Remembering Hurricane Katrina

Rivka Kehaty – N’Shei Chabad Newsletter

I entered the front door, dropped my suitcases, and slowly walked over to my desk. It was just as I had left it that very humid, windy Sunday afternoon, four months ago. There on my desk lay wedding RSVP cards in a square, white pile, filled with scribbled notes saying “mazel tov!” and “can’t wait!” and my To Do list: “Call hotel with exact number of guests, make welcome bags, work on hospitality room menus, call caterer with dessert ideas.” There was my checked off, circled and starred address list of all the wedding guests. Pages and pages of people who mean so much to our family. Where are all these people now? How had their lives changed since that Sunday afternoon on which the radio had blared…

“We recommend that those of you who choose to ignore this mandatory evacuation order should have hatchets ready so that you can chop your way out through your roofs as the flood waters rise to your attics. If you stay in New Orleans, you should know, now, that there will be no one here to help you.”

Panic and hysteria always grip the city of New Orleans as a hurricane enters the Gulf of Mexico. During the hurricane season of June-November we’ve endured many years of false alarms and outright miracles as, at the last minute, the predicted hurricane decreased in intensity or took a turn away from the city. Our family has never evacuated in the 24 years that we’ve lived here. We take our cues in these and all matters from the Rebbe and from his shluchim. We feel strongly that if the shluchim stay– we do, too.

When asking the Rebbe, 18 years ago, if my husband, Uzzi (a third generation Israeli) and I should leave New Orleans and go to live in Israel where we were in the middle of building a home, the Rebbe responded that we should stay in New Orleans to “help make a community.” We have taken this life’s directive very seriously and have done whatever we could to help the shluchim here and add in whatever small way we could in working to make New Orleans into a flourishing Jewish community.

As the hurricane tracking map showed Katrina roaring towards us, scheduled to make landfall the next morning (August 29), I remembered all the other false alarms and felt secure in the fact that we (and the shluchim) had never yet evacuated. And so I simply continued going about the business of getting ready for my daughter’s, Talor Menucha Rachel’s, anxiously awaited wedding. It was scheduled to take place in New Orleans on September 21.

That summer morning, I drove my 15-year-old daughter Tzivyah Sarah over to Bluma Rivkin’s home. The wonderful seamstress, Demaris, who was sewing Tzivyah’s gown, was also the lady who often helped Bluma with her busy household. Tzivyah and I walked in and found the house buzzing with phone calls from stranded tourists and confused locals. Decisions were being made about the mandatory evacuations, flight cancellations and road closures. But what does the Rebbe want us to do? The New Orleans shluchim were still unsure.

I was still in my pre-wedding dream world as Bluma opened her front door with a warm smile and calmly led Tzivyah and me to a bedroom where Demaris would take a few minutes from her housework and have Tzivyah try on the basted-together gown. Demaris and I held the various dress pieces together and gasped at the beautiful creation the gown was turning into! As I walked through the house to leave, I asked a few Rivkins if they had decided yet what they were going to do. They still didn’t know, being so busy with their usual activity of helping others. So Tzivyah and I left, both of us more interested in discussing dress design than the possibility of evacuation. On our way out the door, Demaris handed me Tzivyah’s gown, saying, “You’d better take this.”

On the drive home, I began thinking about the beautiful hashgocha protis that had brought us to this moment of planning our daughter’s wedding.

My daughter Talor began kindergarten with Shayna Rivkin, Rachel Kaufmann and Chaya Sara Nathanson. They became good friends as little girls and stayed that way through thick and thin. After Chaya Sara and her family moved to Los Angeles, Talor, Shayna and Rachel went on to enjoy the common bond of growing up in an unusual, tourist-driven city. They graduated from Torah Academy together and then from Seminary and later all three worked in Crown Heights and New Orleans. The same year that Talor and Rachel became “basement roommates” in Crown Heights, Chaya Sara and Rachel’s brother Saadya got married, B”H!

