As Hurricane Irma bore down on Florida last weekend, Chabad on Campus centers across the state opened their doors, providing shelter for students and community members. In the days since the storm passed, Chabad has switched into relief mode, providing meals and dispatching teams of volunteers to help area residents clean up from the storm.
On Sunday, Rabbi Pinny Backman, who co-directs Chabad at the University of South Florida in Tampa with his wife, Chava, led a bus full of students to help with recovery efforts in Naples, which was especially hard-hit by the storm.
During the hurricane, Backman was able to secure a concrete warehouse as a safe space for his family and 25 others to stay. He stocked the warehouse with food and air mattresses, and they hunkered down for 35 hours as Irma raged outside.
Once the storm passed, the Backmans turned to helping others—something they continue to do a week later, organizing teams of student volunteers to help residents with their homes just days before the start of Rosh Hashanah.
The goal,” says the rabbi, “is to assist those who are worse off than us.”
Rabbi Chaim and Rivkie Lipskier, co-directors of Chabad at the University of Central Florida in Oviedo, just outside of Orlando, spent the days after the storm arranging barbecue meals for students who had lost power and providing encouragement to National Guard members who were using the campus as a staging ground.
Chabad was the one Jewish organization on campus that stayed open during the storm, so the Lipskiers felt an added responsibility to be available to the students.
A Big Comfort for Parents
“Many of our students are away from home, so it’s important for them and their parents to know that someone is there for them,” says the rabbi. “A disaster like Hurricane Irma can be frightening, but it also brings people together and highlights the wonderful community on campus.”
Jesse Slomowitz, a 22-year-old film major at UCF, can attest to such camaraderie. He spent the storm sheltered at the Chabad House, from Shabbat through Monday night, when power came back on after being out for 24 hours. A Florida native, he’s used to rough weather at this time of the year and was more concerned about his parents in Hollywood, on the southeast coast, than his location. (They fared fine.)
What did surprise him were the tireless efforts of the Lipskiers. With other Chabad emissaries and some family members there, the house was full of adults and children, yet the students were always the central focus. The rabbi came up with the idea of using a neighbor’s generator to power a portable oven and proceed to heat up 90 personal pizzas the family had in their freezer.
Slomowitz, who normally assists the rabbi with social media for Chabad programs, posted an open invitation on Facebook for students to stop by if they were hungry.
“There was an amazing turnout!” he says. “People came to eat and left full, the majority of them Jewish students, but they brought other friends, too. It was nonstop taking care of people. The Lipskiers weren’t thinking of themselves; they were looking out for people who needed help.”
A barbecue fed more students on Tuesday night. Classes are scheduled to resume this week before Rosh Hashanah starts on the evening of Sept. 20.
Sara Hoffen, a student at the University of Florida, wrote on Facebook that she was “so proud to be part of such an amazing community” after the Lubavitch Chabad Jewish Student Center at the University of Florida in Gainesville, co-directed by Rabbi Berl and Chanie Goldman, opened up both as a shelter and meal center for students and families from all over Florida.
Maia Groman, another student at the university, noted that despite the Goldmans losing power for much of the week, they cooked and distributed hundreds of hot kosher meals. “The last week has been a stressful one, but this was all so much easier to go through with the help of Chabad UF. They offered their home as a shelter to so many,” says Groman. “They never stopped offering to help, even when they needed it the most.”
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