braided challah and prayed again for Yehudis, their dear, dear friend, who was still waiting. Parents are hurting.

The entire fourth grade crowded around Rivky’s desk, passing around a loose-leaf festooned with photos. One showed an impish toddler at his firstbirthday cake smash, another showed Rivky and her siblings in matching outfits. But the shot that got the most oohs and aahs was the latest addition – an angelic flower-bedecked newborn, fast asleep in a heart-shaped basket. The comments and compliments came thick and fast.

“Can I see? Can I see?”

Where Am I?

Did I just land in Timbuktu? Peru? Baku? Kalamazoo? It’s weird – but tell me, will you, where; I am – and how did I get here? All I wanted was a child, Say, how’d my journey get so wild?

I battled storms, I nearly drowned, Until like Gulliver, I found, That thrust by waves, I had been hurled, and landed in this strange new world.

The people look so very queer; Long white coats that instill fear, The words they use make my heart squeeze, Their language is Medicalese, Such strange cuisine! It comes in pills, With side dishes of pricey bills.

Worst of all, they cannot say, How much longer I must stay, To exit, listen, this is wild, All I need is my own child. You can help me – it’s no riddle, Just take part in Land of Little.

Brunette Wig

SPONSORED BY

Friends of Bonei Olam

SPONSORED BY

Miracles.Wonders.Salvations.

Sometimes things happen at the strangest times.

Rabbi Shlomo Bochner, funder of Bonei Olam, had just kindled the fifth light on his menorah, and the words “al nisecha v’al niflaosecha v’al yeshuosecha” still hung in the air. Then the phone rang.

“We’re in the middle of a seudas hoda’ah,” the caller said, over the din of what was obviously a party.

This is his story.

Eleven-year-old Malky Berger was a dramatic child. When she got a paper cut, it was guuushing; when her stomach hurt, she walked around doubled over. So when she complained about a hammer pounding inside her head, Mrs. Berger didn’t make much of it. But then she found Malky on the floor, thrashing about in the throes of a full-blown seizure – and knew this was real.

She was right. It was cancer.

A brain tumor.

It’s hard to describe what a six-letter word can do to a family – how it can take big, important things like tuition and Chanukah plans and shidduchim, and make them fade into nothingness; how it can take a normal, regular family and flip their lives over so that nothing is the same and there’s a very real sense that it might never be.

At the Montreal Children's Hospital, the doctors outlined Malky’s treatment plan – brain surgery and then aggressive chemotherapy and radiation – while Mr. Berger desperately tried to follow their rapid-fire

explanations. They went through the risks and side effects.

“Hair loss is expected, as is nausea and weakness,” the doctor was saying. He rattled off a list of possible things that could happen – a jumble of words that this father barely grasped. And just as he was wondering if there was something he couldn’t afford to miss, he heard the word “fertility.”

“Fertility?” he asked, echoing the last thing he’d heard. The doctor nodded.

“Yes. With this particular treatment protocol, it’s possible that she won’t be able to build a family.”

No family? But Malky was a child! And how could he deal with this now, with brain surgery taking place tomorrow; with her very life in the balance? Then again, how could he not?

To complicate matters, Malky was scheduled to begin chemo very soon after surgery. There was no time to think, no time for anything. There was just a looming, impossible choice – his child’s future or her life.

This doctor didn’t understand, Mr. Berger thought. To him, the goal was a cure – at any price. It meant seeing Malky alive, five, ten, twenty years down the line. But what kind of a future would she have, if she couldn’t have a family? Would she be destined to suffer the effects forever, because she’d had cancer as a child? Would she never have a chance at motherhood? What could he do?

And so he paced up and down the hospital’s polished corridors, trying to make an impossible choice. Until a Jewish nurse stopped him.

“There’s an organization you should reach out to,” she said. “Bonei Olam.” And she scribbled a phone number on a slip of paper.

“I called Bonei Olam Montreal,” Mr. Berger told Rabbi Bochner. “It was the fifth night of Chanukah, like today. After two rings, Rabbi Hersh M Feferkorn, Director of Medical Affairs, answered the phone and told me that I didn’t have to choose; that we could save Malky’s future, without further risking her life. Somehow, Bonei Olam arranged it all – they spoke to the doctors and made sure her cancer treatment would not affect her ability to be a mother. It wasn’t easy. There was a whirlwind of action - alternatives were discussed, things were done, all before she ever got her first dose of chemo or radiation. And they paid for everything.”