Then last spring, Shayna became engaged to Shaya Gopin and scheduled their wedding to take place at the Wyndham Hotel in New Orleans after Shavuous (June 2005). Talor was teaching pre-school in Brighton Beach and she was not sure if she could take time off to attend Shayna’s wedding. As the date drew closer, however, she began to realize that it would be like missing the wedding of a sister and so she figured out a way to take one day off from her job to fly in from Crown Heights, attend the wedding, and fly right back in time to teach.

Rejoicing in her friend’s simcha, Talor spent much of the wedding on the dance floor.

The next morning, still in the glow of the beautiful wedding, the out-of-town wedding guests gathered in the Wyndam’s hospitality room for breakfast. As they sipped their coffee, a shidduch for Talor came up. Many people thought it was a great idea: Bluma Rivkin, our shlucha from New Orleans (who has known Talor since she was a little girl), her sister Yocheved Baitelman, Chaya Sara Gurewicz– who knew Avraham Simcha (“Avi”) Fine from Chicago– and Chana Gorovitz.

Yocheved called me from the hospitality room and asked if I could come right over to the Wyndam and speak to Rabbi and Mrs. Sholom and Chaya Sara Gurewicz about a possible shidduch. I called my husband Uzzi and asked if he could leave work for a few minutes… and we drove over to the hotel.

B”H it didn’t take long before Talor and her chosson Avi Fine of Chicago met each other several times and got engaged. I’m sure it is obvious where we wanted the wedding to take place– the New Orleans Wyndam, of course!

As we turned into our driveway after the gown fitting, Tzivyah and I noticed the familiar signs of an approaching hurricane. The sky was steadily darkening, and the sound of rustling trees cut through the thick, humid afternoon air. We felt the hovering, weird quiet that occurs when suddenly there are no birds in the air or squirrels in the trees. Just before a hurricane it feels as if every living creature holds its breath. And waits.

The phone was ringing when we walked into the house. It was a dear friend who owned a store next to my husband’s, in downtown New Orleans. Calling from Mississippi now, there was panic in his voice as he said, “You have to convince Uzzi to leave. It’s not fair. You have children. You have to be responsible. I have a hotel room waiting for you right next to ours. Please leave NOW…all of you.” As I hung up the phone my husband walked in the front door! (My husband actually closed the store in the middle of the day and came home? Very, very unusual.) He said that he had called Rabbi Rivkin and he (Uzzi) now felt that we should leave. Another friend called at that moment saying that he had heard that all the roads were going to close soon.

My husband said, “Let’s GO! We have 15 minutes to pack and we’re out of here.” Only one of our five children, Tzivyah, was at home. The others were away camping, counseling, or otherwise working. Tzivyah and I ran upstairs and grabbed a small suitcase.

A radio voice sounded in the background, “If Hurricane Katrina enters the mouth of the Mississippi River there could be tidal surges of 25 feet or more… The city will be under water…” I had heard this unfulfilled warning a number of times before, but maybe this time… who knows?

Standing at my closet I had two thoughts. What wedding things must I save from getting wet, and what will I need for myself for the two days we’ll be away? As I stood there on August 28, 2005, I had no idea how naive I was, imagining that I would be back in two days, imagining that the wedding would take place as planned. I had no idea then (as I packed two shirts, two skirts, and no Shabbos clothes at all) that I would be leaving my home for four months. I also had no idea how truly unprepared, in every way, I would soon find myself, as I left my home and my life as I knew it then.

I had been in Crown Heights with my kallah-daughter Talor for four special days only two weeks before. I had brought home all of the wedding purchases. I had even bought a new suit for sheva brochos, having spotted it in the window of a shop on Kingston Avenue. Talor’s wedding gown was in New York being altered.

Now, two weeks later, twelve short hours away from a Category 5 (the highest possible) hurricane, I grabbed all of Talor’s new wedding things and stacked them on my bed. I found my dressy shoes that I was planning to wear to sheva brochos, and my jewelry. I rolled them all up and stuffed them into a bag. I couldn’t leave them at home and risk letting them get wet!

