With our Chabad House in need of major repair, we stayed up until 3:30 A.M. on Saturday Nigh to rearrange our home in order to accommodate our thirty-five Hebrew School students on Sunday morning. This involved moving furniture, finding new tables and chairs , and getting them set up.
Our scheduled “Pizza Party in the Sukkah” was moved to our driveway, where we transformed and linked our personal sukkah and the Chabad House sukkah to create one giant sukkah to hold 100 people who attended the wonderful celebration.
Soon after, I met with several people from the community to show them how to use two different sump pumps in order to drain the floodwaters from their homes. I never thought I’d become a maven of sump pumps, fittings, and tubes, but as a rabbi, we must always be prepared to assist in every way we can.
On a personal level, it turned that our car sustained extensive electrical damage and we were told it would need rewiring. After replacing a dead battery, the car was running well enough to allow us to continue on our way so that we could assist others.
We are deeply grateful to the people all around the world who have given financial support as well as our local community for reaching out to us and volunteering to help with the extensive and often difficult process of flood cleanup. Though everyone deserves our gratitude, I’d like to extend a special shout-out to the volunteers from the Mormon Church and the Vail Resort for all their assistance to the people of Longmont.
There is still a great deal left to do. Thank you all for making this difficult time easier to bear.