“Tonight we are celebrating a seudas hoda’ah. We went through gehinom, and came out on the other side. Malky is in remission.”

Then he got quiet.

“You know, Rabbi Bochner, there were many people who helped Malky survive. There were askanim who sent us to big doctors, donors who paid for treatments, friends and relatives who cared for our other children and sent us meals for months. We are forever thankful to them all. But if not for you, Rabbi Bochner, we wouldn’t be making this seudah tonight.”

“Because what kind of simcha would it be if we knew that her cure had come at the expense of her future? This seudah is possible because of Bonei Olam.”

Rabbi Bochner hung up the phone, tears in his eyes. And then, with his Chanukah candles still casting their glow, he repeated the words that had been interrupted by the call. לעו ךיסנ לע לודגה ךמשל ללהלו תודוהל ידכ"

land Of little

Little in a Big World

Each stair Makes him peer And be hit with great fear

He can’t climb ‘cause it reaches his middle;

The faucet’s a fall, A white water wall; He could Drown under it, He’s so Little.

$2o

through him days gets without What getting fazed I would say is a very strange Riddle.

His mother’s big heart Is what sets him apart – she is with him at start, end and middle; I’d do quite the same, but now, I’m in pain, as I wait to hug someone little.

diamond necklace

Stroller & car seat 13

SPONSORED BY

Hassan Family Ari & Rivky Raskin

for her 16

$150 AT YARD COUTURE

$100 AT EXCLUSIVE ROBES BY DRAIZY MANDEL

$50 AT HAIROLOGY BY NINA

$50 AT HAIR BY TSIVIA MANI/PEDI VANHILL SPA

MAKEUP FOR ONE BY LEAH BENLOLO

MAKEUP FOR ONE BY REUT MAKEUP FOR ONE BY ELSA DAYAN

WASH & SET BY LEAH BENLOLO

17 shabbos package

$100 AT A1 FISH, $250 AT FOODERIE, $250 AT SUCRE, $250 AT LA MARGUERITE, $50 AT AMAZIN' GLAZIN, $72 AT CHEZKIES, $25 AT HOMESWEET CHALLAH, $60 AT EXCELLENT CHOCOLATE, 1 CASE OF RASHI WINE

18

Mother of pearl ring

SPONSORED BY RNB Jewelry

SPONSORED BY

DJ Hamsa

SPONSORED BY Camp Ohr Menachem

Hello Sarah, as a counselor at Bonei Olam, can you give me an idea of what you do?

Sarah Donath: In our branch in Montreal, I am one of the medical counselors. When a couple applies for Bonei Olam services, they are assigned a counselor to guide them and walk them through the many steps, procedures, and challenges until the day their baby is born. Bonei Olam counselors are trained to deal with a wide range of reproductive health issues, including among others complex genetic cases, or young cancer patients who reach out to us regarding the risk chemo poses to their child’s future ability to build a family. We also have single women who are struggling with Shidduchim and want to do everything to recognize their dream of having a family one day.

You advise them about the process?

Sarah Donath: Of course. But even more than that, we offer emotional support. We accompany them step by step throughout the entire process and explain all the procedures. We ensure that they secure appointments with reputable doctors and clinics and help them read their blood test and ultrasound results.

Do you also offer financial assistance?

Sarah Donath: Definitely. Bonei Olam’s core belief is that lack of funds should never be an obstacle to assisting a couple in their quest for parenthood. Every applicant’s situation is considered on a caseby-case basis.

You also provide Hashgachah? Why is that necessary and in what situation ?

Sarah Donath: Because of the sensitive nature of fertility treatments and procedures, it is vital that Hashgacha (supervision in the lab) is provided. Bonei Olam ensures Kedushas Yisroel is consistently maintained with a vibrant team of Mashgichos who stand ready 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, and seven days a week in all local fertility centers. We store our private equipment in all laboratories, in this way,

everything is safeguarded in accordance with Halachah under the supervision and guidance of the local rabbinate. The Mashigichos are caring and compassionate women who are knowledgeable in the field of reproductive medicine. They are also familiar with fertility procedures and Jewish law and are dynamic figures who are an integral part of the process.

Seems like you really care and are there for the women.

