Hope at Hannukah: A Modern Tale @ Continuing Alumni Education

Posted on December 10th, 2012 Special Contributor

It was Hannukah of 2005, four months after Hurricane Katrina changed everything. A group of us were in New Orleans helping to restore the homes of four Jewish families that had been flooded with nearly eight feet of water. After five days of putting up sheetrock, spackling and taping, we were standing with Anne and Stan Levy outside their home.

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Anne Levy is a short woman. She is a survivor of the Holocaust, miraculously being smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in January, 1943 and passing for Christian once on the outside. Eventually, some fifty years ago she had come to this house in New Orleans and has lived there ever since.? ?Now we have to start all over,? she had said with tears in her eyes.

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She would never have asked for help with her home. ?Others need it more.? It was her daughter who had told about their need, bringing us to their home. It wasn?t requested; it was offered.

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When we first entered her once beautiful home, we saw that the damage was total. It had been gutted to the studs. There was a hole in the living room floor and a coffee table with a waterlogged copy of Anne?s biography: ?Troubled Memory,? sitting on it. It told of how in 1989 she had confronted David Duke at the State Capitol Holocaust exhibition and had told him, with her finger raised high, that this was not a place for a Holocaust denier. She hounded him throughout his run for Governor until he lost.

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So there we were with Anne and Stan on the fifth day of Hannukah. Each of the nineteen members of our group had written a special, personal blessing for them. We recited our words with tears in our eyes. Then we presented them with a mezuzah and a Hannukiah.

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Holding up the Hannukiah, Stan said words that I will never forget: ?Here you are, Jews helping Jews. You have renewed my faith in the Jewish people, in Judaism and in G-d.? Regaining his composure he added, ?I can see the light shining from your faces as you work on my home. I want to have that experience myself. So I will join you on your next building project.?

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Author: Rabbi Joel Soffin

The following year we returned to New Orleans. Stan and Anne hosted all of us for dinner after a day of work. We studied Torah together. This November during Hurricane Sandy, Stan set me this email: ?We hope you were out of the storm damage. Please let me know.?

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I found a copy of that Dedication Ceremony which began with this paragraph:

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The story is told of a family that left New Orleans for a time due to the hurricane and moved to Philadelphia. One member of the family, the mother, went back weeks later to see the extent of the damage to their home. She found that everything had been ruined and removed from the house except one thing, the menorah. As she sat holding that precious object, it seemed to light up in her hands and to ease her burden.

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Whenever I look at the lights of the Hanukiah, I think of Anne and Stan. I can hear Stan?s words. And I, too, feel a deeper faith in the Jewish people, in Judaism and in? G-d.

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This week?s post was contributed by Rabbi Joel Soffin founder of Jewish Helping Hands.

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Source: http://elearning.huc.edu/wordpress/continuinged/?p=1883

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