A Letter To My Daughter

My Dearest Shira,

I cannot believe that you are heading off to Israel for a year of Torah study and Spiritual growth! That fills me with pride and joy! The year and a half that I spent in Yeshiva after High School remains one of the most impactful and transformative times in my life. I hope you will look back on your year (which seems like a long time but believe me will fly right by) with similar nostalgia and appreciation for the rest of your life as well.

It will be weird not to see your beautiful face and to hear your laugh every day. I am going to miss you A LOT. And so will Ima and the twins. But thank God today we can be in touch with What’s App and Skype. When I was your age none of that existed. I had a 10 minute expensive phone call every Sunday and that was it.

I want you to know Shira that you are not now, nor will you ever be, alone. You and I are so similar in so many ways. We do not mind being alone and sometimes even prefer it. But I hope you feel, like I do, that even when you are alone or apart from the ones you love, that you are not alone in the world. Ima and I are always thinking of you (we have been for close to two decades now!) and are just a phone call away. I once heard from Rabbi Feivel Wagner zt”l (who was the Rabbi in Grandma and Grandpa’s shul in Forest Hills) that the reason we do not make a new Birchat HaTorah every time we learn Torah throughout the day (the way we would make a new Mezonot every time we had a snack for example), but rather just one bracha in the morning which covers the entire day, is because even when we are doing something else and not directly engaged in Torah study it is still in our hearts (if not our conscious minds) all the time so there is no Hefsek. In the same way that a parent never stops thinking about (or at least feeling) their child, even when apart from them and doing something else (one day please God, you will understand this), so too Torah is always a part of us 24/7. So just know that even though we will not see each other day to day you will always be on my mind and I will smile knowing that you are dedicating a year of your life to grow spiritually in the Holy Land. You can always call us if you just need someone to listen or to make you laugh. I want to give you space to grow but also want to hear from you as often as possible.

Ima and I are so proud of you. We never could have imagined when you were a little cute baby that you would turn into such an impressive, kind hearted, talented, creative, funny, wise, loving young woman. The way you put others before yourself. The way you are able to think with sophistication and understand multiple perspectives. The way you are able to just create (writing, art, cooking, photography, music…). You never cease to amaze me. But this year is about growing even more. I want you to challenge yourself to grow this year.

I want you to challenge yourself this year to grow in Torah. Take your Torah learning to a whole new level. Study Tanach in a deep way. Learn not only the WHAT and HOW of Halacha, but also the WHY. Learn Mussar so that you can see the deep life wisdom in Judaism and use it as a tool for constant self-improvement. Try to build your skills so that you are such a strong learner that you could be a teacher and give your own shiurim.

I want you to challenge yourself this year to grow Spiritually. Develop a personal connection to Hashem that is beyond the formality of performing mitzvot and reciting prayers. Learn about Hashem and nurture your sense of awe. Develop the connection so that you always feel that Hashem is with you and so that you use Hashem to guide all your decisions in life.

I want you to challenge yourself this year to grow in your Independence. What I mean by that is not to be apart from others, but rather to see how strong you are and learn that you can take care of yourself. As children, our parents take care of us. As parents, we take care of others. You are now in the transition phase where in order for you to learn how to take care of others you 1st have to learn how to take care of yourself. I think you have already made great strides in this area, but being in another country for a year will help you grow this muscle even more. Yes, you will learn how to cook, how to travel, how to get what you need from people with authority. But you will also learn how to manage your emotions and stress, how to get yourself through tough times, how to get medicine if you are not feeling well, etc…

I want you to challenge yourself this year to grow in your Relationships. Push yourself to talk to new people, not only to be kind to them, but also because they may turn out to have something to offer you (friendship). Try to focus on the needs of others and help. Volunteer in the community. Set up chavrutot, go out for dinner, and spend Shabbat with different girls. Go to a family for shabbat that you have never met before. Stay up late at night having bonding talks with your roommates. The friends you make this year could very well end up being lifelong friendships. Pirkei Avot says “Aseh Lecha Rav U’Kenei Lecha Chaver.” So in addition to making great friends, try to find role models and mentors from your teachers that you look up to, admire, and can talk turn to for guidance and advice. My Rebbeim from yeshiva remain to this day a source of inspiration and motivation for me, as well as people to whom I can turn if I need to talk.