Sarah Donath: Of course. Sometimes couples face treatments for the first time, it could be a frightening experience. So we are there to hold their hand and offer encouragement and support during the process. They get a pile of papers with calendars and medications. It can be overwhelming, to say the least. It makes them calmer when we explain to them how the treatment works and how it will affect them, and we also help them make sense of the calendar with the entire schedule from the doctor. We try to make things uncomplicated and as comfortable as possible. We are really there for anyone who needs help 24/6.

Wow. You also have an inhouse medical referral team?

Sarah Donath: Yes, we have an amazing relationship with top doctors, clinics, and laboratories in Montreal and abroad. Anyone who asks for a referral is evaluated and then receives the best-recommended options suitable for his or her situation. We also recently hired an in-house doctor who is sensitive to the needs of the couples, especially in our community, and offers private consultations and minimally invasive treatment at our local Bonei Olam office. We also have a team of nurses on call to administer injections.

That’s incredible. I am going to speak with you Kathy to find out more about that.

Hi Kathy, as a nurse at Bonei Olam, how do you feel when meeting a woman who is about to get injections?

Kathy Haziza: Honestly, every

case is different. Every woman is on a different level, emotionally, intellectually, and physically.

According to each woman’s level of understanding, I explain the process as clearly as possible. My goal is for the patient to feel warmly supported and understood throughout the treatment. I also make sure oncology patients are as calm and comfortable as I can make them. I explain, educate, and answer questions until the patient is relaxed. I also invite family members to be part of the process and be there with the patient. In this way, the patient feels calm when the injections are performed. Though patients can learn to inject themselves, I am there for as many days as necessary to do it for them.

How long do you spend with each person?

Kathy Haziza: The actual injection doesn’t take long; it depends a lot on the person’s frame of mind and his or her anxiety level. Usually, I spend a lot of time answering questions, addressing concerns, and offering support and encouragement. Eventually, a relationship is developed between us, and it is therapeutic for the patient.

Are you with the patient at any other time?

Kathy Haziza: Yes, there are times when a patient needs to be hospitalized and needs surgery as part of their treatments. Often, I will be asked to accompany them and be there with them during and after the surgery. I will also confer with other Bonei Olam volunteers to ensure that the entire process is done according to Halacha and supervision. As a nurse, I make myself available 24/7 so people can reach out to me with any unanswered questions from doctors or concerns they have. At Bonei Olam, offering emotional support is a priority. Have you heard about our Cocoon program?

No, but I’m about to find out! The Cocoon program is focused

on providing emotional support to women and couples experiencing infertility struggles. Let’s find out more from the Cocoon director Rivky Fried.

Good morning, Rivky. As the director of Cocoon, what is your focus, and what is the goal of Cocoon?

Rivky Fried : The focus, of course, is on the couple, particularly on the women who are encountering infertility. In our society, childless couples feel foreign and don’t have a place among the community, especially around the Jewish holidays. So, we do large events several times throughout the year, sometimes with a cruise or a barbeque. The atmosphere is light and carefree, and everyone can just be themselves. There are also monthly support groups with inspirational speakers, entertainment, and delectable dishes to nourish the spirit and warm the soul.

Wow. Sounds impressive.

Rivky Fried: Yes, it is. For many couples, it’s their lifeline. They draw so much encouragement and chizuk from these events. It offers them comfort, comradery, and a sense of community.

How else are these events important?

Rivky Fried: In the society we live in, couples carry around pain and suffering and lose a certain place in the community—and even in their extended family. At these occasions, couples are relaxed, letting go of the pressure they feel being in their regular environs. Over time, couples connect, and women form friendships with others who are in their shoes, friendships that endure challenges and face happy times together.

Anything else Cocoon offers?

Rivky Fried: Yes, when a couple is going through treatments, Cocoon will deliver a beautiful

care package to the couple at the clinic filled with encouraging content and helpful resources. Cocoon also distributes beautiful gifts before every Yom Tov with a letter offering support and encouragement. Couples are touched to be part of a family that recognizes their challenges and pain, and they are moved by their warmth.

But Bonei Olam doesn’t focus only on couples. Singles with medical conditions are often concerned about their future ability to build a healthy family, to find out how Bonei Olam helps them, let’s talk to Avigail Salter at the Montreal office of Bonei Olam.

Hello Avigail, I heard you are involved in running Kesher Networks, could you tell me how it works?

