One Financial Advisor’s Personal Sacrifice

Why he’s taken a leave of absence to stand strong for family in Israel

Shabbat Alone Together: https://aishdcevents.wixsite.com/aishcenter/event-details-registration/Shabbat-Alone-TOGETHER

Ric Edelman: It's Wednesday, December 27th. A couple of months ago, I shared with you the story of JB Liebstein. He's a colleague of mine at Edelman Financial where he is a financial advisor. JB has been a financial advisor for, oh, pushing 30 years now, been with the firm and Edelman Financial for longer than I can remember. JB did something rather extraordinary a couple of months ago. I'm going to let him share his story with you. In case you missed it previously, and an update on what is going on with him and the latest of this saga. JB, welcome to the show. 

JB Liebstein: Thanks very much for having me, Ric. I appreciate being here today. 

Ric Edelman: So JB, a couple of months ago, after the horrific events in October when Hamas attacked Israel, you took it very personally.

JB Liebstein: It was really an attack not just on Israel, but on all the Jewish people. So a couple of days after the war started, I headed on the plane and I landed in Israel about 4 or 5 days right afterwards. I brought a bunch of supplies with me that I understood the Israelis needed and found a group of volunteers and started working on the day after I landed. 

Ric Edelman: And you've been there pretty much ever since you came home here toward the end of the year, just for a brief period to tend to some client needs in your financial planning practice with year-end tax activities and such. But you're headed right back to Jerusalem after the first of the year. Talk about your experience when you arrived in Israel, what you saw, and just tell us about that. 

JB Liebstein: Right. Well, as you know, Rick, the country was not prepared for this to happen. It took everybody, including the Army, by surprise. They didn't have a lot of the materials and supplies that they needed. So they didn't have helmets, they didn't have flak jackets. They didn't have enough boots for 360,000 soldiers. They called up from the reserves. So that's where a lot of the focus went with the Israeli budget. But there were a lot of supplies that were still needed by the soldiers. They need the warm socks; they needed thermal tops. And that's where we came in. So the Army supplied the big things and we supplied everything else in between. So for the first three weeks, I called everybody I knew in the States and told them of the issues, and people were very happy to help. People would send me $500, $1,000. And this was at the very, very beginning. Everything went through my Venmo account. So we raised a lot of money, and it went into buy warm clothing for the soldiers along the border. 

Ric Edelman: But that didn't stop there. You started providing meals to the soldiers, right? 

JB Liebstein: Right. One time we went down to an army base in the south just outside Gaza and we brought a thousand dinners with us for Friday night dinner. The dinners were home cooked. It was fish, chicken, meat, salads, challah, juice, everything that's sitting on a Jewish table for a traditional family. On Friday night, the commander pulled me aside and thanked me for that. He said that it was the best thing that had been done for his soldiers since the war began, and he told me, if we could keep doing this, it would be the best thing that we could do for the soldiers. So I went back with my team and said, we have to keep doing this. It costs five bucks a meal, and we had to come up with $5,000 every single week to do this. And it was still rather new. This was three weeks into the war. So again, I got on the phone, called everybody knew, told them what was happening, and we started a program called Shabbat Alone Together. And through that, we raised thousands of dollars to bring meals to the soldiers on the front. 

Ric Edelman: So I'm just astonished. I mean, forget about the humanitarian element of this. Forget about the human and emotional element of all this. I'm just astonished at the logistic challenge of this. How do you suddenly, from nothing, prepare a thousand meals a week? And I think now you're doing a lot more than a thousand meals a week. How many are you up to at this point? 

JB Liebstein: Well, this past Friday we did 3,000 meals, but it's a big endeavor. We went to the mayor's office in Jerusalem, and we told him we needed a facility where we could have a kitchen. He knew of a single family house that was empty. We took it and we put it in the backyard, a kitchen we built the kitchen had electricity, had plumbing, and we bought a stove. We bought an oven. We got a lot of refrigerators donated. We had that kitchen up and going in two days. Then we got all the suppliers, and we told them that all the food that we buy is for the soldiers. We were able to get everything at wholesale. We called a lot of volunteers, and I think we only placed maybe 10 or 12 outgoing phone calls, but we had 50 or 60 people that wound up showing up from word of mouth. So we go out there and Wednesday we cut and do all the salads. On Thursday we're cooking all the meat and fish and chicken. And on Friday, either we deliver it straight to the army bases in the south, or they send a soldier up to pick up the meals. But oftentimes we go down to south of the Gaza border near one of the kibbutzim that was attacked. We meet the IDF there. We hand them over the meals, and they bring it in one of their trucks to the soldiers inside Gaza. I'm telling you, Ric, there's not a better feeling than to know that there are soldiers that are just taking a break, relaxing with their fellow soldiers and enjoying a good meal. 

