The Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City has joined in a national effort to help members of the Jewish community effected by power outages that wreaked havoc across Texas earlier this month as a result of winter storms and freezing temperatures.
Donations can be made through the Federation’s website at https://www.jewishkansascity.org/texas-emergency-relief-fund.
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Texas is home to around 130,000 Jews, the majority located in the Dallas and Houston areas.
Millions of Texans lost power amid frigid temperatures and the outages also affected water supplies.
When the Jewish Federations of North America announced the fundraising effort, on Feb. 19, it noted press reports that nearly 500,000 homes and businesses remained without power, with large swaths of the state’s grid down.
JFNA said Hospitals were without running out of water, and that some 7 million residents were under a boil-water advisory. JFNA said residents were burning furniture to stay warm.
On Feb. 18, JTA reported that that Dallas’s Jewish had repurposed a “health crisis management team” that had been established to coordinate the local response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The team, consisting of rabbis from each denomination and the CEOs of local Jewish agencies, switched gears to help people deal with the power outages.
At that point, the group had gotten aid to seniors and people without electricity. Synagogues and their congregants were offering shelter to those without power. And the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas partnered with Kosher Palate, a local kosher restaurant, to deliver thousands of meals to Jews without power — a project the restaurant began on its own and accelerated with the federation’s aid.
As noted by JFNA, the state of Texas and its Jewish population are no strangers to natural disasters.
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey decimated the Houston area, flooding thousands of Jewish homes and causing millions of dollars in catastrophic damage to several synagogues and other Jewish institutions. In 2019, an EF3 tornado struck Dallas, bringing more property damage to Jewish communities. And, of course, JFNA said, they have suffered from the pandemic, as have all of our Jewish communities.
Responding to the latest crisis, Mariam Shpeen Feist, president & CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas expressed confidence in its ability to help. “We were built for times like this.”
JTA reported that In Houston, too, Jewish leaders leaned on a coordination groundwork laid long before the unusual cold snap set in. After Hurricane Harvey the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston had convened the Jewish Response and Action Network.
“After Harvey, each shul made its own response. They made their own food. It wasn’t coordinated,” said Jackie Fisherman, the network’s director and the Houston federation’s director of government affairs. “We thought there must be a better way.”
During the power outages, the Houston federation helped procure fuel for a backup generator at an assisted living facility, took part in the distribution of 10,000 water bottles to the community and assisted a few individuals in need of electricity secure generators from the city.
