Houston’s Jewish community, as well as other communities across the country, came together to help those affected by the record breaking storm.
Donations have poured in from across the country and local institutions are doing their best to cope with the hurricane’s dislocations, which hit some of the city’s most Jewish neighborhoods. Houston’s Evelyn Rubenstein JCC announced earlier this week that it would reopen on Thursday to serve as a center for the distribution of relief supplies and case workers from Jewish Family Service will be there to assist families, the Jewish Herald-Voice reported.
Meanwhile, national organizations such as the Orthodox Union and the Jewish Federations of North America have begun fundraising campaigns and JFS is compiling a list of local Jews affected by Harvey in order to effectively distribute aid.
The Herald-Voice also reported that local synagogues have begun partnering in order help families by various means, including organizing community meals.
The city’s residents are contending with mass displacement, property damages, and shortages, with much of the city underwater. For the Jewish community of Houston, this also means a shortage of kosher food.
According to Chabad.org, all of the local supermarkets stocking kosher certified products are either flooded or otherwise shut down (one was turned into a shelter) and it is unsure how soon more comestibles can be brought in.
"We have placed an order for kosher meat in Miami, and it’s leaving there on a refrigerated truck Tuesday morning, heading this way,” Rabbi Dovid Goldstein, the local emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement said. His plans to establish a kosher food pantry for the local community may be compromised by the impassability of waterlogged roads, many of which are currently transformed into streams.
“Even for those who were fortunate not to lose electricity, like us, it’s a matter of days until we have no milk and other basics,” Rabbi Yossi Zaklikofsky, another emissary, told Chabad.org. “And when the stores do reopen, it is open question as to what they’ll actually have that’s salvageable.”
The Herald-Voice reported that “with the loss of so many kosher kitchens and limited access to kosher food supplies, more community meals are expected over the coming days, weeks and months.”
Meanwhile, local Jewish camps such as Camp Young Judaea-Texas, located three hours outside of the city, have opened up their facilities to displaced families.
We don’t have a lot of money but we have a great staff, so we said, ‘Let’s open it up,’” camp director Frank Silberlicht told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “For people to have some kind of normalcy, that’s what camp provides.”
The Reform movement’s Greene Family Camp, meanwhile, has offered its facilities as a kind of day care for parents who need to return to their homes to inspect the damage, JTA reported. The camp is also providing clothing and food and has taken in several entire families.
“We’re going to do everything we can to support them emotionally as well as physically, keep them occupied and try to take their minds off of what’s going on,” the camp’s executive director said.
Several Jewish institutions, including synagogues, have experienced flood damage. The Robert M. Beren Academy, a local day school, is also serving as a relief area for displaced families, the Jewish Daily Forward reported.
A number of local Jews, including a number of IDF veterans, have been reported to have participated in rescue efforts.
Speaking with the Times of Israel, Rafi Engelhart, the director of the local branch of the B’nei Akiva Zionist youth movement, described how he, together with his neighbor, rescued eight people.
Grabbing a rubber raft, the pair made their way to the house of a nearby family that couldn’t leave their house due to the flood waters.
“They were okay but they were stuck in the attic and the water just kept coming up and we were afraid they’d have no place else to go,” he recalled. On the way back they came upon another family and "took the mother and daughter and brought them back here before going out again to get the others.”
On Monday the Herald-Voice described how members of the fraternal Hebrew Order of David movement went door to door rescuing the stranded.
