Call it a stereotype, if you like. But we have had enough experience visiting, living in, witnessing and passing through New York to know that it is different from the West. It is less friendly, less helpful, less responsive, less humane than life in the West. Something as simple as an ordinary hello often seems as difficult to secure as a smile from a convict. OK. Enough of our anti-New York rant. Our purpose this time is actually the opposite: to comment on the incredible outpouring of helpfulness, selflessness and kindness that the citizens of the Hurricane Sandy-stricken New York area have demonstrated. It has been inspiring.
Soup kitchens opening 24-hours a day.
Volunteers rescuing the elderly or infirm.
Families (and synagogues and restaurants and other institutions) opening their doors to one and all, for electric recharging, for food, for shelter, for heat.
People emptying their pockets of change and bills.
Charities unleashing far larger sums for those in need.
Repair crews working around the clock.
Houses of worship filling with pray-ers who don’t usually come.
Houses of worship providing free pizza.
Others providing buses to evacuate people in stricken areas.
Professionals and lay people mining all imaginable communication sources, such as social media, to get the word out where help was available, or where gasoline was to be had.
Politicians of different stripes working together.
All very beautiful. We hope that New Yorkers never need to rise to the occasion again.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
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