When the “Hamassacre” occurred on October 7, Beit Shemesh resident Chaim Rutenberg, the director of QA for Genie Retail Energy who made aliyah from the United States a decade ago, and his wife Elisheva were hosting his newly married nephew and his wife. The nephew was called up to serve in the IDF (some 300,000 Israelis were enlisted in the first 100 days of the war), while his wife stayed with the Rutenbergs. As they experienced how “gut-wrenching” it was for the new bride, his nephew reported from the field that he was constantly hungry.
Ten days into the war, Chaim Rutenberg sent beef jerky to his friend Kobi Tsarfati, who serves in the IDF Logistics Corps. “After some of his special forces units tried it, he tasked me with getting him more,” Rutenberg recalls. “Thanks to very dedicated vendors, we procured over 1,000 packages in two days.”