I met Tzivyah in the hallway and we ran downstairs. On the couch was the gown that Demaris had suggested we take with us, though unfinished: Tzivyah’s beautiful ice-blue basted-together gown. The unattached sleeves were pinned to the waist. I rolled up this huge, tulle-filled creation and stuffed it into another bag.

From the wedding necessities, my feet (they had a mind of their own) carried me to the file cabinet from which I pulled out my bright pink file bag filled with all of our birth certificates and important documents. I took out the children’s immunizations file and took this too.

Now I was in the kitchen. What would we need in a hotel situated at the border of Mississippi and Tennessee? Having just returned from Crown Heights, I of course had a box from the Shuk still filled with crackers, tuna, pickles, and nosh. I packed this and also pita, vegetables, coffee, sugar, instant soups, my 2-cup hot water pot… but when my husband caught me packing my cutting board, can opener, knives and peelers he got really desperate, and urgently asked me, “Why are you bringing that and that and that? We won’t need all this stuff for only two days! We have to go now!”

With my husband waiting anxiously at the front door, I continued to stay focused on “things that cannot be left to possibly get wet.” I went around the downstairs walls and took down the Rebbe’s pictures and all the photo portraits of my children and put them all into a cardboard box. I put the box into the van along with everything else. I figured I would just continue working on my wedding arrangements from the Mississippi hotel, so I tucked my wedding planner under my arm. (Did I actually think that the hotel caterer would stay behind in his office anxiously awaiting my calls throughout the hurricane? I didn’t think that far ahead.) Oh, and what if an as-yet-uninvited name popped into my head while we were away? So, I also brought my box of wedding invitations and stamps. Finally we backed out of the driveway and left.

The highway was now in “contra-flow” (all lanes of the highway, both outbound and inbound, were now only outbound with no one allowed to drive into the city). We soon found ourselves in the dreaded evacuation gridlock, with our car at a complete standstill. We now had time to think and reflect, and it was torture. I wonder if the elderly Mr. S’s children picked him up… Oh we should have checked. I didn’t hear from this one or that one all day. Did they make it out okay? All of the people I didn’t call to see if they were safe, if they had a way out. Would they have wanted to come with us? I prayed that I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life making up for what I didn’t do in those panicked minutes before we left.

Just sitting there in lines of traffic, Uzzi turned our motor off. We were alone with out thoughts. When traffic started moving again, we drove on in silence. I looked up at the birdless sky, grieving over what I should have done.

Twelve hours later, we tumbled out of the car and staggered into the hotel. We watched the 2:00 a.m. news report to see where the hurricane was headed. A bright red swirling circle barreled towards the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, headed straight for our city’s front door. Landfall was predicted for 6 a.m. That morning my eyes stayed fixed on the digital clock blinking 6:00 a.m. I just sat there in complete anguish thinking of what my dear shluchim (and beloved friends) the Rivkin families and the Nemes family were going through at that very second. I couldn’t move at all for hours. My husband, my daughter and I felt with every fiber of our beings that we were alongside our precious, beloved friends. We pleaded silently to Hashem for their safety. We did not know then that they were all safe.

All of our cell phones no longer worked and contact with anyone left behind was not possible. We became desperate for information. Our experience with any bad weather such as heavy rain storms or tropical storms had been that the power would go out for a few days and the streets would flood for a while. After a couple of tough days, we would breathe a tired sigh of relief, and resume our lives. We now waited expectantly for this to happen so that we could get back home, hug our friends and resume our plans for our daughter’s wedding to take place at the New Orleans Wyndham— now only 3 weeks away.

Instead we watched the news reports in horror as the levees broke, putting 80% of the city under water. Some residents who did not evacuate began looting and destroying the area where my husband’s store is located. My husband paced and I cried, not knowing at the time that his store was miraculously spared any looting. We held our daughter, Tzivyah, as chaos and anarchy swept away a neglected city that now seemed to contain only madmen. The news in New Orleans got worse each day that week. You could hear the hotel guests walking up and down the hallways weeping and wailing, “I don’t know what to do….my home….my business….I didn’t bring the things I should have….all of my important papers, photographs…..everything I have is gone…where will we go… what should we do?”

