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(JTA) — When Rosh Hashanah begins on Sunday evening, Temple Beth Shalom in San Juan, Puerto Rico, plans to be holding companies — whether or not or not energy has been restored after Hurricane Fiona devastated the island Sept. 18, leaving devastation in its wake.
“Thank God the temple has photo voltaic panels,” mentioned Salatiel Corcos, the synagogue’s past-president. “They’re not in excellent form as a result of they had been broken, however we may have companies on Sunday evening.”
A devastating hurricane. Energy blackouts. Catastrophic flooding, but a scarcity of ingesting water. Huge aid efforts underway. If Puerto Rico’s Jews really feel a way of déjà vu, there’s ample cause: The identical situation performed out precisely 5 years in the past, when Hurricane Maria — a Class 4 storm packing winds of 160 mph — pressured the island’s three synagogues to cancel Excessive Vacation companies even earlier than its arrival.
Putting Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017, Maria killed about 3,000 folks in its wake, left an estimated $90 billion in damages and sparked an exodus of residents to the U.S. mainland, together with a few of the island’s 2,500 or so Jews. It took almost a yr to revive electrical energy amid a fiscal disaster exacerbated by a magnitude-6.4 earthquake in January 2020 and a collapse of public funds.
The second story of this home in Loiza was destroyed by Hurricane Maria in 2017. (Josefin Dolsten)
By comparability, Hurricane Fiona — which struck southwestern Puerto Rico Sept. 18 as a Class 1 storm — has been much less harmful. It killed eight folks on the island, largely sparing the San Juan metropolitan space.
But intensive flooding has washed away numerous roads, bridges and buildings in Arecibo, Caguas, Ponce and Mayagüez — destroying the island’s espresso, sugar and banana crops and doubtlessly setting again the delicate Puerto Rican economic system for years to return. Making issues worse, the U.S. commonwealth is within the midst of a brutal warmth wave and excessive humidity that’s pushing the daytime warmth index to between 105 and 109 levels.
“This wasn’t as unhealthy as Maria, however 75% of the island continues to be with out electrical energy, and greater than half are with out water,” mentioned Corcos, who runs a building agency within the San Juan suburb of Guaynabo. “I don’t have energy, water or web, so I’m utilizing my cellphone as a hotspot and have a generator that runs on gasoline. Since we’re an island, only a few fuel stations are open and many individuals are operating out of diesel gas.”
Ingesting water will rapidly turn into a critical well being challenge if the ability grid isn’t restored quickly, Corcos mentioned..
“Within the worst-case situation, we must go to rivers or creeks to search for contemporary water,” mentioned Corcos, 33, who like 60% of Temple Beth Shalom’s members is a convert to Judaism relatively than a Jew by start. “Most likely we’ll do this once more. I do know people who find themselves getting ingesting water from creeks, however it’s not very secure as a result of it could be contaminated, so you must boil it. Many of the homes have fuel stoves, however when the fuel runs out, it’s going to be a giant drawback.”
Jewish teams from the mainland and past are contributing personnel, provides and cash to a aid effort that’s swelling as Fiona’s penalties turn into extra obvious to these exterior of Puerto Rico. On the bottom, too, native Jews have been working to share assets with Puerto Ricans extra affected by Fiona’s wrath, each due to geography and poverty.
Diego Mandelbaum, the full-time non secular director of Congregation Shaare Zedek, a Conservative synagogue in San Juan’s upscale Miramar neighborhood, had simply returned from distributing 30 pallets of water to flooded residents in jap Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico’s Jewish Neighborhood Middle, housed at Sha’are Zedek Synagogue, is situated in San Juan’s historic Miramar neighborhood. (Picture by Larry Luxner)
“We had been fortunate as a result of we nonetheless have sufficient diesel for a number of days. We’re utilizing donated funds to assist six communities in Loiza,” mentioned Mandelbaum, who mentioned Shaare Zedek expects between 150 and 200 worshippers for Rosh Hashanah companies this weekend.
Established in 1952, Shaare Zedek is the oldest of Puerto Rico’s three synagogues. Most of its members are native Spanish-speakers who emigrated from Cuba after Fidel Castro got here to energy in 1959, although Mandelbaum — a lawyer by career — is from Argentina.
“We’re OK and our synagogue suffered no bodily injury,” Mandelbaum mentioned. “The one drawback we face proper now’s that lots of our members are with out electrical energy. We do have a generator that’s operating as we communicate, however we don’t have any concept when the grid might be again on-line.”
Anita Wagner, who alongside together with her husband Sammy is a longtime member of Shaare Zedek, left for Miami just a few days after Fiona’s landfall, having already deliberate to spend the Excessive Holidays with their kids in South Florida.
“Puerto Rico’s electrical grid may be very fragile, so we in fact we knew there can be no energy,” mentioned Wagner, 77. “Anyone who can afford it now has a generator. We’re advantageous, however the issue is within the mountains and the countryside, as a result of all of the rivers flooded their banks — and we had been having rains for the week earlier than the hurricane so the sand was saturated. That’s why so many bridges collapsed.”
The Wagners, who fled Cuba in 1962 and constructed up a profitable chain of 33 shops in Puerto Rico, plan to return to the island in time for Yom Kippur.
Puerto Rican Jewish neighborhood chief Anita Wagner, interviewed on the San Juan condominium she shares together with her husband, Sammy. Each had been born in Cuba and emigrated to Puerto Rico within the early Nineteen Sixties. (Picture by Larry Luxner)
“Lots of people have left earlier than, after Maria after which the earthquake. Some have come again, however I don’t assume it’s sufficient to make up for individuals who left — particularly the youthful folks,” she mentioned. “All people’s praying for a fast restoration. That’s all we are able to do.”
Rabbi Mendel Zarchi, who has run Chabad-Lubavitch of Puerto Rico since 1999, supplied an identical perspective.
“As we communicate, the electrical energy continues to be off, in order that’s 5 days and counting. And people with out electrical energy haven’t any water as a result of the water pumps depend upon electrical energy,” mentioned Zarchi, the island’s solely full-time rabbi. “But all that is minor for us, relative to the nice impression on those that solely simply began recovering from the historic earthquakes that decimated southwestern Puerto Rico for over a yr.”
Some 120 households now belong to Chabad — which has a 12,000-square-foot synagogue advanced in suburban Isla Verde — because of an inflow of U.S. mainland Jews drawn to Puerto Rico by just lately handed tax incentives that encourage funding on the island.
Actually, Chabad now maintains a small satellite tv for pc shul within the coastal resort of Dorado, west of San Juan — marking the first-ever Jewish presence exterior the capital metropolis in Puerto Rico’s historical past.
“In these difficult instances, it’s much more significant once we get collectively and mirror on the blessings granted to us. As a neighborhood, by good and unhealthy, we all the time must lean on one another,” Zarchi mentioned, noting the devastation that Fiona has already visited upon Puerto Rico. “We want this was not the case. Nonetheless, we don’t get to decide on what comes our method.”
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