Avigail Salter: I run Kesher Networks, a Bonei Olam international program that helps Jewish singles with medical conditions find their bashert. Singles register on our online database, which is confidential and only accessible to our Shadchanim. Our database gives the opportunity for singles to search for a suitable match anonymously on their own without a shadchan’s help. They can search for other users using pin numbers and a basic background on every registrant, leaving out identifying information.

Nice. What type of people register?

Avigail Salter: Anyone with a medical condition, physical or emotional, qualifies to register.

How do you help with the Shidduch process?

Avigail Salter : Our Shadchanim search through our database and try to make matches. We spend endless hours making phone calls, whether it’s speaking to doctors or therapists, or just general research to see if our idea is compatible. Our group meets on zoom twice a week to discuss potential Shidduchim. We handle every potential shidduch with the utmost sensitivity and care.

What is your fee?

Avigail Salter: Kesher Networks is a program that is fully funded by Bonei Olam, like all other Bonei Olam services, Kesher Networks is free of charge. That’s incredible! What background types do you cater to?

Avigail Salter: We service singles from Chasidish, Litvish, Heimish, Yeshivish, Sephardi, Chabad, and Modern Orthodox circles. Our group of shadchanim is diverse and we have someone who relates to every background.

What is the feedback you are getting?

Avigail Salter: The response has been incredible! We are overwhelmed with registrants B”H. We are very focused on giving the best service and making every registrant feel welcome and comfortable. The thank-you emails and heartfelt phone calls from our registrants make it all worth it!

Behind the Scenes

Real Bonei Olam babies, real messages from our inbox.

Your dollars make you Hashem's partner in so many lives.

To our Bonei Olam couples: Thanks for sharing!

To Rabbi Bochner and Bonei Olam: we cannot thank you enough. You’ve turned our hopes, dreams, and tefilos into reality.

Our son cost thousands of dollars to bring into the world, but we know that for Bonei Olam, every neshama is priceless.

This little note was written by parents. Parents of a priceless baby boy. We need to write this in caps - PARENTS(!) - We still try to wrap our brains and hearts around a word of such magnitude. We want to scream it, we want to sing it, we want to hang it on billboards: “We are PARENTS, and Bonei Olam Montreal helped us achieve this title!”

Our road to parenthood was paved with much challenge and fear. We hobbled down that road, stumbled, regrouped and stumbled some more. Along the road we were introduced to Bonei Olam. From that point forward, we were airlifted and carried. Our warm, dedicated counselor was literally involved through all the turbulence, guiding us, encouraging us, and helping us demystify this process.

As we hold our precious baby boy close to our hearts, our hearts hold tremendous gratitude towards Rabbi Bochner and all supporters of Bonei Olam.

Our counselor, Sarah, always made herself available to us - sometimes initiating before we even asked.

Not a day goes by that I don’t look at my daughter and marvel at the miracle of her life. Our private nurse Kathy Haziza feels like family to us.

Our hakaras hatov to Rabbi Bochner and Bonei Olam Montreal accompanies us through every day, every year, and every milestone with our precious daughter. You’ve made our dreams possible.

Thank you for helping our dreams come true. Our daughter is everything we hoped for and more - beyond a blessing! We are so grateful for all the help we received from Bonei Olam Montreal!

Thank you Bonei Olam! Your financial help made a huge difference for us. We couldn’t have had our beautiful son without you!

We were amazed at Bonei Olam’s counselors’ knowledge – even the doctors take your opinions into account!

Soon after we got married, we found out that we had a genetic issue. Naive as we were, we thought that an intelligent, successful couple like ourselves would not need help from an organization to navigate the process. One year and two failed treatments later, we reached out to Bonei Olam Montreal and got connected with Rabbi Feferkorn. Rabbi Feferkorn helped us find a new physician, financed our treatments, and arranged case conferences with a board of physicians, when our "simple" case did not end up being as simple as we thought it would be. Every family has three partners: the father, mother, and Hashem. Our family has a fourth partner: Bonei Olam. After many treatments, we have two beautiful daughters that for years were only a dream. Thank you for helping us become a family.

Thank you, Sarah Donath for giving us the hope and courage we needed during the hardest times.

Thank you for our miracles!

Thank you, Bonei Olam, for Gene-a-Rations! Thank you for your dedication to Klal Yisroel! The two gifts we’ve been granted with your help give us the koach each day to care for our other gifts. (From a couple that had two healthy children with Bonei Olam’s assistance, after the birth of a their older children, born with a genetic disorder. Bonei Olam helped isolate the faulty gene and avoid its appearance in the future.)

