‘I Can’t Stop Thinking of My Loneliness’

 |  March 16, 2021

Miryam, elderly Jewish woman who suffers from blindness and loneliness

Loneliness has always haunted 85-year-old Miryam’s life. “I don’t want to keep on living,” she told Fellowship volunteers who came with food and care. “I’m dying of loneliness.”

Only 13 when her home country of Morocco — already an unfriendly place for Jews like Miryam — fell under Nazi control, she remembers running. “The Nazis made us run. We didn’t know where we should be running, but we ran.”

As Miryam ran, a Nazi soldier struck a blow to her face, robbing the young girl of her eyesight. Alone in a Nazi-occupied country where those of the Jewish faith faced persecution at best, and death at worst, Miryam and her siblings nearly starved. Only when the Allies retook Morocco did the children find relief.

Two years later, Miryam made aliyah (immigrated) to the new state of Israel. She met and married a lone soldier, and the couple raised three sons. But life would not remain happy. Her loneliness returned.

Tragedy took two of Miryam’s sons, while the third is disabled, leaving her all alone. And tragically, surgery failed to improve the aging woman’s eyes, leaving her completely blind.

When we visited Miryam last Passover, with a special Passover Food Box and the promise of a volunteer to visit regularly, even during the ongoing pandemic, the precious woman’s sadness broke our hearts. “I can’t fall asleep at night because I can’t stop thinking of my loneliness.”

But Miryam knows she has friends like you. “I only eat whatever The Fellowship sends me,” she says. And she knows that this Passover, The Fellowship’s friends around the world will be sending her not just food, but love and friendship to keep her from being lonely.

This Passover, your gift will not only feed an elderly and impoverished Jewish person like Miryam, it will show them that they are not alone, and that they are loved.