Oct. 7th gave La’aretz Foundation renewed purpose

If you’d have asked Shelly Harel Pitman on Oct. 6, 2023, she’d have told you that her fundraising days were on pause. The most important thing in her world was her 2-month-old baby. On Oct. 7, everything changed in an instant.

Having already formed the nonprofit La’aretz Foundation one year earlier with her husband, Mike Pitman, the couple — both of them from Israel — quickly decided to fundraise for victims of the terrorist attack and subsequent war effort.

“We didn’t know yet what...