Rabbi Oren Hayon

Interviewee: Rabbi Oren Hayon 

Interview Date: March 20, 2018 

Interview Location: Temple Emanu El, Houston, Texas 

Interviewer: Mark Goldberg 

INTERVIEWER:  Today is March 20, 2018. This is Mark Goldberg interviewing Rabbi Oren Hayon for the Resilient Houston: Documenting Hurricane Harvey project. And we are sitting in Rabbi Hayon’s office at Temple Emanu El.  

MG: So thank you for being here. 

OH: My pleasure. 

MG: Thank you for having me. 

OH: Absolutely. 

MG: Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you arrived in Houston.  

OH: I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. My first arrival in Houston came when I was graduated high school. I came to Houston to study as an undergrad at Rice University, which happens to be right across the street. So I arrived here when I was 18. I did my undergraduate work at Rice and actually first encountered Emanu El as an undergrad. This was my local synagogue. It was the place that I came for — to live my own Jewish life [0:01:00]. It was also the place that I came to teach religious school and teach Hebrew. So my relationship with Houston and my relationship with the congregation were connected from the beginning.  

After I graduated from college and left Houston, it was some years before I came back. I was ordained at the Hebrew Union College is 2004. I was ordained in the Cincinnati campus of HUC. After ordination, I served a congregation in Dallas for seven years. After that, I served as the Executive Director of the Hillel at the University of Washington in Seattle. So I was in Dallas from 2004 to 2011 and then in Seattle from 2011 to 2015. I was recruited for this position as the senior rabbi at Congregation Emanu El in 2015.  

Obviously, as I mentioned, I was acquainted with the congregation from before, so I [0:02:00] had very happy feelings and memories about the place — was keen to come back and make my home in Houston again. I had very warm feelings about the city as well as the congregation, so when the position opened up and the opportunity presented itself, I was happy to pursue it and happy to come back to Houston to serve this congregation. I’ve been here now approaching three years. 

MG: Do you live near the congregation? 

OH: I do. I live about a mile away. I live in the Rice Village neighborhood, so it’s — this is the place that I walk my dog — take my kids bike riding. This is the place that I live, and work, and make my life. 

MG: So this interview is for a part of the Resilient Houston project that’s titled Neighborhood Narratives. And most of Houston’s synagogues and other Jewish community institutions are not necessarily in this neighborhood [0:03:00] but in or near Meyerland. So before we actually talk about Harvey, can you describe Emanu El’s relationship with the Meyerland Jewish community or with the heart of Jewish Houston? 

OH: Sure. We certainly had — a large number of our congregants — and we’re a close to 2,000-family congregation, so a significant number of our members live in Meyerland and come here to make their spiritual home at Emanu El, come here to bring their kids to be educated, to celebrate Shabbat and holidays, and so on. And I think, at the same time — although we’re not in most of those folks’ backyards, I think that Emanu El is geographically distinct from the historic core of the Jewish community. It’s actually been a very significant part of the cultural identity of the place.  

Members of this congregation, I think, take — certainly take pride [0:04:00] in and are guided in their relationship with Emanu El by the fact that its neighbor institutions, if not its peer institutions — but I’d say that’s also an aspirational part of the identity of the place. Our neighbor institutions are not the JCC, the Federation, the Jewish Home for the Aged, but instead the university across the street, the museums down the block, the medical center some blocks away that — I think — certainly in the 40’s when this congregation was forming and this great building being built and also today, I think the congregation and its leadership has taken a lot of pride in the fact that this congregation blends so conscientiously [0:05:00] and so consciously with the, let’s say, cultural and intellectual heart of the city.  

MG: So would you say that the congregation, other than the congregants who live in Meyerland, also have ties to those Jewish institutions there? Or your community is more so entirely localized around here? 

OH: No, I think we certainly share ties with those institutions. Our members are also members of the JCC and have also involved with those legacy institutions of the community. And I think that this is something that gives them sort of pride and sense of self — that this is a place that looks different — that feels different. And I think, if you talk to long-time members and families of the congregation, they will talk [0:06:00] at length about what kind of vision and foresight the founders of this congregation demonstrated by placing their congregation here at the time well outside the boundaries of the historic Jewish community in Houston. 

MG: So let’s move on to talk about Harvey. 

OH: Sure. 

MG: Tell me about your experiences with Harvey. Now, I think that could be a three-part thing, yours, your congregants, and then your congregation. So why don’t we start with you? 

