Michael Pollack spent Memorial Day volunteering with people whose homes were destroyed in the recent tornado in Moore, Okla., which left 24 dead, nine of them children, and nearly 250 injured.
The Oklahoma City resident had seen pictures on Facebook of Rabbi Ovadia Goldman, co-director of The Chabad Community Center of Southern Oklahoma, and his three rabbinic interns helping out in the affected areas. Then he and his wife, Jiji, decided to join in.
Over the past week volunteers from nearby Jewish communities have been going from house to house, meeting with homeowners, listening to their stories and offering gift cards they can use as cash to start to rebuild. The funds are available as a result of a nationwide campaign by the Orthodox Union, which has contributed $15,000 to the recovery effort.
Pollack says he hopes the people they met felt cared about and supported, and that they understood that they weren’t alone.
The rabbi and his team have been working tirelessly since the natural disaster struck to try to improve victims’ lives, jumping into action to gather volunteers, food and other resources, as well as opening up the Chabad House after the tornado as a place of respite.
Pollack says he was glad to see Chabad reaching out to address the broader community’s needs. “I thought that this represented the Jewish community very well. I was impressed with the initiative and the boldness of the project.”
Anita Barlow, who had worked as a high school teacher in Moore, came out with her husband, Michael, on the Sunday before Memorial Day to help out. She says she came away moved not only by the people she met, but by the way the rabbi plunged into the effort and encouraged others to help out so quickly. The devastation was bigger than she had imagined, she says, down to the school she saw where six of the children had died—it was all but leveled.
“The whole thing was a very positive experience,” she says, adding that even though the residents lost so much, they still seemed upbeat. “One lady, when I talked to her, I said, ‘How are you doing?’ and she said, ‘Better than a lot of people.’ And she was sitting there in the rubble of her home.”
They gave a pregnant woman watching TV with her two children a gift certificate to Walmart after hearing that her kids lost a lot of their toys, says Barlow. “She was just so pleased; you could see that even a small act like that just made her day.”
Residents were largely approachable and appreciative, she adds, and their faces simply lit up at the sight of the gift cards.
Michael Barlow, active in Chabad leadership, says he was glad to be part of such significant work: “It was an opportunity to do a mitzvah, to put the religion into action.”
Judaism is a religion of action, he stresses. “You can’t just talk about doing good things; you have to get out there and do them.”
Barlow is organizing students from the University of Oklahoma’s Hillel to volunteer in conjunction with Chabad, to talk with people and offer tangible assistance via the donations that have been pouring in.
In an area where homes have been reduced to piles of brick, stone, wood and iron, he acknowledges being initially apprehensive about how their gestures would be received. Yet he was pleasantly surprised.
“They were so excited to have the cash,” he says. “But also, they were so appreciative of the fact that someone came and offered it to them.”
Join the Discussion