Six programmes, one emergency line
Everything Partners does is designed around a single constraint: help has to arrive without the neighbours knowing it arrived.
01 · Year-round
Food security
The largest programme, and the one that never pauses.
Eligible households receive a prepaid voucher on a cycle set by the review committee — weekly for the most acute cases, and roughly every third week for the rest. It is redeemable at four participating groceries in Beitar Illit. The value is set by household size — from about $18 for a smaller household to $54 for a family of eight or more, averaging $29 — and is reviewed quarterly.
The vouchers are ordinary store credit cards. They carry no logo, no name and no marking of any kind, and the shopkeepers who accept them have signed confidentiality undertakings. A cashier does not know which customer is on the programme, and neither does the queue.
For the most acute cases — a hospitalised parent, a household with no functioning kitchen — we add a prepared Shabbos package delivered on Thursday evening, after dark, to the door.
Twice a year the fund runs a distribution several times the size of a normal week. Before Pesach, Kimcha d'Pischa covers a full holiday table: meat, wine, matzah, fruit and vegetables, together with clothing and shoes for the children. Before Tishrei a second round repeats it on a smaller scale.
These campaigns are where the pressure on the fund is most visible. Applications rise by roughly 60% in the six weeks before Pesach, largely from households that manage the rest of the year without help and cannot manage this. We have never yet turned away a Yom Tov application, but we have come close, and each year the decision is made in the last fortnight on the basis of what has actually arrived.
02 · Seasonal
Yom Tov campaigns
Pesach and Tishrei — the two weeks of the year when a poor household is most visible to itself.
03 · Year-round
Medical & crisis relief
Israel's health system is good. The gaps in it are expensive.
National health insurance covers most treatment, but not the co-payments, not most dental and optical care, not medications outside the national health basket, and not the cost of getting to a Jerusalem hospital three times a week when you do not own a car.
For a family already living at the margin, a chronic diagnosis is a financial event as much as a medical one. This programme covers prescription co-payments, children's dental and optical care, medical equipment, and hospital transport. Wherever possible we pay the pharmacy, clinic or supplier directly.
Beitar Illit sits at seven hundred metres in the Judean hills and it snows most winters. Between December and March the electricity bill for a large apartment can exceed a household's entire discretionary income, and disconnection notices follow.
We settle arrears directly with the utility before the cut-off date, replace failed heaters and water heaters, and cover gas deliveries through the coldest weeks. We also fund the repairs landlords will not make — a broken window, a failed boiler — where the alternative is a family living in a cold flat all season.
04 · December–March
Winter warmth & utilities
The cheapest intervention we make, and the one with the shortest deadline.
05 · Academic year
Children & education
A child should not be the one who finds out that the family is struggling.
Every Elul brings registration fees, books, uniforms and shoes, arriving at once for six or seven children in the same household. It is the single most predictable financial crisis in the local calendar, and the one families most often try to absorb by going without food.
We pay school fees directly to the institution, provide book and uniform vouchers, and fund summer day-camp places so that children of working parents are not left at home alone through July and August. Nothing is handed to a child in front of a class.
Hachnasat kallah — helping a bride from an impoverished or orphaned family marry with dignity — is among the oldest obligations of a communal fund, and one of the most delicate. Assistance is arranged entirely through the family's rav, and the fund is never named.
Alongside it we operate a small interest-free loan facility for households facing a one-time shortfall rather than ongoing poverty: a security deposit, a work vehicle repair, a debt that would otherwise go to a lender charging 40%. Loans are repaid on an agreed schedule and recycled back into the fund. Our recovery rate since 2018 is 94%.
06 · By application
Simcha assistance & interest-free loans
Two very different needs, handled by the same rule: discretion above all.
The emergency line
Some things cannot wait for a committee cycle
A death in the family. A sudden hospitalisation. A father who loses his work on a Sunday and has no way to buy food by Thursday. Two directors are jointly authorised to release emergency funds within seventy-two hours, on the condition that the file is presented in full at the next monthly board meeting for retrospective review.
Most families who come to us through the emergency line were not known to the fund beforehand, and most of them return to managing on their own within the year. We do not publish a count: the number moves with events we would rather not advertise, and behind each file is a household that asked for help once.
Applying
How a family reaches us
Referral or direct approach
Through the local rabbinate, a neighbourhood volunteer, a school, or the family itself. Applications are taken in person, never in a public office.
Documentation
Income, household size, rent or mortgage, debt, and any existing state or communal support. The committee asks for evidence, not affidavits.
Two-signature approval
Assessed against written criteria and approved by two committee members. Files carry a number, not a name.
Quarterly review
Circumstances change. Roughly a fifth of households leave the rolls each year because they no longer need us.
If you are a family in Beitar Illit seeking assistance: speak to your rav, or contact us directly at bepartners@gmail.com. Enquiries are confidential and are not discussed with anyone outside the review committee.
Together in times of need
Every week begins with the same question.
Whether there is enough in the fund to cover the families already on the list. Your gift is the answer.