OH: Sure. So it was August, obviously, of 2017. And like most, if not all, rabbis at that time of the year, we’re thinking very deeply and engaged pretty steadily in the work of planning for the Jewish High Holidays that fall in autumn of the year. I think [0:07:00] I knew and my family knew that the storm was going to be big, because the predictions were serious and ominous before the storm started. Certainly, none of us could have known that it was what it was.  

As I mentioned before, I live in the neighborhood. This is a neighborhood that took on water but, obviously, didn’t sustain the kind of cataclysmic, destructive flooding that other neighborhoods saw in Houston. We happen to live on a third-floor apartment, so my family and I sort of sheltered in place, and watched the rain fall, and watched the levels rise, and watched the bayous spill over from the comfort of our home. And so our kind of immediate experience was one of safety and gratitude, because our losses were so minimal compared to others.  

We have been here [0:08:00], as I mentioned, just about three years now — two and a half or so by the time — at the time Harvey started. Just by a freak of timing or meteorology, our family had been — had incurred losses in two other floods since we’ve been here. We lost some things in the Memorial Day flood and then again in the — and also in the Tax Day flood. So we knew the experience of flooding. And we’re grateful to be — to have been so high and dry at the time. So we were grateful that we were okay. We were grateful that we didn’t have more material losses and, you know, kept in touch with friends and neighbors, colleagues and congregants, who were watching their lives drift away or float away.  

After the rain finally stopped — after the water stopped rising and it was safe to go outside [0:09:00], I think the first thing that I did once I knew that our family and our immediate surroundings were safe was to walk down Sunset Boulevard to make it to the campus of the synagogue. I mentioned earlier it’s about a mile from the house, so I have very distinct memories of walking — taking that walk during the — really, the bedlam and confusion of those first couple of days.  

The Rice University Stadium parking lot had become sort of a makeshift landing zone for military helicopters and medical transports that were coming in and out toward the medical center, so it sounded like you were in the middle of a war zone as these military aircraft are taking off and landing. It’s very, very loud — sirens and the rotors of the helicopters taking off and landing. But aside from that [0:10:00], the silence was just bizarre, because there was no traffic. And there was no conversation, so it was a strange combination of stillness and loudness all at the same time. 

So I took that first walk down Sunset Boulevard and made it to the synagogue building and saw that while there was still some standing water around the outside of the building, it wasn’t underwater, which is what I had feared most. And so once I saw that the — as best I could tell from the outside that the structure was in tact and was going to be standing — remain standing, then I was able to talk to my colleagues and the other clergy members and leadership of the synagogue to make sure that we could position ourselves as a resource and a refuge for the community. 

MG: How did Emanu El prepare for and respond to Harvey? You mentioned before that this is the third [0:11:00] flood in three years. Presumably, congregants had flooded before. So how did this synagogue prepare and then respond? 

OH: No one was accurately prepared. I think the aid and assistance that we have offered in the past — Houston is a city that floods, and so Houstonians have to be prepared to respond to it. The assistance that we’ve offered in the past, now looking back, is smaller both in amounts and in kind. Helping congregants who had flooded  in the past often would be pastoral care or a phone call to check in on people’s spirits — maybe offering some small gift cards, so people could replenish their small household items and toiletries — maybe offering to take care of people’s groceries for a week or two, but this obviously was much, much [0:12:00] larger and much more devastating than anything that had happened in the past.  

I think the first thing that we did as a clergy team, knowing that our building was in tact and that everyone, in large part, were still stuck at home, was to start reaching out to congregants on social media to share messages of hope and encouragement — to share some thoughts about Jewish teachings for the week or Jewish messages of hope and resilience. So we started offering those by video that we both livestreamed and posted to our congregation’s Facebook page, so people could follow them contemporaneously but then also go back and rewatch them if they needed help.  

We set up a dedicated email address so that people could let us know what their needs were, what the extent of the damage was, and how we could help. And then we began sharing with the larger Jewish community [0:13:00], the larger Houston community, that we were going to have very serious needs that we couldn’t handle on our own. And almost immediately, the North American Jewish community really responded enthusiastically and energetically. People began reaching out with offers of monetary assistance, offering to deliver supplies, to ship clothing and food and bottled water.  

