 Elliot
Resnick, Jewish Press Staff Reporter
Date Posted: December 5, 2007
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Bureaucracy? Red tape? Fighting the system?
The Roth family, olim from Australia, know all about it. The parents
of Chaya Elisheva,12, who suffers from blindness and profound brain
damage, the Roths spent many years attempting to receive government
help for their child’s homecare.
“It took the spirit out of us,” Arnold Roth recalls.
And then on August 9, 2001, the Roths lost their 15-year-old
daughter Malki in the Jerusalem Sbarro Pizzeria suicide bomb attack.
By the end of the traditional seven-day mourning period, the Roths
vowed to honor their daughter’s memory by starting an organization
that would help parents like themselves who wish to provide homecare
for their severely disabled child.
“Malki really loved Chaya, and Chaya was drawn to her in a special
way,” her mother, Frimet Roth, said.
What resulted from that vow was
Keren Malki which today services 2,000 families of children with
special needs. Under its Therapies in the Home program, Keren Malki
reimburses families for 75-80 percent of every therapy session a
special needs child receives at home. In conjunction with Yad Sarah,
Keren Malki also provides expensive specialized equipment on
long-term loans.
According to Arnold Roth, the number of people in the programs has
doubled each year since they began. The organization receives
roughly ten applications a week (most of which are accepted), and
just last month paid for its 20,000th therapy session.
Yet, Roth said, “we have barely begun to scratch the surface.” The
number of severely disabled Israeli children tops 65,000, he said.
Approximately a third of Keren Malki beneficiaries are Arabs,
reflecting, Roth said, other Israeli institutions such as hospitals
that service all citizens. “It’s not political, it’s just chesed,
helping people.”
Roth does not denigrate parents who institutionalize their disabled
children. Rather, he said, parents who wish “to exercise the right
they have to look after their child” should be able to do so
“without having to beg some public official or insurance clerk for
support.”
One very grateful woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told The
Jewish Press that when her three-year-old son was born with cerebral
palsy “everyone in the hospital said he would be a vegetable. Later
they said he would be wheelchair-bound, blind, severe mental
retardation, everything.”
Against the odds, she and her husband commenced therapy. “We started
seeing improvement,” she said, but “then we ran out of money… It was
totally beyond me and my husbands’ salaries.”
Which is when she discovered Keren Malki. “My child now walks with a
walker, and they say within two years he’s going to walk
independently. On all his cognitive tests he’s completely normal; he
speaks above his age.”
According to Roth, Keren Malki’s budget is $750,000, most of which
comes from private donations. He fundraises himself when he travels
to speak about the nature of terrorism (“a cancer that will only be
defeated by an uncompromising will”) and his experience as a family
member of a terrorist victim.
Keren Malki’s benevolent work, Roth said, does not comfort him for
his daughter’s loss. “But it does better prepare you to deal with
the challenges that come with life after the murder of your child.”
This article is published on the
Jewish Press website. |
Malki's
Parents Write
The
Events of 9th August 2001
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