Ric Edelman: You've been in Israel since October. You came back to the US a couple of weeks ago to attend to some year-end issues for some clients, and you'll be returning to Israel in January while you're in the States. Who's running the operation in Israel for you? 

JB Liebstein: Well, I've got a great team in Israel. They're all volunteers. They are working in many different industries. On October 6th and October 7th, they all came together and formed a distribution center to take in donations and to distribute them there. My team in Israel, they're still doing the dinners. They're still making the dinners and delivering them. I'm the fundraising arm, so I'm the Washington DC or the Maryland representative, and I'm the one that's raising the funds. I sent it to Israel every Wednesday, and whatever we can budget, that's what we buy. So we take orders from the bases on Tuesday, and I find out which bases need how many meals for how many soldiers and where they're located. On Wednesday, it's a match between how many meals are needed and how much money I was able to raise that week. So far, we've been very, very lucky Ric, we've been able to fulfill all the needs. 

Ric Edelman: Where are you getting the food from? 

JB Liebstein: We're getting it just from the butchers. We're not getting them from the supermarket. We're getting them from the butchers directly. And then it's brought over to our house and everything is established and cooked there. 

Ric Edelman: Now, when you began your efforts in Israel, you had talked about the fact that you were providing additional supplies and equipment and materials. Are you still providing assistance in those ways? 

JB Liebstein: That's a great question, Ric. Everything is in need in Israel right now, and we have a very, very happy to say we've got around 32,000 undergarments being shipped to Israel in one process or another. About six weeks ago, instead of me collecting money and then going to an importer in Israel and trying to buy the undergarments, I called all the underwear companies that could find on the internet in America. I was lucky enough to find one company that was able to donate 32,000 pairs of undergarments, warm socks, underwear and thermals. 4000 of those are being shipped as we speak, and another 20,000 will arrive sometime the first week of January, so I'm not raising money for that. Luckily, that was donated. All I had to do was pay for the shipping, which of course was quite a lot also. But that's going to be a party if you can make it to Jerusalem when 32,000 pieces of underwear arrive. I can tell you you've never been to a bigger party. I'm very, very, very excited for that day. 

Ric Edelman: I mentioned earlier on that this is a very personal event for you, not just as a Jew, but because your family is in the midst of this. You have family in Israel. You have two of your three sons engaged in this at this point. 

JB Liebstein: Exactly. Yes. So two of my boys are there out of three. One's in college and the other one is joining the Army in a couple of weeks. So he's joining the IDF in a couple of weeks. And the oldest will join the IDF at the end of November. Both looking to do a combat unit. They've been training for this. They're looking forward to it. Of course, my wife and I are very, very worried, but we're also very, very proud that they've decided to take a stand and represent the Jewish people and its fight for survival. 

Ric Edelman: You have now gotten to the point that you are doing this so consistently, thousands of meals per week for soldiers, that this is now requiring many, many thousands of dollars on an ongoing basis. So you're no longer funding this via Venmo. So talk about the nonprofit you've established to facilitate donations. 

JB Liebstein: Right. So I came back a couple of weeks ago for the sole purpose of making this a 501(c)3 found all the paperwork was too much to handle at this time, because I'm torn between being a financial adviser and being on the ground in Jerusalem. So I met with the rabbi, and he basically said that all the checks would go to the synagogue, which is a 501(c)3, and that Shabbat Alone Together will be their campaign. So it worked out perfectly. So we have a website. It's called Shabbat Alone Together.org, and it's a 501(c)3 because all the checks are written out to the synagogue, the Aish Center of Greater Washington. So the synagogue receives the money, the donor receives a donation, and we are a campaign of the synagogue. And then the synagogue pays for all the meals in Israel. And we do all the cooking and delivery. 