And those first few days are really quite a blur, because you never — the process of trying to determine what the needs were, how best to meet those needs, who the right partners would be, it’s a tremendously taxing and just very confusing experience. We had to decide in those first few days. Would we be receiving shipments of bottled water and clothing? If so, where would we put them? How would we be receiving shipments? We have — the loading dock at the synagogue was high and dry, but then what do we do once people start arriving with [0:14:00] food, and diapers, and clothing.?  

We also started — we were trying to be in good touch with our other Jewish communal organizations — the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston, the Jewish Community Center, Jewish Family Service, all of whom were involved in the recovery effort but also all of whom are located physically in the Meyerland area, which, of course, was ground zero for all the flooding. Those first few days were very confusing and very disoriented as the — disorienting as the scope of our relief grew and shrank and grew again.  

In the end, we wound up working with our friends at those other Jewish communal agencies and determined that the synagogues would not be receiving physical donations of goods or food or water. That was going to all be handled through JFS and could be delivered at the Jewish Community Center, because their large, indoor tennis center was equipped to store large amounts of goods and serve as a distribution [0:15:00] point — but that we would be receiving financial gifts so that we could turn around and distribute them right away to congregants who had immediate financial need. So that was — that was the posture that we assumed right after the storm and then just sort of were able to make fine adjustments to that posture over the next weeks and months that followed. 

MG: So I have a couple follow-up questions. First, you mentioned how the group of clergy used social media to send messages. Do you have a sense of in and how those were received? 

OH: We got very positive feedback. I think people were very touched and encouraged to know that we were thinking about them. People were moved to know that they could retain a Jewish connection — even just sort of a light, momentary Jewish touch amid all the craziness of trying to assess damage and recover from it [0:16:00]. One of the things we did is do a brief — one of those first few days was a Friday. And so one of the first things that we did during that first week was to offer some blessings for Shabbat as Friday night approached, knowing that no one — it wasn’t safe for anyone to get in their cars and make it to the synagogue. And I think that — the feedback that we got from that was very touching, very moving — that people found great fulfillment and meaning in being able to take a moment of recognizing the coming of Shabbat as part of their community, even if it was virtual, online community and not in a place where they could physically touch the other members of the congregation. 

MG: And my second follow-up question, you described that scene where the various community institutions and synagogues essentially centralized through the Jewish Community Center for [0:17:00] the immediate post-hurricane relief. How long was that immediate period? And then afterwards, did relief decentralize? Did Emanu El then and other institutions focus on their own constituents and congregants? 

OH: So the — I think we — looking back at it now, I think we made almost all the right decisions in terms of that facet of the recovery effort. I think the Jewish Community Center was exactly the right player to be receiving and distributing physical goods, diapers, clothes, cleaning materials, mops and buckets, fresh water. The Jewish Family Service, who’s already in the work of case management, social work, looking after the aged [0:18:00], and the young, and those with special needs, they were exactly the right partner to work on allocating social work and case managers to people that needed them. And I think the synagogues were in the best position to do immediate disbursement of financial aid — cash aid, gift cards to retail outlets for people that needed a new pair of shoes or a load of groceries. And I think all of us remained in those roles throughout the rest of the recovery effort.  

After a couple of weeks, if I’m remembering right, the JCC was able to taper down the work of collecting and distributing supplies. That was done gracefully and very skillfully. The Jewish Federation continued to solicit for funds for quite some time after that, I think, quite successfully. And [0:19:00] Jewish Family Service remained in the work — in the role of sort of the human social work, clinical and medical care of those that needed it, and making sure that those who needed medicine had a place to go — that folks that needed someone to help navigate the bureaucracy of insurance or FEMA applications were able to do so. So really, I think the — we had a very quick period of time in which to make those decisions, but I think that the choices we made were all pretty good. 

MG: And now, it’s been several months. Are there still instances of relief and need that emerge? 

OH: So we — I mentioned before our congregation is a community of close to 2,000 families. We started a — again, relying heavily on the tools of technology and online communication, we set up a [0:20:00] Google Doc, an online collaborative document, that all the clergy and senior staff here could share and contribute to. So every time we heard of a member that had a need, we could enter it into the spreadsheet and make sure that it would be updated on everyone’s devices as we went so that we could capture as much data as we could about our congregants.  

