Recovering from two floods occurring in less than one month, Chabad House of Overland Park has been through a lot this past year. So members will have much to be thankful for during these High Holy Days.
“Just as we conclude each seder with l’Shana haba b’Yerushalayim, yearning to be back in our eternal home, it feels as if we’ve come back home,” said Chabad Rabbi Mendy Wineberg. “For the preschoolers who were here at this location in the past or had siblings here, this is the place they know and love. And in general, the unique quality of home is that it is the place in which we feel the most comfortable. Free to be yourself. This holds true for davening as well. There are 30 years of prayers, Torah reading and study here. That leaves a spiritual impression.”
Last year Chabad was unable to hold holiday services at their shul due to flooding. Indian Creek slammed the 6,500 square-foot building located at 6201 Indian Creek Drive with a one-two punch on July 27 and Aug. 22, 2017.
Rabbi Wineberg said some congregants were able to attend Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services at Chabad of Leawood, while Rabbi Sholem and Rebbitzen Blumah Wineberg opened up their home for other congregants.
Rabbi Wineberg said his parents’ home is now fondly called the shtiebel, a Yiddish word that means setting up a synagogue in a house.
He said it feels great to be able to plan for the holidays at Chabad House this year. “We’re not there yet, but we hope to be there by the High Holy Days.”
Rabbi Wineberg said the first flood was about three weeks before preschool started, but with the help of volunteers they were able to get everything put back together; they had the flooring and the walls in, everything painted and were ready to go.
“We had over 500 volunteer hours in just one week alone,” he said. “So within one week we were ready to start rebuilding.”
He praised John Rubenstein of Rubenstein Real Estate Co. who stepped in after the flood of July 27 and helped Chabad House rebuild and get things done quickly.
“It was everybody pitching in, their incredible sense of community,” Rabbi Wineberg said. “I would call them ahtus, which means togetherness. That was palpable and it was beautiful, incredible.”
In between the two floods, Rabbi David Glickman of Congregation Beth Shalom and Judy Jacks Berman, director of Beth Shalom’s Early Childhood Education Center, were “just amazing,” he said. They invited Chabad to hold preschool there, which they did for about two weeks.
“They had an extra couple of rooms and so for the 35 parents depending on us for day care, we were able to do it over there,” Rabbi Wineberg said.
Just as clean up and restoration were almost completed after the first flood, Indian Creek overflowed again a month before Rosh Hashanah — this time destroying all the new walls, carpeting and furniture that had been replaced, and the new toys and school supplies for the preschool.
“When the second flood hit, my first thought was what are we going to do about the preschool,” the rabbi recalled.
He said he knew this was no longer a temporary thing; it was going to be for a much longer term.
“That’s when I called K.I. (Kehilath Israel Synagogue), I called Elizabeth Peden and I said we’ve got a problem; would we possibly be able to do it at your school, and she was wonderful,” he said. “She checked with the board and within that week we were moving stuff over there. So basically we were at K.I.’s preschool until Passover.”
He said the Child Development Center at The J. helped as well. When the CDC acquired new furniture, they called Chabad House and offered them a lot of their old furniture, which was moved to K.I. to set up the preschool.
“K.I. just had the building; that wing hadn’t been used for preschool in quite a while,” said the rabbi. “It was a win-win for K.I. and us because we know how to run a preschool and we know all the regulations and everything, so we went in there and fixed it up.”
If not for Beth Shalom and K.I., Chabad House would have had to shut down the preschool for a year. He also credited the preschool parents.
“They were with us for the ride, they had faith enough to believe we were going to be able to make it happen,” he said. “It’s a testament to them that we have a preschool program today.”
Following that second flood, the future looked bleak for Chabad House. Rabbi Wineberg said he had been scheduled to fly to a family wedding, but when he walked into Chabad on Aug. 22 and saw it, he told everyone to go without him.
The preschool was number one on his mind and after calling Peden at K.I., the question was would they rebuild Chabad House or not.
“Honestly, there was a big part of me that thought no,” Rabbi Wineberg said. “But eventually with a bit of time and once the preschool was taken care of and after we had met with the city as well, we realized it was going to be at least a five-year process before they decided what they were going to do [about flooding].
“We realized we had to do something and were going to have to rebuild it.”
This time around, he said, they rebuilt smartly to make sure they can recover quickly if another flood occurs, installing welded vinyl flooring in the preschool rooms, which is the kind used in hospital emergency rooms. It’s made to get wet and can be power washed if necessary. In fact, they have no carpeting in the building at all now.
“All the walls are still cut at the two-foot mark, just covered with a chair rail so if we ever have to pull it, it’s just a matter of pulling the bottom of the wall; it’s ready to go,” said Rabbi Wineberg. “So we rebuilt it in a way that we should be able to, God forbid if this were ever to happen again, recover very quickly.
“We’re recognizing that we are now in an active flood plain. You’ve got Brookridge Country Club, which is all going to be developed as well. It’s taking away all the green space and the water has to go someplace; it can’t run into the ground anymore.”
Chabad House has been at the same location for 30 years and Rabbi Wineberg said they had never had water in the building before. Many years ago, the area was in a flood plain, but the Corps of Engineers widened the creek, which fixed the flooding problem.
However all the houses south of 103rd Street have reverted to a flood plain in the last few years. He said he doesn’t know if it’s because of the construction going on upstream and downstream; he just knows there’s no longer anywhere for the water to go.
He said it’s not a matter of just building a berm. Besides the water outside, there’s also an issue with the sewers.
“The water we had in our building mostly came from sewer backup, meaning the sewers couldn’t handle the flow of water,” he said. “So they backup and then they go back down again. We didn’t have water in the building for that long; it came in and it went out. By morning it was gone, but it leaves a muddy mess. It’s not just the water, it’s mud and everything else.”
While the insurance company paid for some of the cost, it was nowhere near the total damages of at least $250,000, Rabbi Wineberg said. In addition to the cost of repairs, he said they had to bury more than 2,000 holy books, some that were over 100 years old.
“Thank God the Torahs were fine; they survived,” he said.
With 20 inches of water in the building, it was enough to damage nearly everything.
“So with that second flood, we lost 40 years’ worth of stuff, pictures, everything,” Rabbi Wineberg said. “There were no shelves, so everything was down on the floor being moved around from room to room as we fixed the floor and then we moved stuff to the next room.”
When it floods, Chabad House is totally surrounded by water, Rabbi Wineberg said.
But on a hopeful note he added, “We’re in what’s called the 100-year flood plain and we’ve had two 100-year floods, so I figure we should be good now for 200 years. That’s a positive.”