On Sunday evening, as the winds of the “bomb cyclone” that hit Baltimore calmed down, Rabbi Menachem Goldberger, of Congregation Tifereth Yisrael, stood before a crowd of 500 at a concert celebrating his shul’s 32nd anniversary and spoke of unity. The chasidic Rav said that in the upcoming week’s parsha, Vayakhel, Moshe Rabbeinu gathered the people together, united as one, to hear the words of Hashem. Many in the Baltimore community experienced a similar feeling of unity when power outages, falling trees, and closed bridges threatened the sanctity of Shabbos on Friday, Shushan Purim, just three days before.
After the storm passed, the stories began to emerge. Among the most astonishing were about the Jews who had been traveling from New York to Baltimore that erev Shabbos, some on their way to simchas, but never made it. With tractor trailers overturned by the wind littering the Susquehanna River bridge, this essential passageway to Baltimore was closed, and traffic was snarled for miles behind it.
We heard about the Megabus driver telling his passengers that he would have to drive back to New York, and the travelers, including a yeshiva bachur, insisting on getting off at route 40. That bachur walked to a Day’s Inn in Perryville, where he was surprised to find about 40 other Jews in the motel’s conference room. They were also stranded, and the motel was booked. The kind and accommodating hotel staff allowed them to stay in the conference room for the night and gave the rooms that opened up to the women. These Jews shared their leftover shalach manos for Friday night “dinner,” with no idea what they would do for Shabbos lunch. But in the morning, Baltimore Hatzalah’s non-Jewish driver drove up with food prepared and halachically sealed by families on the 4000 block of Fallstaff Road. It was a great Shabbos, full of new friends and the amazing ruach of Jews together.
This is a summary of what transpired in Perryville. Many others who were stuck on the road before Shabbos or lost power here in Baltimore have their own stories to tell.
Halacha to the Rescue
Around three in the afternoon, Fran and Leib Davids and their children saw the lights flicker and then go off in their home on Olympia Avenue. Within an hour of Shabbos, when their power had still not been restored, they packed their bags and drove around the corner to Fran’s parents, Nancy and Dave Broth, on Shelburne. Then the Broths’ grandson, Yoni, a student at YU, called. He explained that he and five of his friends were on their way to Silver Spring to attend a Shabbaton where their rebbe was speaking, but their bus dropped them off in downtown Baltimore. Now they were stranded and needed to get to a safe place for Shabbos, so they took an Uber, driven by a non-Jew, and joined the rest of the family for a Shabbos that Nancy Broth said turned out to be “wonderful.”
Rabbi Dovid Heber, a Star-K certification kashrus administrator and rav of Khal Ahavas Yisroel Tzemach Tzedek (KAYTT), had numerous calls erev Shabbos. “Many people were stuck,” he said, “some in taverns and places that were closing and weren’t safe.” He added that he didn’t recall so many ever being stranded at the same time before Shabbos. The halacha is that a Jew in such a situation is allowed to be transferred to a safe place. On Sunday morning, at his WIT shiur, Rabbi Heber gave details on this halacha concerning the nor’easter on Shushan Purim. His lecture can be heard on Torahanytime.com.
Saved by a Blech
Though not nearly as dramatic as being stranded, my own experience started Friday morning in Baltimore. After hearing howling winds all night, I woke up in the morning with a call from my husband at work. “You better cook early,” he said. “A nor’esther is coming, and we lose electricity easily.” Because I lived inland, in Atlanta, for over 45 years and just moved back to Baltimore a year ago, I never experienced nor even heard of a nor’easter – not even when I was growing up here. But my husband knew better, so as the winds continued to howl and a light snow fell, I started cooking.
Because Purim was the day before and we joined friends for the seudah, I had only cooked gefilte fish for Shabbos. I had three meals to prepare before my new daughter, her husband, and children would join us from Lakewood to attend their friend’s simcha. My challa wasn’t even baked yet! So I prepared the dough, and as it rose, I cooked the soup, chicken, cholent, along with other foods, and set the table.
Our family called from the road and said that a bridge was closed and they had to take a detour and would probably arrive at 12:30 or 1 p.m. They called again and said that traffic was very slow and they weren’t sure when they would arrive. Thankfully, they walked in the house a little after 2. About 40 minutes later, I placed the braided challahs in the oven and set the timer for 28 minutes.