Now the looters began to burn down the buildings they had vandalized. The beautiful department store, Saks, was looted and then set ablaze. New Orleans Saks is in the same complex as the Wyndam Hotel, where the wedding was supposed to take place. All the invitations said so! Only now it was on fire. The mayor announced that no one would be allowed back into the city for an indefinite period of time, possibly months. Talor and Avi’s wedding? We now had the same question as the others in the hotel: “What should we do?”

The hotel where we were staying was only a half hour’s drive from Memphis, Tennessee. So Tzivyah went to the frum girls’ high school dormitory to spend time with some friends. Meanwhile, on their way back to New York after attending a wedding in California, our son, Nadiv Dov Ber, 20, and his fantastic friends Zalman Hackner, Shmuly Rubashkin, Yehuda Apfelbaum, and Sroli Creeger drove hundreds of miles out of their way to surprise us and give us chizuk. Their wonderful visit (though lasting only a few hours) brought so much joy and life to our little hotel room. After eating, laughing and singing, the bochurim drove off again, leaving our spirits renewed and uplifted.

Our sons, Mendel, 13, and Levi, 12, were scheduled to arrive on President Street in Crown Heights with the Gan Israel Montreal camp bus the day after the hurricane hit. We had planned that they would take a flight home to New Orleans that same night. But because we had evacuated and the New Orleans airport was closed, Talor, who was living in Crown Heights, met the camp bus and took care of Mendel and Levi there. Instead of concentrating on herself, as any kallah would a few weeks before her wedding, Talor made sleeping arrangements for the boys at the wonderful home of Zalman Moshe and Esti Kugel, and then at the home of the gracious Boruch and Tikki Dean. Talor entertained her brothers, made a birthday party for her brother Levi and then later took care of him when he developed strep throat. She even shlepped their odoriferous camp suitcases to the laundromat and got everything washed and clean!

Every day we got calls from Talor and Avi, cheering us up and giving us encouragement. Neither the chosson nor the kallah ever asked us anything about their upcoming chasuna. They knew we didn’t know and they didn’t want to pressure us. Avi’s parents, our dear mechutanim Rabbi and Mrs. Shlomo Zalman and Ditza Fine, called only with concern for our welfare. Rabbi Fine said, “Don’t worry about anything. Even if the chuppah has to be in a life boat with just a Rabbi and 2 witnesses, Avi and Talor will get married!”

We knew that we did not want to postpone the wedding (besides the fact that there are serious halachic issues with doing that). Since the Wyndham had been set on fire by looters, relocating the wedding was now a clear necessity. The only question was, relocate to where?

At first we first thought we would have just a simple chuppah in some quiet spot, and that would be it. But Bluma Rivkin (with everything else she had on her mind) and Yocheved Baitelman (whose own son Eli was getting married then) spent time with us on the phone opening up the possibility of still having a chassidishe chassuna that could give joy and light to a very dark and confusing time. They suggested (and we soon agreed) that we hold the wedding in Crown Heights, in the Rebbe’s shchuna, with the chuppah in front of 770, the Rebbe’s shul.

It would be incorrect to say that Yocheved simply invited us to stay in her home. She did more than that. Yocheved convinced us to come and stay with her while we planned the wedding. Just like her beloved husband Avi, O.B.M., (may he be a “guteh better” for us all) had always made people feel welcome and special in their home, Yocheved made it seem as if having our evacuated family stay with her for weeks and weeks while planning a last-minute wedding would be like hosting royalty, an honor for her!

Little did we know that even from Canada (where she had gone for her son’s wedding), she had already begun opening doors and making connections that would make Talor and Avi’s wedding possible on such short notice. She was even able to tell us (on the phone from Canada) that the Bais Rivkah wedding hall on Lefferts was available on our previously planned wedding date September 21.