Today, I think there’s about 175 families on that list. These are members of the congregation that we knew were affected by flooding. And I know that’s not all of them. I know there’s a lot of people that either didn’t get captured, that we didn’t reach, that we still don’t know about, and even just — frankly, today is Tuesday. My day off is Monday, so I came in this morning for the first day of work this week. And on my desk was a note from a congregant who had been affected, and we didn’t know about it. So yes, there are still people that we’re finding out about [0:21:00]. And now, six months out — a little better than six months out, I think we’ve done a good job working with and helping those that we know about. The heartbreak is that there are people that we didn’t know about. And that, I think, at the beginning, we were trying to make sure that there would be enough to help available for everyone. I think we could have been more generous at the beginning, which haunts me a little bit. But I feel really good about the fact that we’ve been able to help the folks that we knew about so conscientiously and so thoughtfully.  

One of the things that we did also, I guess, about midway through this process was to hire a part-time social worker to help us triaging the list of people that were flooded. The volume was so massive. With only four clergy people and hundreds of people that were affected, it was very hard to make sure that everyone was getting touched [0:22:00] and everyone was getting the assistance that they needed. So this part-time social worker has helped us go through the list — helped us really find out what the specific needs of each family was. Do they need help with short-term rent? Do they need to be able to make a car payment? Do they need to be able to pay for medicine? Do they need to be able to replace pet food or toiletries or whatever? Which is great, she’s terrific at that work. And that also then freed up the clergy to be able to do some of the more pastoral care that she couldn’t. 

MG: The way you describe the congregation’s response, you offered relief in so many different ways that are still playing out. What did you mean when you said that you wished you could have been more generous? 

OH: So we — the assistance came in from all over the country. People sent all kinds of incredibly [0:23:00] wonderful and generous and occasionally bizarre things to try to help the Jewish community. And in those first few days, we didn’t know whether it was going to be a hundred households or a thousand households that needed help. We didn’t know if people were going to be encouraging damage or thousands or hundreds of thousands worth of dollars. It’s very difficult to do resource planning. We netted donations in the low six figures — so really generous donations from all over the country. But it’s very difficult to try to figure out to allocate those.  

So the initial strategy was to try to give a little bit to everybody and then go back and increase the gifts as we went, again, which I think was the best decision we could have made with access to the information that we had at the time. And I wish that at the [0:24:00] beginning we could have just said, “Look, let us — you know, let us take care of that mortgage payment. Let us cover those groceries for the month. Please take more.”  Because now that we are six months out and I can imagine that the portrait won’t be too much different once we hit the first-year anniversary, we’re going to have a small balance in that account that people donated to to help those that were — that were flooded. And I would sure love to see that account spent down to zero, because it meant that we helped as many people as much as we possibly could. 

MG: So how did you decide to allocate? And not just resources, but also your time even among the clergy and the staff? 

OH: What’s the process by which we made those decisions? 

MG: Uh-huh. 

OH: So we knew early on that it — that daily life had to change. We couldn’t spend the same amount of time planning for [0:25:00] worship services or educational classes or what have you. It had to be, if not all Harvey, mostly Harvey all of the time. We — so we — the clergy team especially but also the whole senior staff team met constantly. We were constantly sitting down together, checking in with each other, sharing information that we had, talking about what news we’d just heard, who needed help, who had been — who had shown up at the convention center or in a hotel across town and added them to the list.  

The time part was the hardest, because we knew clergy contracts usually begin in July. This was August. We had two brand-new clergy members in the team, a new cantor and a newly-ordained rabbi. So August was supposed to be the time of [0:26:00] onboarding, orientation, get to know your community, figure out what your job looks like. And these two new members of the clergy team really had to — had to dive in and begin doing very difficult, very demanding pastoral care work right from the very beginning. So I — you know, again, that’s another thing that I have some regrets about, because I didn’t give them — I wasn’t able to give them the kind of welcome and onboarding that I would have liked.  

But it also meant that we had to change the way that we served on the pulpit, because the Jewish High Holy Days were just a couple of weeks after the flood. And we knew that that experience had to be different than what we had planned as well. We had anticipated and hoped for a High Holy Days season that was joyful, that was celebrating the arrival of new clergy people, where the dominant messages were themes of hope [0:27:00], excitement, anticipation, optimism. And it became clear immediately that we would have to offer a High Holy Day experience that was very different than that for our congregants. 

MG: Yeah, can you talk a little bit more about how Judaism played a role in your experience, either through your own understanding of Harvey and then also, of course, the messages that you were conveying? Like the specific messages that you were conveying and how they were rooted in Judaism? 