This Rosh Hashanah, I couldn’t believe the difference in my life. I am no longer that poor childless woman who pours her heart out in shul all day. I was home with my baby! I had to run to be in time to hear the shofar! On Simchas Torah, I used to watch everyone come with their babies and children. Fathers would throw their children in the air - while I would choke back tears, and watch my husband clutch the Sefer Torah tighter as he davened for our pain to end. This year, I watched my husband dancing with our little princess, with a joy he never knew existed. Every night, when I wake up for my baby, I remember the lonely, sleepless nights. Oh, the joy of getting up for our little baby! I could go on and on. After many years of so much pain, we are so thankful for every blessing that our little princess brings us. Bonei Olam Montreal – and our ever-patient counselor – was there for us, with funds and with answers to our endless questions. We are forever grateful!

Big Dreams, Little Dreams

Big dreams, Little dreams, Wise dreams, Silly dreams. Day dreams, Night dreams, Full-of-fright dreams. Dreams in color, Dreams in white, Dreams that wake you in the night.

Dreams of diamonds, furs or boxes, Dreams of fire-breathing foxes, Dreams of giants, dreams of clowns, Dreams of tiny men and towns, Though there’s lots to fill a dream, Mine all follow the same theme:

Babies, babies, babies – lots, Some are small, and some are tots.

Dreams of babies in the night, Dreams of babies on a flight. Dreams of girls and dreams of boys, Dreams of floors covered in toys, Dreams of bows and frilly dresses. Dreams of combing tangled tresses, Dreams of nachas calls from teachers, Dreams of boys with frogs and creatures. Dreams of tantrums, sticky kisses, Dreams of honking, school-bus misses, Dreams of simchas, graduation, Dreams of building up a nation, Dreams of spending golden years, Surrounded by a hundred chairs.

Though I awake with hope anew, I wait to see my dreams come true.

work of art painting by

chaim sherrf

SPONSORED BY Chaim Sherrf

25

bosch mixer

and Nussi Frankforter

Esther

land Of little

Rabbi Adam and Elinor Razla

SPONSORED BY

family fun

1 NOCHUM SHOW, MINI FAMILY PHOTO SHOOT BY BASSIE VOROVITCH, $60 BALLONS BY MTL PARTY SETUP, $100 AT PIZZA PITA, $50 AT LET'S GET MOVING BY MORAH LILY, $250 AT PASSMART

table ready 29

HOw BIG is BOnEI OLAM? Montreal

22 Years

Bonei Olam Montreal was founded in 1999 – and is Hashem’s partner in building Jewish families ever since.

26 Staff Members

Including a doctor, nurses, medical counselors, mashgichois, program directors, and more, 6 Countries

Bonei Olam has branches in the US, Canada, England, Israel, Belgium, and Australia. Many countries have multiple locations.

122 Active Cases

guided and supported through the ups and downs of infertility treatments.

1 in 6 Couples

Staggering but true. Almost every family, class, or group of friends includes couples who are waiting.

80

Calls a Day

Every call is a desperate cry for help from someone waiting for a child.

385 Babies

Chances are, you know at least one! Our first babies are already building families of their own!

$18,000+ Per Treatment

Some cases cost much more – but we can’t put a price tag on a Jewish child!

$750,000 Montreal Budget

Money can be the biggest obstacle to parenthood, but Bonei Olam will never let funds stand between a couple and their chance at a baby.

“If people would realize that we would be able to help more people in more ways if we had more money, they’d give and give and give.”

Mrs. Chanie Bochner, Co-Founder

Stuck

A long time ago we got stuck in a land

Where things were so big, we could barely stand The grass was so tall, it covered our heads, We feared being trampled by giant foot treads.

It started quite simply – we wanted a kid, We tried this, we tried that, but whatever we did, Didn’t help, though we wept great big oceans of tears, Marking the days and the weeks and the years

We were in a bad place, we were simply too small, To get through this challenge, it towered, so tall

Each pebble a mountain, we trekked to the top, Then found there’s no answer, it made our hearts drop.

And the currency used in this very strange land, Was humongous – it just didn’t fit in my hand, The coins were so big, when we needed money, I’d break my back dragging it – it wasn’t funny.

Why, when the doc told me to pay up his bill, I felt I was pushing a rock up a hill, The weight made me stagger, it made me see red, You see, I was in this well over my head.