At 3 p.m., the lights went off and so did my electric oven. With the challas about 10 minutes short of being done, I wasn’t sure we would have bread on the table that night. “Don’t open the oven door, because they might finish baking,” said one of my new teenage granddaughters. I agreed and didn’t open the door until right before Shabbos. The challas were crispy brown, definitely done, but we didn’t have hot food for Shabbos until a neighbor helped.
Doris Goldstein, whose twin grandsons were celebrating their bar mitzvas the next morning, was eating with her husband and children on Fallstaff Road. She placed a blech on the top of her gas stove, so we could warm our food and gave the children directions how to enter the house. Her offer to help, even though she wouldn’t be at home, enabled us to have warm chicken and potato kugel for Shabbos, and her kindness warmed our hearts.
The Goldsteins’ son, Eli, and family, our next-door neighbors, were also eating with their parents and siblings for the bar mitzvas. I saw him the next morning at Rabbi Storch’s shul on Fallstaff and at the kiddush for his nephews at Rabbi Weiss’s on Fallstaff and Clarks’s Lane. Both shuls, thank G-d, did not lose power. Eli shared that when the electricity went off in his home on Friday afternoon, he walked from room to room flipping down selected switches in case the power returned on Shabbos. I didn’t think to do that, so when the power came back on during our Friday night seuda, the bright overhead lights in our bedroom came back on also.
When the lights went on in the dining room, I didn’t care that I might not sleep well that night. Seeing the faces of the grandchildren light up, then watching my husband grab the hands of the boys and dance in a circle with them, I couldn’t stop smiling. Of course, it was challenging to sleep with the brightness in the bedroom, but others had bigger challenges.
Tree Trouble
Around 10 a.m. Friday, Chana Kagan was in her dining room cleaning up from Purim. She had just moved from one side of the room to the other when she heard a “whoosh” and a cracking of glass and saw the branches of a tree break through the window where she had been standing just a few minutes before. “I looked outside, and there it was – a huge tree that used to be at the curb had fallen on the house all the way up to the roof,” she said. The house stopped the branches from going any further. Right after it happened, she called her insurance company and then Caplan Glass, who boarded up the window, covering it with wood to keep out the cold.
All day, people drove by and asked if they could help. Many of them shared caring words like, “I’m sorry this happened to you. Thank G-d nobody’s hurt.” She was really touched by the compassion she felt from everyone – both in and outside the community. This included a “pleasant crew” from the City, who spent four hours on Sunday chopping down the tree and hauling it away. “I was standing right at the window,” she repeated, recalling that she had just moved away from the spot where the tree hit. “Baruch Hashem, it wasn’t worse.”
Several people used those same words to express their gratitude: “Thank G-d, things weren’t worse.” Libby Schmell said that it was “a bit of a challenge” but, compared to other things in life, it was “not anything to get hysterical over.” Another woman said that it wasn’t like Hurricane Sandy, Harvey, or Irma. And a third friend said, “It was annoying but not life threatening.”
Gratitude and Unity
So, besides the importance of having hakaras hatov (appreciation) for everything that we have – including rabbis who can pasken for us – is there another message to take away from the nor’easter on Shushan Purim?
At Sunday night’s concert, after Rabbi Goldberger gave a dvar Torah about the unity of the Jewish people, he shared what happened at his shul during the storm: On Friday night, the congregation had lights during davening but by Shabbos morning, there were “no lights and no heat.” During the reading of the Torah, when the lights suddenly clicked on, “a collective ‘aah’ could be heard in the congregation,” said Rabbi Goldberger.
“What is that?” he asked rhetorically, and he answered: “It’s a shared experience by a group of people with no director or choreographer.” He added that the congregants said that because they felt something. “That’s how our eyes will be opened and we’ll be zoche to see something great.
“When the Great Shofar is blown, all the Jews will hear the sound – every Jew, no matter how lost. We will, each and every one of us, respond to the call,” said Rabbi Goldberger, “and gather together, like tonight, to join our souls and sing praises to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.”
Perhaps the howling of the wind is a portend of things to come, but there’s nothing to worry about. As long as we stick together and trust that the Creator of the Universe has a plan, we will, be’ezras Hashem, be safe.