Very early Sunday morning, we left the hotel and traveled to New York, arriving late Monday night, after the Labor Day parade. Even though Yocheved was out of town, she arranged for us to get a key and had food and juice waiting for us. How she arranged everything from Canada during her own simcha will always mystify me. A feeling of familiar warmth and safety enveloped us as we walked through Yocheved’s front door that night.

With barely fourteen days left to plan our daughter’s wedding we woke up the next morning with a running start. My husband’s cousin, D’ganit Yefit, picked me up and drove me to a Walmart where I could buy my family the essentials we would need to supplement the two days’ worth of clothing we had brought. As we tried to get ourselves settled, we realized that making this wedding would be an extremely strange and unfamiliar experience. This was our first wedding, but at least in New Orleans we knew who we were dealing with. We knew how to get to places and where to shop and whom to call. Now we were in a new city, guests in someone else’s home. Yes, we had a hall reserved, but what next? I didn’t even know what our first step should be until that night, when our rock, our anchor, Yocheved Baitelman, arrived home. With a lot of patience and love, Yocheved listed what we needed to do to get started, whom to call and where to go.

The next day Sima Karp of Ten Yad picked me up to take me shopping for wedding clothes and to map out exactly what to do to get Talor and Avi’s future home set up. They were going to live in Chicago. We had planned to shop in New Orleans and ship everything to Chicago. Now we would shop in New York and ship everything to Chicago. Sitting in the front seat of her car, I thought back to the Ten Yad pushka lined up with the others on the bookcase in our dining room. My husband has devoted his work and home life to the giving of tzedakah, but there I was experiencing Ten Yad in action. Sima took the reigns and knew exactly what I needed before I did. Her impeccable taste helped point out things to me that I wouldn’t have noticed or considered. I was also given a lesson in “linens,” having never heard the term before.

Those first few days when we went to Kingston Avenue and Boro Park, I’m sure she found me traumatized, unfocused and overwhelmed. When she asked me, “Which dishes would Talor like– the flowered ones or the plain ones?” I think I whispered, “Yes.” When she asked me, “Should we shop for your shoes or should we shop for your boys’ suits?” — “Sounds fine,” I probably answered distractedly.

Sima took me to Top Fashion to help me find a gown, and clothes for sheva brochos. Imagine being surrounded by Mrs. Nira Blizinsky, Mrs. Chaya Lerman, Mrs. Chanie Hecht, and Sima, the most beautiful and stylish of women! I propped my dazed self up against a dressing room mirror and tried on the beautiful clothes that were brought to me by my four dedicated and hardworking “personal shoppers.” I found my gown on the first try! These ladies gave me such excellent clothing advice and found me things that I never would have thought of for myself. It was a complete transformation for me in every way.

While we worked in Crown Heights, Mrs. Chaya Sara Gurewicz and Mrs. Miriam Rochel Feldman and others began setting up the chosson and kallah’s future apartment in Chicago with beautiful furniture and warm welcomes. It was so good to know that Talor would be moving into a community of people who are so generous and loving- like a whole group of mommies and tatties!

Levi and Elka Kaplan generously gave us a beautiful little guest apartment in Crown Heights for the newlyweds to stay in temporarily. Shayna Rivkin, who also hosted a shower for Talor though a newlywed herself, spent time and energy shopping for food and supplies for the temporary apartment. Sarah Rivkin, our evacuated next door neighbor from New Orleans, her baby Rivka in tow, helped Talor shop for sheva brochos clothes and went with her to her shaitel appointments. Mrs. Chana Rivkin drove me to Michael’s Arts and Crafts so that I could buy supplies to make flowered napkin rings for the wedding tables.

All the while that Sima was shopping with me, driving me around, giving me advice, and basically holding me upright, she was also taking care of her children, planning dinners, being a good daughter to her parents, having our family over for Shabbos… and doing it all with grace and style. When I grow up I want to be Sima Karp.

