Hanukah started Friday night at sunset as did Shabbat. Hope For Sderot will hold its second Hanukah party on Sunday the 13th. It will start at 1 p.m. with four game booths, 5 food booths, two air inflated bouncing toys, and of course a clown. We are expecting 450 kids to come and spend the afternoon enjoying the day off from school and celebrating the third night of Hanukah with us.

A lot of work has gone into this year’s celebration, hoping to reach out to more children this year. The party is expected to last until 5 p.m and we hope the children of Sderot will have a wonderful time. At 5 p.m. we will close the doors and set up for the evening’s celebration which will be by invitation only to those who have been injured by Kassam rockets.

We have packed two special bags for each family. The first bag is full of toys, games coloring books, Hanukah candles and more. The second bag is also for the kids because it is filled with chips, candy, gum, dreidels and chocolate Hanukah gelt (gold foil covered chocolate money).

This week we were also busy building some more shelves. It seems we keep running out of space so we started to build again. Today we signed our lease for our store front for another year. It is funny that this new year for Hope For Sderot is starting out just like last year, with the major exception that we have not had a Kassam fired at us in over a month and we are not in the midst of a war. We thank Ha’Shem for the peace and quiet and we pray it lasts. Yet there is that feeling down deep inside that says it won’t last for long, the track record of Hamas and their charter won’t allow it. But for this first night of Hanukkah that falls on Shabbat we celebrate in peace.