– By Cliff Keller –
The feminine name Nadia is common in Mediterranean countries, in Eastern Europe, parts of Russia and the Arab world. In many Slavic languages, Nadia means hope. The Arabic variant, Nadiyyah, means tender and delicate. But there was nothing hopeful, tender or delicate about the young lady named Nadia who inspired the eventual founding of the Red Carpet Nail Center, an outreach to women in the Tel-Aviv area living in prostitution, drug dependency and deprivation, and a branch of the Israel-wide, pro-life ministry, Abundant Life (Chaim Beshefa in Hebrew), a nonprofit organization which fights to protect mothers and the babies in their wombs.
“Nadia was sitting on the sand,” begins Anat Brenner who, with her husband Ishai, founded Chaim Beshefa in 2004. “Clearly Nadia had been living on the streets for many days. Everything around her was dirty. Not far from where she sat, other girls were shooting heroin.”
