Thursday, Feb 2nd, 2023 | Dr. Andre Gasiorowski, Chairman of Helping Hand Global Forum, was invited by Rivi Kirshtein to the event organized by the Nefesh Yehudi organization at the synagogue in Tel Aviv to address a group of secular Israeli students who will travel to Poland to visit concentration camps.
Dr. Gasiorowski introduced the Helping Hand Coalition and Global Forum and talked about the book “And Every Single One was Someone,” which contains six million times just one word, “Jew,” and was given to H.H. Pope Francis as a special gift by the Helping Hand Global Forum delegation during a Papal audience in May 2022 in the Vatican, and also to former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Israel Lau.
Then he explained the Book of Life project, which is an initiative to preserve 100,000 stories of people saving the lives of Jews during the Holocaust in Europe and North Africa and present them in VR and Metaverse visual technologies. The project also aims to store these stories in the Vatican museum as a form of education about the Holocaust through international and interfaith diplomacy.
Mrs. Rivi Kirshtein is the daughter of Rabbi Israel Lau, who was born in 1937 in Poland and survived the Holocaust as a child. He is currently the Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council and the Council of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.
The Nefesh Yehudi organization organized the event to inspire the students to learn more about the Holocaust and remember the people who died during this tragic period of history.
Nefesh Yehudi, or “Jewish Soul,” is a Hebrew phrase that describes the essence of Jewish identity for centuries. It is a term that embodies the spiritual and emotional bond between Jews and their heritage. It expresses the strong connection between the Jewish people and their faith, culture, and traditions.
Nefesh Yehudi is an organization established in 2004 and active among students in higher education institutions in Israel and the Diaspora, intending to deepen Jewish awareness and the connection to the Jewish people’s historical, cultural, and moral roots. The activity in Israel is carried out in 30 centers that address about 50 academic institutions, with more than 6,000 students active in Nefesh Yehudi projects each year, being part of an international organization that includes 35,000 Jewish students from all over the world who are selected each year to participate in parallel programs for the activities of the Jewish soul in Israel on a variety of campuses chosen in North America, Latin America, Russia, France, Dr. Africa and more.
