During the afternoon of July 3rd, Omri Tas came with a wonderful story for children of all ages about the Gerald the Giraffe. Gerald was a beautiful young giraffe with a short neck. Since all the other giraffes had tall necks, they sometimes laughed at and made fun of Gerald. So, one day he asked his parents, Geraldine and Jerry, "'Why do I have a short neck when all the other giraffes have a tall neck?' And his parents said 'Well, that's the way God made you and we're very proud of you and please don't worry about what the other giraffes say, because we know your heart and your neck, and someday you'll discover why God made you with a short neck.'"
Now the primary diet of the giraffes was leaves of very tall trees. So Gerald had to eat the leaves of bushes and smaller trees because he could not reach the other ones. "As it turned out, one winter all the giraffes got sick except for Gerald. Why was this? No one really knew, but they were all astounded that Gerald was the only giraffe that didn't get sick." Gerald, you see, ate from a "particular bush that had leaves with a certain healing property in them that kept him immune from the disease that all the other giraffes caught. But no one knew this, it was a secret, a secret to God."
In order to understand why Gerald did not get sick as they did, the other giraffes decided to observe his life and diet. After doing this they concluded that it must be his diet that made the difference, since it was not the same as theirs. "So they studied, in their giraffe laboratories, the properties of all these different plants that Gerald ate. And lo and behold, when they ate these same leaves they got whole, they got healed." So "if it were not for Gerald with his short neck, all the giraffes in this area could have died because they were so sick they wouldn't have known what to do. So then they realized why Gerald was born with a short neck and they all came up and nuzzled their necks against Gerald (they had to bend kind of low) and thanked Gerald and they said, 'Gerald, we love you, we're never again going to make fun of your short neck because you helped save all of us!'"
