Iowa Jewish Community Mounts Flood Relief Effort

Spared the worst of the most destructive flooding to hit Iowa in 15 years, the state’s Jewish community joined the largest recovery effort to take shape since 1993.

In the capital city of Des Moines, hundreds of people converged on the Maccabee’s Deli Tuesday to make 5,000 sandwiches and stuff brown bags full of food for thousands of Iowa residents now living in emergency shelters.

“We’ve got a full house here,” reported Rabbi Yossi Jacobson, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Iowa, the deli’s operator. “There are so many people that need food, and this is the least we can do.”

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The American Red Cross reported that it had assembled the largest flood relief effort since the Midwest floods of 1993. In Iowa alone, Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state’s 99 counties disaster areas.

“From Kansas to West Virginia, more than 2,000 Red Cross workers are assisting people with vast amounts of clean up supplies, dozens of shelters and tens of thousands of meals,” the organization said in a statement.

“We’re the fortunate city right now,” said Valerie Cohen, a coordinator of Chabad’s relief program, pointing out that residents of some inundated Des Moines neighborhoods had begun returning to their homes. “We still have people who were hit, but it could have been much worse.”

Volunteers at the Maccabee’s Deli in Des Moines, Iowa, pack boxes of food as part of Chabad-Lubavitch’s flood relief effort.

Throughout the morning, people poured in to the tiny Jewish deli on Polk Boulevard to help pack boxes destined for local locations, as well as shelters in Cedar Rapids, some 100 miles away. Cedar Rapids bore the brunt of the flooding when the Cedar River overflowed its banks.

Meanwhile, weather forecasters further to the east in Davenport warned of a Mississippi River that hadn’t yet crested following days of heavy rain last week.

“We’re in touch with the Red Cross,” said Cohen. “We’re sending the food to wherever it will be most useful.”

A handful of companies contributed the food, including the kosher meat packer Agriprocessors, which provided some 1,000 pounds of meat. In addition, Sam’s Club, Rotella’s Bakery and Loffredo Produce all chipped in substantial quantities of goods.

“Agriprocessors is proud to serve the greater good,” said Juda Engelmayer, a spokesman for the Postville, Iowa-based Agriprocessors, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the United States. “The people need our help right now.”

Waters Recede

In Iowa City, where floodwaters from the Iowa River prevented Adina Hemley from getting to her home last week, some levees and walls made of sandbags held.

Hemley, the student life coordinator for the Hillel serving the University of Iowa, joined other members of the city’s Jewish community in sandbagging operations to save area neighborhoods.

According to Rabbi Avrohom Blesofsky, co-director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Iowa City and its Chabad House serving the university, the wall that he helped build kept the waters at bay.

“It was one of the few places in town that did hold,” said Blesofsky, who added that he knew of one community member whose house was completely inundated. “The water’s now starting to recede.”

The river, however, claimed 20 buildings at the university, where most students had already gone home for the summer.

The Postville, Iowa, kosher slaughterhouse Agriprocessors donated 1,000 pounds of meat to the relief project.

Rod Lehnertz, an official with the university’s facilities management division, announced on Tuesday that the school was redistributing its existing sandbags to communities to the south of campus.

“We assembled more great volunteers, along with the Iowa Department of Transportation and the National Guard, and sent approximately 450 tons of sandbags to our southern neighbors,” Lehnertz wrote on a blog set up by the university’s department of communications.

Back in Des Moines, Jacobson marveled at the sense of unity that the disaster sparked.

“Everyone has a tremendous energy to help out,” said the rabbi, who directed concerned citizens in other parts of the country to visit a Web site established by Chabad-Lubavitch of Iowa to support its flood relief program, www.ChabadFloodRelief.com. “The Jewish community has come together, as have the rest of our neighbors.

“We can sympathize,” he continued. “We can pray. But the only real response is action.”