And then with a brisk, efficient, get-it-done-now whooosh! Devorah Benjamin came into my life! (Devorah and her husband Rabbi Shmuel Benjamin head the indefatigable Keren Simchas Chosson v’Kallah). She sat down with my husband and me. With no lists in hand, no fancy leather planners or even post-it notes, Devorah cheerfully told us detail by detail what we needed to do and what had already been done to make this wedding happen. She kept repeating her comforting song, “It’s no problem, I’ll handle it, don’t worry about a thing, piece of cake.”

It seems to me that she does not need to keep written reminders or a to-do list because she does everything the second it needs to get done. A call needs to be made? She doesn’t say, “Okay, I’ll make a note to do that sometime later.” Devorah immediately picks up the phone and calls. And everyone takes her calls immediately, as if she is a brain surgeon. Nobody dares waste her time as they know what she is busy with: mitzvos, mitzvos, and more mitzvos, all day and all night. May Hashem reward her with good health, hatzlacha, and nachas.

One day I was walking up Kingston with Devorah (actually I was jogging alongside her just trying to keep up!) and I noticed she was holding a folded piece of paper. She passed a woman on the street and while zipping by her, slipped the paper into the woman’s hand. I later reminded Devorah that we had a list to drop off with someone. “I’ve already dropped that off, dear!” The list, of course, was the paper that Devorah had put into the woman’s hand as she breezed past her! I learned so much from Devorah about not wasting a second and using every moment efficiently to get a kindness done.

Devorah found the absolute best people available to make the wedding. She knew their work, each one’s strong points, and what choices they had to offer. Devorah even knew the caterers’ menus so well that she could make recommendations down to which soup everyone would enjoy and what little extras to ask for. Because of Devorah’s expertise, I arrived at each meeting well prepared.

Everyone involved in organizing the wedding seemed to treat us with a very special gentleness and mentchlichkeit. Months earlier I had booked Avremi G (musician) and Levi Liberow (photographer) to come to New Orleans. But during the disaster, these two men showed that they weren’t only artists of music and photography, but truly artists of the soul, as well. Both of them called when we were in the hotel just to reassure us that they were there for us in any capacity that we would need them. We made our wedding date, in the beginning, according to when Avremi would be available, because he creates an atmosphere of complete joy and I truly feel that his middos and sensitivity come through in his music. Levi Liberow poured his heart and soul into each glowing photograph. His extra special efforts resulted in exquisite photographs that seem to be lit up from within. It is a pleasure to be around him, and the videographer, Luis Bleger, as they worked their magic.

In a chorus of clattering plates and steaming pans, Benzion Kohen exudes calm and professionalism. When planning this wedding, he acted as if he had all the time in the world for me as I decided between this and that salad and this dessert or that fruit. This wedding had a rolling sea of guest numbers expected to attend– sometimes the number was 100, sometimes 375, and sometimes 250. During the wedding, when we were so amazed and touched that double the amount of dinner guests arrived than we had expected, tables, chairs and food magically appeared, enough for everyone. Mr. Kohen was completely organized and unfazed. Every guest was seated, served delicious food and made to feel welcome and comfortable.

Yossi Chein of Empire Press made, at the last minute, the most elegant and meaningful bentchers that have become treasured keepsakes in our family. Yossi had also printed the ill-fated invitations to the New Orleans wedding…the ones I had carried under my arm as I fled the hurricane, just in case I would think of another name to invite… ah mentsch tracht un G-t lacht! (I still have them; I don’t think I’ll ever throw them out.)

Even with all the wedding preparations, we were still faced with dealing with insurance adjusters, government agencies, FEMA, enrolling our sons into Lubavitcher Yeshiva and Darchai Menachem and getting our life back together after one of the worst natural disasters in our country’s history. Mrs. Phyllis Mintz, working with Mrs. Jackie Ebron, called us daily with updates on what we should know, what we should be doing, and who we should be contacting to get our lives in order. These women, who are part of the Crown Heights Community Council, were a wealth of information, help and support. They kept our New Orleans dealings moving forward while acting as a sort of clearinghouse for all of the overwhelmingly generous offers of help that were coming into their offices. During our many phone conversations, I felt personally that, especially when there is a wedding involved, everyone becomes a doting Yiddishe mama!

