By Kathy Carlson, JTA
NASHVILLE — Ruth Klar and Alicia Safdie knew they were lucky, safe and healthy amid the floods muddy wreckage. But the little things made them cry.
My cookbooks are gone, Klar said in her den at River Plantation, a large townhome condominium community in Bellevue, one of the areas of Nashville hardest hit by the May 1-2 floods.
Stains on the wall marked the three feet the floodwaters reached, taking the cookbooks full of favorite Jewish foods.
A few hundred yards away at Safdie’s home, she and Eva Watler took a break from clean-up.
A few days earlier, Safdie had broken into tears when she realized she had no shoes; they were gone with the flood. Now she was sounding an optimistic note.
Were gonna be OK, said Safdie, who was rescued, along with her mother and two guests, by boat.
Just a few days after the rains finally quit, River Plantation offered up an eerie landscape.
All types of vehicles lined the streets visitors cars, workers trucks, church vans and dirt-crusted cars rendered useless by the flood.
Countless grayish mounds of dusty-smelling debris sodden drywall, insulation, ruined tables, chairs, couches, books, toys, you name it took over what used to be grassy front yards.
Rabbi Kliel Rose of West End Synagogue went door to door at River Plantation, just talking to residents, Jewish or not.
The wonderful thing is the way the community is coming together for support, the rabbi said. Its very powerful.
ROSES visit was just one example of the Jewish community responding to the flooding.
Jewish Nashville quickly joined together to rebuild waterlogged homes and resettle uprooted families after more than 13 inches of rain pounded Middle Tennessee over two wearying weekend days.
The Jewish community began mobilizing its post-flood relief efforts when Harry Baker, the sports and fitness director at the Gordon JCC, fielded a phone call just as rains began slackening a bit. He was told that a nearby Red Cross shelter was overflowing; 140 people needed a place to stay.
Without hesitation, we said, Get them over here, Baker said.
Five minutes later, the Red Cross arrived and workers readied the JCC gym and auditorium.
More than 500 individuals slept in the gymnasium on cots provided by the Red Cross. They also were served three meals a day, thanks to local restaurants.
The JCC also operated a relief distribution center for several days, allowing flood victims to come and take items of need, such as food, clothes, toys, books, toiletries, cleaning supplies and much more.
It provided hundreds of individuals with items they needed to begin rebuilding.
Volunteers associated with the JCC staffed the relief center around the clock.
The place looked like Macys it was filled, said the JCCs executive director, Eric Goldstein, who had been out of town when the flooding first hit.
I was glad that our Jewish campus was there for the community, Goldstein said.
Initial help has reached Nashville quickly, from volunteers and donors. Jewish federations, including ones in San Antonio, Birmingham, Atlanta and southern Arizona, were quick to send food and donations.
Day schools and preschools are collecting money, as are federations and congregations nationwide.
Congregations outside Nashville also may send volunteers to help, said Steve Edelstein, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Nashville.
The impact will be long term, and we and the general community will need support, he said.
Nashville resident Fred Zimmerman, chair of the national emergency services committee of the Jewish Federations of North America, said the disaster relief process encompasses three parts: immediate rescue work, resettlement and efforts to boost emotional resilience.
THE communitys rabbis visited flood victims; three spent time at the Safdie home. On one visit, Sherith Israel Rabbi Saul Strosberg pulled up Klars soaked carpeting with another community member.
The Safdies story began at about 9 a.m. on a Sunday when rain crept into the first floor of their home.
At first there were jokes about how they always wanted to replace the carpeting anyway, but the wisecracks soon stopped. In two hours, four feet of water inundated the first floor.
Alicia Safdie, her mother, Suzi Safdie, and her visiting cousin and his girlfriend went upstairs and stayed there until someone in a small boat rescued them that afternoon.
We each packed a little bag, hers with two favorite stuffed animals and two external hard drives from her computer, Alicia said.
They then climbed out the second-story window and down the side of the house, hanging onto woodwork, and into the boat.
By that time the water outside was perhaps six feet high.
They threaded their way through newly formed canals between the subdivision buildings (Were bumping into buildings in the boat, Alicia said).
Once they reached safety in an un-flooded part of the subdivision, Alicias uncle picked them up and took them in.
Nearby, Ruth Klar talked with friends on her cell phone.
She had lived in her house since 1986, when that section of River Plantation was first built and when her late husband, Stanley, retired.
Klar was able to salvage many family keepsakes wedding photos, original pastel artwork of her three sons as bar mitzvahs, framed immigration documents from two or three generations ago. A mezuzah remained affixed to a doorjamb, and her mothers antique mirror was untouched.
The floodwaters stopped just short of a stenciled family tree that Klar had painted on her kitchen wall. But everything below the water line was pretty much destroyed.
My freezer out in the storage shed was turned upside down, she said. Inside were 260 pounds of kosher meat.
And she wont be able to use the now-soggy boxes of matzah she had put aside to make toffee brittle. Still, she and her son, Arthur, in from Knoxville, slogged through the next steps: a tetanus shot for him, FEMA aid applications for her.
The Safdies followed similar post-flood steps, with Suzi away from home to complete FEMA paperwork.
The bottom line, Alicia Safdie said, is they are here and they are safe. The rest, she added, is all stuff, though. It can all be replaced.
The Nashville federation has set up a mailbox on its website, www.jewishnashville.org, for flood relief donations.