In general, push yourself out of your comfort zone, because the more you use those muscles the stronger you will get. I always tell you that you don’t even begin to realize just how strong you are. But the way to keep growing is to exercise. It’s like going up the down escalator. If you stay still you remain at the bottom. If you sprint up you run out of steam and go all the way down. The secret is to push yourself just a little faster than the escalator is going and little by little make your way up. So too in all these areas of growth. Huge unrealistic goals will never get done. Set up mini goals with time limits that you can measure and check them off as you go. After each goal is met set the bar a little higher and begin again. This may sound like you can never relax, but the truth is that it gives life meaning and excitement to always have something you are working towards and to celebrate successes along the way.

You know the song “When you get the chance to sit it out or dance I hope you dance?” Well, I hope that whenever an opportunity comes you grab it. Tell yourself, this opportunity may never come again I do not want to miss out. So even if you are tired, or sick, or upset, or whatever, just go for it anyway. Every once in a while you will say that was a waste. But most of the time you will be so happy you went and you will even feel better by the end.

Try your best to see as much of Israel as you can. Get a map and wherever you go highlight it on the map so you can see where you are. And get a map of Yerushalayim as well and just walk through the city seeing all the different neighborhoods and people. Introduce yourself to people and ask them questions about their lives. Take photos. You could even do a Humans of Yerushalayim thing. It would be so cool to have a person or story of the week that you could write home about. Someone interesting that you encountered that week and what you found interesting about them. Keep a journal of your experiences, the people you meet and places you go. You will love looking back years later and reading it again.

Have a lot of fun but at the same time never lose focus on what you are there for: to figure out the answer to the question “Is there a God and what does He want from me?” Do not just learn Torah when your schedule says you must. Learn more on your own. Come back inspired and loving Torah.

And now a few thoughts about Health and Safety. Number one, be smart. Do not go to dangerous places. Try to travel with others. Ask advice if you are not sure. Do not engage in any risky behaviors. Take good care of yourself (sleep, diet, hydration, sun protection, exercise…) so you feel good. If you need help ask the people at MMY. They are there to help you. But as I said earlier, never forget that you are strong and can get through anything.

So, I have so much more to say, but in the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, “Let me sum up. Buttercup is marry Humperdinck in little less than half an hour. So all we have to do is get in, break up the wedding, steal the princess, make our escape.”

Ima and I love you more than anything in the whole wide world and we always will

You are amazing and much stronger than you even know

This year is going to fly by and is going to be the best year of your life! Enjoy it!

Approach this year as an adventure! Use your Moral Compass and your Spiritual GPS and enjoy the journey! Explore and discover not only new parts of Israel and of Torah, but of yourself as well.

Yesimeich Elokim K’Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, V’Leah. Yevarechecha Hashem V’Yishmerecha. Ya’er Hashem Panav Eilecha Vichunekah. Yisah Hashem Panav Eilecha V’Yasem Lecha Shalom.

Love you with all of my heart!!

Abba

Picking Up The Pieces From Hurricane Harvey

Where do I begin? Today is Monday 9/4. It has been about a week since Hurricane Harvey left Houston, but it feels like it has been a month. I will try to share what these past 11 days have been like, not only for those outside of Houston, but also so that years from now we will be able to read this and remember.

The good news: Our family is ok. After the Memorial Day flood and the Tax Day flood we moved to a nearby apartment so that we would not have to go through this again. So this time we find ourselves with the blessing of being able to help others try to pick up the pieces instead of picking up our own.

The bad news: The entire city was just devastated by this storm which sat over us for 4 straight days and dumped 50 inches of rain. Our shul is flooded once again. Almost every house in the neighborhood is flooded. About ¼ of our staff at school have flooded. And about 30 families in the school as well. This will take a long time, a lot of money, and a lot of love to get through.

Let me start by sharing my own experience during Harvey, knowing that it is nothing compared to those who had to be airlifted by helicopter or rescued by boat from 5 feet of water in their homes.

Last Wednesday (8/23) was the 1st day of school. Teachers stood at the door clapping and cheering as students took those excited but nervous tentative 1st steps into a new school year. The 1st two days went very well. But seeing the forecast for, what was at the time, Tropical Storm Harvey, we decided to dismiss early on Friday at 2:30 (instead of 4:00) and to cancel school on Monday. By Friday morning Harvey was developing into a Hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico and we cancelled school for that day as well.