And then Bluma Rivkin, who after the hurricane (when the levees broke) had evacuated to Houston, called with the most amazing news…

When we came to the realization that we couldn’t have the wedding in New Orleans, the hardest part was knowing that our community which is like family to us, people who have taught and loved Talor and mean more to us than they will ever know, would not be standing at her chuppah with us. With Hurricane Katrina all my hopes of sharing this simcha with our community were dashed. In addition, in New Orleans everyone looks forward to a wedding. A chassidishe wedding is something very special and extraordinary. And I had been eagerly looking forward to giving that gift to the community. Now I could no longer do that.

When Bluma called, at first I couldn’t believe what she was telling me! She said that a very special woman in California wanted to do something to “uplift the New Orleans Jewish Community” and she was sponsoring tickets so that many New Orleans families would be flown to Crown Heights to attend Talor and Avi’s wedding. Could this be true? Despite the disaster, our dear friends from New Orleans would still be at our simcha? What an incredible gift this anonymous donor gave all of us.

Our friends had later told us that one of the things on their minds throughout the whole ordeal, together with all of their other worries, was, “Oh no, what will be with Talor’s wedding?”

It couldn’t have been easy for them, living in other people’s homes, in their evacuation cities, to pack up once again, arrange places to stay in Crown Heights and then find clothes for a simcha. But they all came; gorgeous, joyous, truly a sight for very sore eyes.

Bluma organized this trip for the New Orleans people as if it were a mini-convention, with an information packet about Crown Heights, a planned schedule of events, and welcome bags.

Many of these friends had evacuated from New Orleans to Houston, Texas. Attending this wedding actually helped save most of them from evacuating again due to Hurricane Rita which was headed straight towards Houston! One of my friends had come on her own to the wedding, while her husband stayed behind with their young children. She spent much of her time in Crown Heights on the phone with her husband discussing logistics, as he now had to evacuate to Austin with their children.

B”H we were happily surprised to find out that my husband’s two brothers and one sister-in-law had decided to fly in for the wedding from Eretz Yisroel. Yocheved insisted that they all stay with us in her home so that the brothers could visit with one another! Yocheved was consistently smiling and gracious as our family slammed in and out and up and down and all around her house, with all phones and doorbells ringing off the hook. Truly, her home was “headquarters.” It was the place where I invited Rabbi and Mrs. Fine (the mechutanim) for tea or cooked my sons a hot dinner when they came home after school. We turned her peaceful, neat home into a three-ring circus, and she kept turning it back into an oasis. She only gave more and more each day and not only to our own family but to other families at the same time, often until 3:00 a.m. May Hashem repay her with many simchas of her own, and only simchas. Although you can’t blame some Crown Heightsers for complaining about all the simchas they attend, Avi Baitelman a”h had never been one to do that. He appreciated and enjoyed every single simcha, and was mesameach others with great energy and dancing talent (which his sons have inherited). How we wish he could have been part of our simcha. In a way, through his wife (may she live and be well), he was.

Every day, Sima Karp and Devorah Benjamin would call me and run down my checklists to see what I had gotten done. Usually, out of 12 or so items, I’d have only two or three checked off. With an encouraging “Good job!” these women would then run to get the other 10 items accomplished without me.

Mrs. Chanchy Brook jumped right in and organized the Shabbos Kallah. When she was unable to have it in her home because her father suddenly became unwell. Mrs. Gitty Rosenfeld (my daughter’s Bais Rivkah boarding family) generously hosted it in her home. Mrs. Brook arranged for many wonderful women to contribute the most beautifully baked and presented treats that looked right out of a gourmet bake shop!

Sima also kept track of who was giving sheva brochos on each evening. If I had said yes to everyone who had offered to give sheva brochos– even the smiling people who just happened to be standing next to me in a store line, but they meant it!– the exhausted chosson and kallah would still be attending sheva brochos today.