OH: Uh-huh, sure, so we — you know, as I said, we had initially expected that the dominant message about — of the High Holy Days around which we’d make repertoire choices about music, thematic choices about sermon, liturgical choices about what readings we would include in the services. So we decided to shift, because we had to, away from a message primarily [0:28:00] about hope and joy — instead, to messages about resilience and the strength and comfort of community. So that shift, which is a very significant one, immediately meant that we had to go back to the drawing board and reconsider everything that we were going to offer our congregation for the holidays. Every piece of music, every sermon, every liturgical choice had to be reexamined. I know that I started over with my sermons that I had been writing for six months already at that point. Because I want Jewish life to be taken seriously. I want the synagogue to be taken seriously. And for Jewish life and this synagogue to be taken seriously, it has to offer messages that are meaningful and comprehensible and are respectful of the experience that [0:29:00] these Jews have gone through just a couple of weeks earlier.  

So tactically speaking, what that meant, first of all, was that we had to let people know that we wanted them to come be a part of the holidays — that the congregation, regardless of whether they had lost their admission cards in the mail, regardless of whether they had a nice pair of shoes to wear, regardless of what they were wearing, to make sure that it was a come-as-you-are, because we want to be able to fill your spiritual hunger at this time in your lives and at this time of the year. So I felt good about that, and it was, I think, a really meaningful and important time for the people that came to hear those messages that I think they really needed to hear again about resilience and about the power of community. No one — I think Harvey, as a — as a clergy member in this [0:30:00] congregation — in this community rather, I think I saw that the storm really was a very significant test of the religious leadership of people in the community. It was a time that the voices of spiritual tradition — the voices of spiritual leadership were listened to. And those that were coherent and those that were meaningful won out over those that relied on empty comfort, hollow platitudes, shallow theology. So in a way, I think it was a great reminder about the power and the value of sound theology and good conscientious moral leadership. 

MG: Can you give me a specific example of that sound theology versus the more empty theology [0:31:00]? 

OH: Yeah, I think we heard a number of really terrible sermons after Harvey at the beginning — fortunately, few of which came from this part of the country. But certainly, I had colleagues sending me copies of articles that other members of the clergy had published or sermons they had given that want to attach theological or moralistic meaning to the fact that people suffer — that people suffer because of their sin — that God uses destructive weather to punish people because of the lives that they lead. Those are — those are neither accurate nor helpful nor, frankly, particularly coherent once they get properly dissected.  

I think — I think [0:32:00] a meaningful, coherent, and useful message after something like Harvey is about the fact that human beings have an unparalleled ability to help one another, that we know how to offer solace in ways that we may not have thought we were capable of before, that ancient spiritual text and tradition can be deeply and penetratingly relevant in ways that we may not have expected, and that there are things that we find ourselves saying about God that we didn’t think we believed before but all of the sudden offer meaning and truth that has — that’s astonishing after something like Harvey [0:33:00]. 

MG: This discussion about theology and sermons highlights something that has come up multiple times, which is the way in which the Jewish calendar is affecting people’s experiences. You mentioned early on how — well, of course, the hurricane happened a few days before Shabbat. And so that affected your communications — of course, the High Holiday sermons and other sermons. And now, we’re coming up on Passover. And in a way, we could say we’re still experiencing Harvey. Do you feel like this might be another moment where the — the Passover might be another moment where the calendar is going to affect how we think about Harvey? 

OH: Sure. And you know, you want to be careful and [0:34:00] sensitive to not create a message that’s so on the nose to be trite and patronizing. You want to be — while there certainly is a foundational Jewish story about making it through the water to a place of salvation, I would probably be careful about preaching that sermon, because not everybody in March of 2018 is feeling particularly saved and redeemed.  

But yeah, I think that there is — I think that the overlay of the Jewish calendar with the history of Houston in 2017, 2018 yields meaning and power that Jews and this city are only now realizing they have access to. The place where the — you know, where the miracle of that [0:35:00] overlay falls short, I think, is the fact that the Jewish ritual calendar, of course, is cyclical — that every year it starts over again. And every year in the winter, you talk about darkness. And then the springtime comes, and it’s time for new hope and deliverance. And the harvest gives way to new seed, which produces a time of planting and hopefulness. And for people that made it through Harvey, the new year isn’t going to be a fresh restart. It’s not like the history of the past year will have been erased. There is a very clear distinct point in the calendar before — after which nothing is the same as it was before. So yes, that’s — I think there’s great power in that overlay, but we have to be thoughtful about not pushing it past its breaking point. 