My wife Elisheva was supposed to fly up to New York Sunday morning with our eldest daughter Shira whose flight to Israel for her Gap Year was Sunday night. Anticipating flight delays or cancellations we changed plans and sent them up on Thursday night instead. They spent Shabbat with family in NJ and Shira made her flight to Israel without a problem. In the end, not only would her Sunday flight have been cancelled. The entire airport was shut down. So it was good that we got them out when we did.

A couple of weeks ago our kids were rear ended driving to the library and so our car has been in the shop. Driving a rental car home from school on Thursday with the twins I went straight home and parked on the higher parking lot in our building, determined to get a spot that would not flood. Earlier in the day I had filled up with gas and stocked up on groceries. I even bought the twins a new board game to get us through the weekend. I did not realize it at the time, but we would be stuck in the building until the following Tuesday afternoon.

Before Shabbat I filled jugs of water in case we lost power. I cooked a good cholent (nervous that it would go bad if the power went out). And I downloaded some kid movies from Netflix for Sunday in case we lost power. We stayed home the whole Shabbat in anticipation of the storm which was coming. We may have broken the record for most board games played, and by around 7pm the skies erupted. Loud thunderstorms and flashes of lightning announced the arrival of Harvey. Tornado warnings kept flashing on the phone and TV. I got the twins to sleep even though Simcha still gets very nervous during loud storms as leftover anxiety from previous floods. [In addition, each night Rina cried because she missed her sister who was off to Israel]. And then I stayed up most of the night watching the water level get higher and higher. I saw a car drive up onto the sidewalk in order to try and stay dry, but by the morning the water was about two inches from its top. In front of our building you could see more flooded cars and the water up to the 2nd story of the apartment building across the street. The local meteorologist said she had seen 2-3 inches of rain/hour before, but had never seen 4-5/hour before. Ultimately, Harvey dropped 19 Trillion gallons of rainwater over Texas (enough to cover all of Texas, California, and Alaska combined with one inch of water). This is a year’s worth of rain in just 5 days!

Basically what was happening was that Harvey hit Corpus Christi (3 hours south of Houston) Friday night as a strong Category 4 Hurricane with 130 mph winds. It then drifted northwest very slowly (around 3mph) and we were on the eastern “dirty” side of the storm, so we got rain band after rain band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzn309lDKBs

Around 5:30am the TV and Internet went out. And around 10am the power went out as well. I quickly had one last cup of coffee from the Urn and we spent the next couple of days eating food from the fridge that we didn’t think spoiled and charging phones and kindles in the car. We filled buckets with water from the pool to fill our toilet tanks so that we could flush. And we packed an emergency suitcase with clothes, important papers, and all of Rina’s Diabetes meds in case the water kept rising and we would have to go up to a higher floor. Mercifully, the temperature was cooler than usual so sleeping that night was not as uncomfortable as it could have been.

Both Sunday night and Monday night had heavy rains and rising flood water as I drifted off to sleep, but in the mornings somehow the rains had stopped and the water level gone down a bit. On Monday morning there was a meeting in our building where the manager basically said, “If you want to get out during this lull in the storm do it now because it’s about to get worse.” The storm had moved backwards out to the Gulf and was then forecast to come straight up over Houston. So we had this little window if we wanted to get out. Boats were picking people up and taking them to a staging area where Army trucks would take them to the George R. Brown Convention Center. Many people in the building left, including the manager herself. But on the radio (battery operated) they kept saying to stay sheltered unless you had no other option because even if the streets around you were passable there could be flash floods a few blocks away. They were talking about how if you needed to go up to your attic due to rising waters in your house to only do so if you had an axe to break through to the roof if the waters got even higher. They said it was safer to go up to your roof if need be. A bunch of Jewish families in the building got together and we all agreed to stay put. Even if we wouldn't get power for a few days we could take turns opening our freezers and since we were higher up we felt safe. From my window I could see helicopters airlifting people in baskets from the tops of nearby buildings. It felt like were trapped in this dark hot building and would never see the light of day.

Well, ironically, that same afternoon the power came back on. It turned off a few minutes later but around 4pm it came back for good. Afraid the power would go out again, I quickly had Rina charge her insulin pump and charged my cell phone as well. All three of us took quick showers. I had a warm cup of coffee, filled the tub with water, and washed the pile of dirty dishes. It was so good to have light and AC again, though much of the food by that point had spoiled. We still did not have TV/Internet (that came back just last night) but we were comfortable. Sometimes it takes something really big to make you appreciate the little things.