The evening before the wedding actually arrived, there was a moment when I actually thought that everything was finished and in place. Then Bluma called offering to help me with a list of last-minute things that I had not even thought of! Did I have the candles for the parents to hold under the chuppah, the cup and the wine, the silver spoon for them to step over as a segulah for a rich life… Uh-oh. In a frenzy I called Devorah Benjamin who said that Yonason Hackner had all the chuppah supplies prepared for us. I told my husband, “Rabbi Hackner has everything!” Uzzi got on his phone and called Rabbi Hackner. At the same time Devorah was standing in front of 770 just a few feet from Rabbi Hackner. Devorah spoke to Rabbi Hackner, who would talk to Uzzi, who would in turn talk to me and then I would answer Devorah, until all four of us were talking at the same time to all of the rest of us. At one point, our cell phones in hand, Uzzi and I just looked at each other and smiled as the voices of Devorah and Rabbi Hackner blended like parents reassuring their children that YES we have what you need and RELAX because we ARE taking care of it!

After having only about two weeks to make all the arrangements, my daughter Talor and her chosson Avi were about to experience the wedding that Hashem intended for them, not in the Wyndham and not in New Orleans but in the exact right place where Hashem wanted it to take place.

Thanks to the anonymous donor in California, a woman whose name I will never know but whose kindness I will never forget, we were surrounded by our friends and neighbors despite the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. It was overwhelming to see, at the Kabbalas Panim, our friends streaming in– with smiles from ear to ear, their arms outstretched.

We got to this day all in one piece because of the Rebbe’s chasidim in Crown Heights, people who live and breathe the Rebbe’s teachings. As many names as I mentioned, I know I did not properly thank each and every one of them or mention all the names of all the people who came through for us (please forgive me).

The people who make up the Crown Heights community are the experts, the professionals, in kindness. They know how to deliver it in the most gentle, effective and beautiful manner. Uzzi and I thought we might know a little bit about giving, after living in New Orleans, but oh how you all have humbled us. We learned so much from you, although I don’t even know all of your names. Residents of Crown Heights, always hold your heads high. You are Hashem’s gardeners who glorify the flower-lined, mitzvah-filled path to Moshiach.

And there were flowers, lavender roses. I hadn’t seen a lavender rose since we were in Eretz Yisroel, but Shmuel Rendler the florist, made sure they were in fresh, dewy abundance as we walked into our simcha at Bais Rivkah on Lefferts.

Standing among the flowers, I thought back over the last two weeks. Less than three weeks earlier I had known only that the wedding could not be at the Wyndham, but I had had no idea where or when it would be. Now here we stood, on the wedding date we had originally planned, all dressed in our wedding finery, with the apartment ready for the young couple… with more than we had ever dreamed of. Avremi G’s music began. Soon we stood under the chuppah and watched our daughter accept the ring and drink the wine. Then we watched the lit up, joyous faces of our dear friends twirling in and out; my friends from Crown Heights who had made this happen, my friends from New Orleans who had been through so much, our family who had come from all over, our out-of-town friends who surprised us, our wonderful mechutanim, our new son-in-law, our little girl in her wedding dress…all whirled past me in a bright blur of love and happiness.

Mazel Tov, Crown Heights, and thank you with all of our hearts!

POST SCRIPT
The New Orleans group all went to the Ohel together the morning after the wedding (yes, I was tired, but I wouldn’t have missed this for the world!). Standing together, we davened with all of our might for the saftey of our community and the rebuilding of our city.

My dear husband Uzzi made sure to financially repay Ten Yad and Devorah Benjamin for all they had given us when we needed their help, so that they would be able to continue to do their good work for other people! What truly beautiful organizations these are. How worthy of our support they are. May Hashem bless them with hatzlocha. Donations to Ten Yad may be sent to 1249 Carroll Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11213, and donations to Keren Simchas Chosson v’Kallah may be sent to 712 Montgomery Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11213. We would be most gratified if as a result of this article these organizations were helped to grow.

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