But then, from the real world, we heard someone call, “Can we lift you up, so you don’t feel so small? Give us your burdens, don’t spare any worry, We’ll take over everything – doctors, care, money.”

From that very moment, we stood straight and tall, Bonei Olam took over, did not let us fall, I tell you this story, ‘tween feedings and grins, Life is quite busy, with one year old twins!

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Of li

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Soul Survivor

At a bris in Denver, Colorado, eighty-year-old William Klaiman sat on the Kisei Shel Eliyahu. He wore a stiff satin yarmulke, and he looked around the shul in awe. So Yiddishkeit was alive in America! His family line would live on! Even after Buchenwald had destroyed their bodies; even after America had stolen their souls; even after infertility had nearly snatched away his very last chance at Jewish continuity. This is his family’s story.

Hitler did everything possible to destroy the Klaimans. First his henchmen crammed all of them – even adorable little Anyushka, the baby and darling of the family – into the Lodz ghetto. Then, over the next five years, he starved, tortured, worked, gassed, and marched them to death. Hy”d! But he couldn’t get them all. Zev Volf survived. At war’s end, the 21-year-old found himself the sole survivor of his extended family.

The question was, would he be a soul survivor? Would there even be a soul survivor; a member of the family who would carry his ancestors’ way of life to a new generation of Jews? At first, it seemed likely. Zev Volf was a true Litvak, and when he met his wife in the Fuerth DP camp near Nuremberg, he lived as he always had.

But then came the long, hard voyage to America. The four-thousand-mile watery expanse seemed to symbolize a complete break. Lodz was far, far away. America beckoned.

Here, a man would enter a building as Zev Volf, and exit as William. Here, they told him, ‘Things are different. We don’t eat kosher anymore.’ And, ‘Shabbos is a day like any other.’ Like tens of thousands of others, he listened. William, his wife Elsa, and their

of belongings and a cherished album of photos from the DP camp.

William’s granddaughter, Tauba Fitzig, recalls:

“I loved to look at the album. There was a photo of my mother, who was born in the DP camp, wearing a sweater knit from old socks. And there were wedding pictures of emaciated young people who had lost everything, and were determined to start again. There was so much resilience, so much strength. These people were my heroes.”

But the photos were a paltry link to a different world. True, the family lit the menorah on Chanukah, and on Pesach, not a crumb of bread passed their lips. But it wasn’t enough to keep their children from marrying out. Tauba’s mother is Jewish, so she passed her lineage to her children. Tauba’s uncles had no Jewish descendants – one married a non-Jewish woman and had no children; the other never got married.

Tauba’s sister is Jewish – but as things stand now, seems to have little chance at having Jewish descendants. That leaves Tauba, who always felt connected to her past. Her grandfather gave her Jewish pride.

Tauba recalls a teenage phase as a vegan. She’d taken up the cause of animal cruelty (ironically the same cause the Nazis held dear; human cruelty didn’t faze them) and decided not to eat meat. The phase passed quickly, and she went back to her regular diet. But she couldn’t bring herself to eat pork. Her grandfather’s advice was spot-on:

“If someone asks you why you don’t eat pork, tell them it’s because you’re Jewish.” Eventually, after a complex years-long journey, Tauba got engaged to Nachum – and embarked on a new way of life.

“It was so obvious that Hashem orchestrated our relationship. Things kept happening. There were so many details, so many pieces of the puzzle that came together, to bring us to each other.” At one point, she had an epiphany.

“Hashem cares about the details! He cares about what I eat for lunch. He cares about the way I spend Shabbos! He cares if my elbows are

If someone asks you why you don’t eat pork, tell them it’s because you’re Jewish.

When she brought her bearded, yarmulke-clad chosson to Colorado to meet her grandfather, he was nonplussed. What happened to the ‘things are different here’ story he’d been fed? Was it a lie? Could it be possible to live in America and remain true to Yiddishkeit?

At Tauba’s chuppah, she sensed the presence of her ancestors. An entire chain of Lodzer grandparents and great grandparents seemed to whisper, ‘you are our future. Through you, our memory will live on.’ The night was full of hope.

That hope carried her and her new husband through one year and then another. But with each passing month, she felt her ancestors’ memories crying out at her. She couldn’t bear it.

“The worst was when we realized that the real impediment to having a family was money. The doctor said our problem was treatable – for sixty thousand dollars. To us, that was like saying we needed to go to the moon. It was impossible.”

