Harvey and a Charedi Hero

Miriam and Adam Ballin

The Jewish community of Houston has not been spared from Harvey’s wrath. According to the Jewish Week, 71% of Houston’s Jewish community has had serious water damage. Although the neighborhood of at least one Shul, the Young Israel of Houston has been largely spared. So says its Rabbi, Yehoshua Wender, in remarks he sent out to members of his Shul. Which Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein has reproduced on Cross Currents. 

But even they have been affected.  There is a food shortage in Houston.  A Hebrew Theological College high school (FYHS) alumnus that lives in Dallas has responded. From an HTC e-mail: 

Rabbi Aryeh Feigenbaum, FYHS alumnus and Rav of Ohr HaTorah in Dallas, TX is working with Dallas caterers, the local Vaad and several Dallas shuls to provide the Houston community with a thousand hot meals a day for the next three weeks.  If you would like to help out click here:  

As great as this tragedy is for the citizens of Houston, one of the positive things coming out of it is how great the American people are. Volunteers of all stripes from all over the country have traveled great distances with all manner of boats and other aquatic equipment to rescue the lives of people they have never met. Some of them risking their own lives in the process. 

It did not matter to these heroes what the politics of the victims they rescued were. They didn’t ask who they voted for in the last election. It didn’t matter what their race or religion were. Not for the rescuers or the rescued. It was one huge effort by a disparate group of people whose only concern was to rescue lives – putting their own lives at risk in doing so. 

Many of us will react to a selfless heroic act of a Jew by declaring to God,  ‘Mi K’Amcha Yisroel?!’ ‘Who is like Your people, Israel?!’ My answer might be that when it comes to selfless heroism, Americans are!

But as is also the case Jews do live up to their above billing and have responded. As always Israel if there in the form of IsraAID, a  non-governmental organization . The JUF has set up a fund for victims. As have Orthodox institutions like Chabad,  the OU/RCA, and Agudah.  Next time someone says that Orthodox Jews only care about their own, point them in this direction.

There is one Charedi woman that stands out in all of this. Her name is Miram Ballin. She personifies what a Kiddush  Hashem should be. From the Jewish Journal:

Wednesday evening, Ballin left her husband to watch their five young children and headed to southeast Texas, where she and six other Israeli mental health professionals will help locals cope with the flooding. Their work will be guided by hard-won experience responding to local emergencies, including dozens of terrorist attacks.

“I just feel it’s necessary and needed, and simply the right thing to do,” she said. “When we have 150 people who have been trained to deal with exactly this, not to send them to Houston to help out is I think wrong.”

She is not only a hero for taking this initiative. Miriam earned a certificate in family therapy from Bar Ilan Unviersity. But her story doesn’t begin there. She was brought up in a Reform home in Houston, became more observant in high school and met her husband (who is an  MD and himself Charedi)  in college. They both immigrated to Israel in 2011.

Charedi rabbis gave her a lot of flak for wanting to become a medic. Nevertheless:

Ballin became the first woman medic for United Hatzalah, whose leadership she said embraced her ambition… In April, Ballin again worked with United Hatzalah leaders to start the Psychotrauma Unit. Her husband, Adam, a 35-year-old family physician at Hadassah Medical Center, is also a volunteer medic and member of the unit. The service now has over 150 female volunteers

In addition to her day job as a family therapist, Ballin, 33, is the head of the Psychotrauma Unit of United Hatzalah, a mostly Charedi volunteer emergency service based in Jerusalem. She spearheaded the creation of the unit last year amid a wave of Palestinian violence to provide psychological support to those experiencing potentially traumatic events.

The unit’s 200 or so members include medics, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers who are trained by some of Israel’s leading experts on the psychology of crises. They have responded to dozens of terrorist attacks, as well as forest fires, car accidents and other medical emergencies.

Perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of Miriam Ballin is her conciliatory approach to the Charedi world. Rather than asserting her rights as a woman and complaining how anti woman the Charedi world is  she instead consistently shows her sensitivity to the concerns of even the most extreme Jews among them. She has for example pledged that she will never answer a call to go to Meah Shearim. (I just hope that if it involves a life threatening situation, they do not act like the ‘Chasid Shoteh’ of the Gemarah that refused to save a naked woman’s life because of modesty issues.)

What a wonderful example for us to follow. Thank you Miriam for being who you are and giving me the opportunity to once again say: Mi K’Amcha Yisroel!

Update
This post has been updated to correct an error I made about the extent of Harvey’s devastation to the Houston Jewish community. I misread  the message issued by Rabbi Wender (published in Cross Currents) to his congregants. I apologize for the error. Thank you to the reader who pointed it out.