MG: So it sounds like your High Holiday sermons were [0:36:00] the coming year we’re still going to be grappling with Harvey. 

OH: Right. Right. We have to be — we have to take seriously that — you know, and from the pulpit but not only from the pulpit, we have to really recognize and acknowledge the fact that this is still a very painful reality in many of our members’ lives. So we have to think about it every time we ask for financial donations, every time we ask for volunteers, every time we send a list of supplies needed for religious school classes home to parents, every time we talk to kids about their summer camp plans. The reality of Harvey is always there in the back of your mind. And while we have to move forward and we have to uphold our obligation to our members as a place of Jewish content and hope and insightful programming and education [0:37:00], we also have to be really sensitive to the fact that people are hurting deeply and will continue to hurt for some time.  

MG: So how do you see the future unfolding? The future of Jewish Houston, which experienced such devastation? 

OH: Well, the — you know, I can — I can speak to this as the rabbi of this congregation, which as I said at the beginning of our conversation, takes great pride and draws large measure of its identity from the fact that it is geographically aloof and apart from the core — historic core of Jewish Houston. So members of Emanu El have never had the need for it to be proven to them that Jewish life exists outside Meyerland. That’s always made Emanu El what it is.  

I think there is a lot of uncertainty about what Jewish Houston will look [0:38:00] like — maybe not a year from now but certainly 20 years from now — whether it will continue to be important and meaningful that there even is a center of Jewish Houston. We are watching the demographic patterns continue to unfold as new Jewish families move into Houston and Jewish families move out of Houston — that the patterns of Jewish settlement in Houston don’t follow the patterns that would have been laid by these families’ parents and grandparents.  

I think one of the lessons to me is that geography of Jewish life continues to be important, but I think it’s important in different ways than we thought it was important before. Before, I think we assumed that Jewish geography was important because of what proximity to the kosher butcher, or the mikvah, or the synagogue [0:39:00] meant to Jewish families. I think today we’re starting to see that the geography of Jewish life is significant because it has secondary meanings or at least other meanings to the way that Jews build their lives. Because we are beginning to realize the importance of neighborhoods and community relationships. Knowing that there’s going to be somebody, whether or not it’s your rabbi — somebody down the street with a flashlight with fresh batteries, a bottle of clean water, and a safe place to dry off, have a cup of coffee, charge your phone, and be safe for a few hours. 

MG: So what hopes do you have for the community? 

OH: I hope that — I hope that we’ll [0:40:00] remember — it’s kind of a perverse thing to hope for, but I hope that we’ll be able to hold onto the way that we depended on each other — the way that we were able to nurture and preserve the impulse to help. I hope that we will remember how strong we are. I found that very moving and very inspiring. We don’t always tell those stories about ourselves. It was great to be able to retell that story repeatedly about how powerful we are and how strong we can be together. I hope that we can use our resources — not just our material resources, but our human, our spiritual, all of our emotional resources, too, to build in ways that are creative, aspirational, entrepreneurial.  

I think that there’s a very understanding and sound [0:41:00] desire to rebuild — to make things the way they were before. But I hope that nostalgic desire to get back to the way things were won’t get in the way of our ability to be expansive with our thinking — to think about a Jewish Houston that looks different than it did before — to think about structures of Jewish life that are adaptive and innovative more so than they were before — to think about communities that look and function in ways that are more responsive to and more supportive of the lives that Jews in Houston live today. 

MG: We’re nearing the end. Is there anything you want to add? 

OH: No, you know, I’m grateful for the opportunity to tell the story. It’s interesting. I find in myself that the way that the story gets told has changed over time. You know, the [0:42:00] immediate aftermath of the storm, the story that we found ourselves telling has gone from the accounts of the destruction and the loss. And then sort of the second phase after that, we were telling stories about recovery and relief. And now that we’ve got six months of distance between ourselves and the flood, I think, you know, we get new perspective with that extra bit of time to think about really what this whole experience — the flood, the recovery, the aftermath — what this whole experience means communally and Jewishly — what it means spiritually.  

It’s a very interesting experience to be in the middle of a period that you know is historically and communally significant but not necessarily knowing what it’s going to look like with the benefit of years of perspective. I’m really proud of the congregation [0:43:00]. I’m really proud of the community. I’m really proud of the way that we have responded. And I’m really grateful to have had the chance to tell the story again. 

MG: Thank you. And I’m grateful that you volunteered it. 

OH: For sure. Thanks for the time. 

MG: Thank you. [0:43:19]