Playing their cards right in the Bowls Club, Raanana

This year, ESRA Herzliya had a new venue for its bridge morning – the Bowls Club in Raanana. The large room which is used as a bridge club by the Israeli Bridge Association proved to be a very successful venue.

Over 120 people joined us on a Thursday morning in May to play duplicate bridge and other card games, and to support ESRA.

We had great discussions about what food to serve. Just a snack with tea or coffee was decided upon. We opted for small, savory bourekas, crackers, cheese cake and sweet biscuits. Of course we over-ordered and ended up selling the extra food – a few more shekels to help ESRA.

A raffle was held with a dozen prizes. Usually, drawing the winning numbers is a long and tedious process, so we decided on a different system. We quietly went amongst the tables and asked people to draw tickets which we placed on each of the prizes, and everyone had to go and see if they were one of our lucky prizewinners. The system worked very well.

The atmosphere in the hall was great; the concentration of the players could be felt and our very experienced tournament director, Eitan Levy, did a wonderful job of controlling it all. The winners at the end of the morning were: North/South - Sheryl Derman and Annetter Millener-Gilad, and East/West - Adrian Mendel and Steve Friedman.

One remark made by a lady leaving the hall was, “Could we have a bridge morning every month?” What a lovely idea, but it does take a lot of time and effort to organize, so we will have to see what we can do…

We would like to thank all the people who assisted us in making this such a successful event -  Louise Braverman for allowing us to use the premises and for all the help she gave us, and the tournament director who so generously gave us his time.  To those who came to play or to help - thank you for helping us to raise money for ESRA and for our ESRA projects in Herzliya.  These include Students Build a Neighborhood, Bayit Cham - an afternoon center for teenage girls at risk, and other local ventures that we are asked to support.