2023

Dear Friends:

Having recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of Jordan River Village, during 2023 AFJRV experienced a year of unparalleled change. Under the leadership of its new Executive Director Etai Freedman, and with the addition of several new board members, AFJRV entered the new year with increased focus and energy. We embarked on new endeavors to raise funds and promote cooperation with Village leadership and to ensure AFJRV’s ability to serve as an engine driving the Village’s success during its second decade and beyond.

With those programs well underway, the AFJRV board, like Jews all over the world, watched on October 7 with horror the unimaginable and unprecedented inhumane acts of terror inflicted by Hamas on the Israeli people.  Before the full immensity of what had occurred could even be processed, the AFJRV board sprung into action pivoting its focus towards providing immediate financial aid and assistance to the Village in its vital efforts to aid displaced persons, war-traumatized families and, eventually, hostages and their loved ones. 

As 2023 progressed, financial contributions made by AFJRV’s board members were sufficient to cover all of AFJRV’s operating expenses, ensuring that every dollar donated by you, AFJRV’s benefactors, went directly to fund the urgent work underway at the Village.  In fact, AFJRV, with your help and with great alacrity, was able to raise the necessary funds to enable the Village to open a new school for children with special needs who were forced to evacuate their homes due to the war. The new school provided four classes to approximately 52 boys and girls, ages 3-16, who previously had been left without an appropriate educational framework. With the school firmly established, the Village was once again able, due in part to AFJRV’s financial assistance, to shift focus—this time at the urgent request of the Israeli Government—towards opening its facilities to the returning hostages and their families and to the families of those hostages still held in captivity. 

During the fall of 2023, AFJRV was also there to provide psychological support and comfort to the Village’s officers and staff, many of whom continued to serve the Village’s patrons while themselves silently suffering the traumas of having lost family members and friends on October 7 or having loved ones being held in captivity or serving in harm’s way while in the armed forces. 

Inspired by the resilience the Village and Israeli people showed during these most trying of times and with hope that the war against Hamas will soon be brought to a successful conclusion, we are once again looking to the future, with a goal of enabling the Village to reach more and more children each year so that eventually the Village experience will be available to every Israeli child in need. With the vision and energy of our new leadership, new board members and an appreciation for the Village’s unique expertise, we are, in 2024, embarking on this extremely important mission. We are confident that with your continued assistance we will be able to help the Village open its arms ever wider until the day that the Jordan River Village experience will be available to every Israeli child in need of its services. 

Warmly,

The AFJRV Board