Queens, NY – Rabbi: “Like A War Zone” In Belle Harbor (video)

Queens, NY – Nestled between the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay, there was no escaping the storm surge generated by last week’s hurricane for residents of Belle Harbor. Only four blocks wide at its widest point, the ocean and the bay met during the hurricane with four to five feet of water literally flowing down the streets.

“Ninety nine percent of the homes in the community have flooding, with anywhere from six to eleven feet of water inside houses and many homeowners suffering extensive damage,” Rabbi Levi Osdoba, director of the Belle Harbor Torah Center and rabbi of Congregation Bais Yehuda, told VIN News. “While for most the flooding was confined to their basements, some people have a foot or two of water on their first floor as well, depending on how low their homes were built, and five to ten percent of the homes in the area were completely destroyed.”

Video by Shimon Gifter on Sunday Nov. 4 2012

Normally a beautiful, well kept community, the streets of Belle Harbor are now littered with debris and sand and both Rabbi Osboda and Rabbi Tsvi Selengut of Congregation Oheb Zedek in Belle Harbor have been working feverishly together to coordinate the relief efforts in the storm stricken area.

“They take out truckloads of sand and there is still more,” said Rabbi Osdoba. “Someone got their car stuck in the sand today and I helped push their car out. It was literally like pushing a car out of a snowbank.”

Despite the fact that for many residents the damage was confined to their basements, Rabbi Osdoba estimates that the losses incurred are extremely significant.

“When you say the word ‘basement’ you think of junk, odds and ends,” explained Rabbi Osdoba. “But what do we keep in our basements? Sometimes we have more down there than we have in the rest of our houses. Entire libraries of seforim, computers, boilers, guest rooms – it was all totally destroyed by water, sewage and oil, which was everywhere. People are stripping their walls, their floors and their ceilings and putting all their ruined items out on the street for the garbage men to take. It mamash looks like a war zone here.”

While residents who still have homes are busy removing debris from their houses in order to begin the restoration process, it may be some time before electricity is restored to the area and people can move back into Belle Harbor. Despite the enormous losses, residents are grateful that the damage wasn’t worse.

“Thank G-d my house is still standing,” said Beach 135th Street resident Avi Kunstler.

“The basement is done as is the garage,” added Kunstler’s son, Aryeh. “Thank G-d it just missed the first floor. The rest of the house is livable except for the stench coming from the basement, but a lot of friends lost their entire houses. It literally looks like a bomb went off here.”

Of the three Shuls in Belle Harbor, both Congregations Magen David and Bais Yehuda, more commonly known as “The Shteibel”, are primarily based on the first floor of their buildings and escaped with minimal damage. At Congregation Ohab Zedek, which has minyanim and a day school in its basement and is located just one block from the Atlantic, the losses were staggering.

“They lost Two sifrei Torah and countless seforim,” said Rabbi Osdoba. “The boiler got uprooted and punctured and there was oil all over everything.”

“I have never seen anything like this in my entire life,” said one Chasdei Lev volunteer who spent several hours last night taking seforim out of the shul. “Hundreds, hundreds of seforim, all going to shaimos. The bais medrash, was below ground level and everything in the bais medrash is totally gone. Any tallis that was there, any tefillin, chumashim, siddurim, gemara, shulchan aruch, every single sefer is totally gone. In the school downstairs? Every single classroom is completely wrecked. The ceilings are down. The walls are down.”

After finishing at Ohab Zedek, a group of volunteers moved on to the Rosh Yeshiva’s house where hundreds of seforim which had been housed in the garage had been destroyed.

“As we put the last sefer into shaimos, we were all incredibly saddened and literally ready to start crying,” recalled the volunteer. “But we knew that crying wasn’t going to be productive. Instead, we celebrated the fact that we were able to give the ruined seforim a proper burial, in a bakavodik way. We broke out in a rekida and we made hakafos, singing ‘Toras Hashem Temima’.”

While there was no damage to any of the Sifrei Torah at Belle Harbor’s Yeshiva Merkaz Hatorah, flooding in the basement coupled with the lack of electricity have forced the yeshiva to temporarily relocate to Staten Island, where the limud Torah continues uninterrupted at Agudas Yisroel of Staten Island, Aguda Tov and the Young Israel of Staten Island. Approximately forty of the yeshiva’s bochurim are being housed in Stated Island at an apartment building that was the former site of Nesivos Hatorah, with the remaining students being bused in daily from Brooklyn.

“We are thrilled to have the yeshiva here,” said Dovid Winiarz of Staten Island. “The protection afforded to our community adding their Torah to the already vibrant Torah center that Willowbrook represents is a win-win situation for everyone and we are grateful for the opportunity to be the literal port in the storm for the yeshiva and its bochurim.”

Rabbi Osdoba told VIN News that while donations of clothing were not needed at this time, he would welcome any volunteers and funding as well as donations of work gloves and garbage bags.

To make a donation to the Belle Harbor Torah Institute’s relief efforts go to www.belleharbortorah.com/hurricanerelief or contact Rabbi Osdoba at [email protected]., Or to Yeshiva Mercaz Hatorah Of Belle Harbor, 505 B129th St, Belle Harbor NY, 11694.

Belle Harbor photos by Eli Wohl/VINNews
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