Jerusalem seniors celebrate birthdays in a project fighting loneliness

Hunukha Muallam, 90, was visibly moved when he joined a special birthday celebration in Jerusalem after spending a long period barely leaving home. It was not his exact birthday, but he said the event surprised him and that the affection mattered most. Muallam, who was born in Iraq during Hanukkah 90 years ago and moved to Israel as a child, worked for years at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, where he met both of his wives. He has eight children, though his contact with them is limited. "At the King David I was at the peak of my life," he said, adding that he once even received a gift from President Isaac Herzog.

Last week, nearly 300 older adults gathered in a Jerusalem hall for a shared birthday party, many of them experiencing for the first time in years, or ever, someone stopping to celebrate them. The event was the annual highlight of "Mitkhabrim", a Jerusalem initiative that has been running for seven years and supports about 270 lonely seniors in the city. Each participant is paired with a regular volunteer who visits and stays in touch throughout the year.

The project operates through the municipality’s community and welfare departments, the department for older residents, the city’s social affairs branch, and the Shefer association. It was founded and is led by Yehudit Zbidzicki, a longtime Jerusalem municipality employee who has devoted more than 30 years to social work. She said it began with a chance encounter in a supermarket, when she realized a man was not asking for groceries but for company. The man told her he spent his days with "supermarket, home, health clinic," and she decided to dedicate her work to lonely elderly people.

During the war, the program expanded to three weekly phone calls for each participant, along with food baskets and personalized packages. Zbidzicki said the team checks each person’s real needs, from tahini to fruit and dates, and distributed soap and towels before Passover. For Hanukkah, volunteers, police officers, soldiers, pre-military students and young people lit candles in homes across the city. She said, "People think loneliness is only sadness. But loneliness is also when no one is waiting for you," adding that sometimes "one knock on the door can change a person’s whole week." Officials including Gil Ribush and Mayor Moshe Lion praised the project as proof of a strong community and thanked the volunteers and partners for ensuring no one is left alone.