The woman who won tens of thousands of shekels and donated it all: this is the reason
Advocate Shirit Sadan, who won the Mifal HaPayis religious essay competition, proved that it is possible to do otherwise and donated the entire sum to establish libraries in the young settlements.
In our demanding daily reality, where many struggle to make ends meet, it is often difficult to think about anything other than oneself. It is likely that many people who win cash prizes are not quick to perform acts of charity, preferring to cover an overdraft or help their own families. However, there are rare individuals who prove that it is possible to act differently, placing the community's interests far above personal gain.
One such person is Advocate Shirit Sadan, a mother of eight, who recently won 25,000 shekels in the Mifal HaPayis religious essay competition. Despite a lack of prior experience in academic or religious writing, Sadan chose to participate following a complex period that included long months of reserve duty by her family members and personal mourning over the passing of her grandmother. Her grandmother, an Auschwitz survivor who passed away at the age of 102, was for Sadan a symbol of growth out of destruction and served as the primary inspiration for her winning essay.
The essay dealt with the topic of "Growth from Crisis." Sadan combined the memory of her grandmother with the national trauma of the "Iron Swords" war, analyzing the establishment of a family as the most powerful tool for spiritual revival. She reviewed biblical figures who experienced destruction and rebuilt their lives, and delved into halachic rulings from the post-Holocaust era, in which authorities such as Rabbi Herzog and Rabbi Feinstein resolved doubts to allow widows and survivors to establish new homes. Sadan connected this continuity directly to our times, to the moving phenomenon of war widows and survivors who choose to marry and grow anew.
When Sadan was informed of her 25,000 shekel prize, she made an extraordinary decision to donate the full amount to strengthen the education system by establishing eight religious libraries for children inside synagogues in the young settlements. Among the settlements that received the donation are Avigayil and Asa'el in the southern Hebron Hills, as well as Evyatar and Malachi HaShalom in Binyamin.
Now, ahead of the closing of registration for the next Mifal HaPayis competition this coming Thursday (3.9), Sadan calls on other women to participate. The women's track this year deals with the topic of "Until he reconciles with his fellow," and Sadan emphasizes that writing that comes from life itself and touches the heart creates a great power that deserves to be heard.