Ric Edelman: I have to bring this up. JB, the United Nations and others say that there's a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Not only have the Israeli counterattacks against Hamas killed or wounded tens of thousands of people, there's no food in Gaza. There's no fuel, there's no water, the health care is virtually nonexistent, and so on. How do you respond to people who raise an eyebrow over the fact that you're raising money to feed Israeli soldiers while there's a humanitarian crisis going on in Gaza? 

JB Liebstein: Well, that's a great question. But of course, Ric every Jew's heart aches that there are people suffering anywhere in Israel and in Gaza. But from our perspective, we're fighting right now a war that is existential. We have Hamas in the South whose sole goal is to destroy Israel. We have Hezbollah in the north who has more arms than Hamas. Their sole goal is to destroy Israel, and we're receiving missiles from Yemen and from Iraq also. So this is a fight for our survival. We have no qualms against the Palestinian people, but we do want to destroy Hamas. The war could be over tomorrow if Hamas would release the hostages and disarm. And if that would be it. But they choose not to. So we're very upset that there are civilians that are being injured and killed. But at this point in time, we are fighting for our survival. And for us that's primary at this point. 

Ric Edelman: So for anybody who is interested in supporting JB's efforts, as he mentioned, the 501(c)3 organization allows for tax-deductible contributions to Shabbat Alone Together.org. The link to that website is in the show notes, so you don't have to worry about spelling it. All you got to do is click and I presume that you would take the contribution page. JB no donation is too small, no donation is too large. 

JB Liebstein: You got that right. The $5 is the calculated cost for one soldier for one meal. So we have plenty of soldiers to feed, so any donation is welcome and we really appreciate it. 

Ric Edelman: Let me share my thoughts with you on this, JB first of all, what you're doing, what your family is doing is heroic. It's remarkable. It's noteworthy. We're just so very proud of you and in awe, quite frankly. It just really what you're doing just takes your breath away to put your life on hold, to give up your safety and your personal security here in the United States, to go to Israel, devote your life to this cause. It's astonishing. It's just wonderful and heartwarming to see. I've also been equally astonished and angered over the incidents that we're seeing here on college campuses in the US, and I've been embarrassed and shocked, as so many of us have been, by the astonishingly poor behavior exhibited by so many university presidents. Everything that's happened, starting with the Hamas attack on October 7th, is so very disturbing on so many levels. All at the same time. And I've made it clear on this podcast and elsewhere that I stand for Israel. And as you've noted, Israel is experiencing an existential threat. Israel is retaliating to an unprovoked attack by Hamas. Their attack was not a military attack. It was not soldiers attacking other soldiers in order to achieve some military objective. This was a terrorist act. It was targeted at defenseless women and children, at elderly citizens and college students. Look, if you hit me and I retaliate by hitting you, I don't understand why people are mad at me instead of you. 

But put that aside. Fact is, I admire and love the Palestinian people, just like I admire and love the Israeli people. The problem is that the Palestinians are being subjected to horrible abuse by Hamas. They're being used these Palestinians as human shields. We've seen the atrocities that are occurring. In my opinion, the only way that we can save the Palestinians is to eliminate Hamas. And that is why I am personally so supportive, and why I am so convinced that Israel is facing an existential threat, and that why it is so essentially important that we support Israel. Now, I realize not everybody shares this view, but the fact is that Israel and Jews all over the world are facing an existential threat that we haven't seen the likes of since World War Two and the Holocaust.

And so Jean and I have talked about this extensively. JB, we want to say to you as our way of saying thank you to the work that you're doing. We want to encourage our podcast audience to support your efforts with Shabbat Alone Together. And so for the next 48 hours, Jean and I are going to match all contributions that you receive to Shabbat Alone Together, up to $100,000. So if you donate a dollar, $10, $100, $1,000, we will double it. Go to Shabbat Alone Together.org to make a donation to support JB and his efforts to be helpful in a very tangible, specific and beneficial way for the soldiers of Israel. 

JB Liebstein: Thank you very much. Ric. 

Ric Edelman: JB, my friend, thank you for what you're doing. Stay safe. Keep your family safe. And with God willing, this will all be over very soon. 

JB Liebstein: Thank you, thank you Ric. Thank you Jean. Thank you everybody, I appreciate it. 

Ric Edelman: That is Shabbat Alone Together.org.

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