Harvey ended up moving a little east sparing Houston even more damage. Much of the city was still flooding from overflowing bayous and dams that had to be released. But by Tuesday morning the rain had stopped, the streets around us mostly drained, and we were able to step out for the 1st time to assess the damage. I helped a friend remove flooded couches from his home. I walked through what was once our shul and saw what looked like a war zone. A cousin who lives in a neighborhood that did not flood kindly braved the supermarket lines and brought us some groceries. In the end over 40 people died as a result of the Hurricane and tens of thousands are displaced from their homes. Harvey will end up being the costliest storm in US History (more than Katrina and Sandy combined).

The focus now turned to recovery. We immediately announced that, since our school (Robert M. Beren Academy) thankfully did not flood, we would host a Mini Camp for children in the community whose homes flooded or whose parents were volunteering. Our teenagers stepped up to serve as counselors, and we kept the kids occupied and happy for Wed-Fri. A bunch of teachers and parents shopped and prepared lunch for the kids and for anyone else in the community who needed a hot meal. Elisheva was able to finally fly home on Thursday night. We decided that school would open again on Tuesday 9/5 so that we could give the kids some normalcy and routine in their lives, and allow the parents to do the work they needed to do. But this did not mean we had a nice long weekend to relax. These last two days we have been in the school morning until night hosting the recovery efforts. As much rain fell over Houston in the last week, there has been even more Chesed, and it will not end anytime soon.

An army of volunteers, both from within the Houston Jewish community and beyond (Israel, New York, Baltimore, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas…) have turned the school into Ground Zero for recovery efforts. A team from Dallas brought a truck down and they are grilling and smoking 3000 (delicious) meals a day for anyone who needs. Trucks of donations have come in to the point where we are having trouble storing it and getting it all out to the people who need it. Hundreds of volunteers are going house to house helping people remove drywall and floors as well as flooded furniture and possessions. Tens of families have taken in their neighbors for as long as they need. We have received calls or emails from schools and shuls all over the country asking how they can help. The outpouring of support is so appreciated as it helps us know that we are not alone and that others care. I have never felt the concept of Kol Yisrael Areivin Zeh Lazeh as deeply as I have this past week. We have started a campaign to raise 5 million dollars in one week in order to rebuild the shul to a higher level so that this will never happen again and to increase the tuition assistance we can offer families who have lost almost everything. We are also collecting Gift cards to stores that we can distribute to families who need to replace so much.

The theme that I keep thinking about is the idea that at the same time we are so Scattered and yet so Together. Our thoughts are scattered, as there is so much happening at once that it feels at times difficult to maintain your train of thought or to make a coherent decision. Our homes are scattered, as many are now living with friends while they try to find a new place to live. Many people are worrying about not only the short term but also the long term future (how can we sustain a community that has now flooded 3x in the last 27 months?). But the truth is that the shul will rebuild eventually and be beautiful. The homes in the neighborhood will be raised up. And what will remain is a community that has been through the worst together and helped each other through it. It will be a community of Achdut and Strength. It will be more Together than ever before.

Let me talk about one last thing for now, and that is Mental Health. Our community is in the midst of Trauma. This was a terrifying few days. The winds and the flooding took over 40 lives, including the elderly woman who lived next door to the house we used to live in when we flooded the previous two times. On Shabbat I wondered whether I should bench Gomel. On the one hand, thank God, I never felt that we were in any imminent danger. But on the other hand, this entire city should bench Gomel, as every one of us just survived a monster storm. One man who did have to wait out the rising water in his home came down from his aliyah where he had benched Gomel and just burst into tears. There is trauma from the fear of the experience. There is trauma from the immensity of loss. There is trauma from the anxiety over what the future will bring, including for many where they will live and how long it will take to rebuild or recover. There is trauma from the physical and emotional exhaustion of schlepping the garbage to the curb and seeing it everywhere as you walk and drive through the streets. There is trauma from the fear that this could happen again. There is trauma from those who have now flooded three separate times. And there is trauma from those whose homes or apartments did not flood and are feeling survivor’s guilt.

Tomorrow students return to school, many of whom are no longer able to live in their homes. We will try to make school feel like a safe normal place where they can just be themselves. We will provide mental health counseling and will guide our teachers (many of whom are dealing with their own recovery and trauma) on how to support their students as they transition back into day to day reality. We will teach our students about Resilience and Grit. And we will hold on to each other so that even when all the debris is removed and the volunteers are gone we will be able to see the rainbow that always appears after the storm.

To support our school and our shul please contribute here: www.rmbauos.com