And then they heard about Bonei Olam.

“I must have a child,” she cried, when she made the call. “You have to understand. I’m the last branch. If I don’t have a child, there’ll be no one left. The Lodzer Klaiman’s will be gone. It’ll be like cutting off a branch of Klal Yisroel!” Bonei Olam did not hesitate. They took on the case, and wrote the check that gave the Fitzigs a future. The Fitzigs were astounded.

“For me, a baalas teshuva, Bonei Olam encapsulated Jewish goodness at its best,” she says. “Here we were, seeking the very same thing Avraham Avinu had sought – Jewish progeny. And his children, whom we didn’t know at all, were using his middah of chessed to help us achieve it.”

“Bonei Olam has no agenda. They wanted nothing from us. All they wanted was to help another Jewish couple build a family.”

Today, Tauba and her husband have three beautiful children. At her son’s bris, where her grandfather was honored as sandek, it struck her:

“This child is my family’s only link between Avraham Avinu and the future. If not for Bonei Olam, Hitler – with the help of assimilation – would have succeeded in making our family Judenrein. This child is transplanting the memory of all my ancestors to a new generation.”

Zev Volf /William Klaiman passed away in peace, secure in the knowledge that he could face his ancestors with pride, because he was not just the sole survivor of the family. He had also lived to see that it still had a soul.

Tauba and her husband, Nachum Fitzig, live in Hollywood, Florida, with their beautiful, growing family. Their ancestors must take great nachas from the sight of the peyos-framed face of their ten-yearold son, Yossel, who loves to learn and daven; and their daughters, Chana, named for her great-aunt Anyushka, and Eda. Through them, the Klaimans of Lodz live on.

Rabbi Schlomo Bochner, himself a child of survivors, grew up on the stories of the aunts, uncles and cousins he should have known. Bonei Olam is his personal revenge against their murderers.

One and a half million children were killed, and thousands of family lines were completely destroyed in the Holocaust. In America, millions more were lost in the spiritual holocaust of intermarriage and assimilation. It’s as if their neshamos were gunned down and gassed, in this world and the next, with almost no one wise enough to shed a tear.

But Bonei Olam and its donors are doing everything possible to preserve family trees, so that no branch in Klal Yisroel is severed forever.

If I don’t have a child, there’ll be no one left!

LOL in Land Of Little

If ever there’s reason To laugh – any season There’s one place you really must see, It’s called Land of Little, For people in middle Of growing – they are still quite wee.

They make up for size With the glint in their eyes, And the things that they do and they say, They live in great wonder, They question, they ponder, Cause trouble and messes, oy vey!

Crack eggs to make suns, Pick raisins from buns, And ask at least one thousand whys, Think up great excuses, Have hundreds of uses For glue, paint, mud, sand, fireflies.

They turn rooms to stages Make plays, quite outrageous, In costumes they make on their own They ask for pet rabbits, Pick up funny habits, And don Mommy’s sheitel, on loan.

If you are so blessed, To come, not as guest, But in Little Land actually dwell, You’ll chuckle, you’ll grin, Or jump out of your skin, Through it all, you will say, LOL.

BY Friends of Bonei Olam

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Dealing with infertility can be one of the greatest challenges you ever faced. That’s why you need the best help you can get. Bonei Olam will guide you through the maze of doctors and treatments and help fund your care if necessary.

Bonei Olam is the community’s go-to resource for all reproductive health matters, from childhood and shidduch concerns through

can help.

adulthood. We provide a full range of services, including referrals, genetics and highlysophisticated lab services. To get the help you need, call now.

It takes a team like Bonei Olam, with its exceptional medical board, medical advisors and counselors, to guide and connect patients to the doctor, fertility clinic or research establishment best suited to their needs.

• Medical Referrals & Guidance

• Financial Assistance

• Interest Free Long Term Loans

• Hashgacha - Supervision In The Labs

• Cocoon - Emotional Support Program

• Genetic Research

• Insurance Advocacy

• Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Care

• Global Medical Network

• Cancer Related Fertility Preservation

• Pediatric, Adolescent Fertility Related Issues

• Shidduch-Related Genetics

• 24- hour Hotline

Bonei Olam Inc. 5670 Hutchison, Montreal QC H2V 4B6 www.boneiolam.ca | www.ourcocoon.org

If you are struggling to build your family… We understand. We

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