Brooklyn teacher, student among storm’s fatalities
Federations launching mailbox for victims of winds, flooding
Two young Jews were killed in Brooklyn by a falling tree during superstorm Sandy.
The pair were out walking a dog Monday night in the storm’s high winds.
The dead were identified by The New York Observer as Jessie Streich-Kest, 24, who worked as a high school teacher in the city, and Jacob Vogelman, a student at Brooklyn College. The two had been friends since middle school, according to the Observer.
They were discovered dead Monday, crushed by the fallen tree.
At least 45 people in the United States and 68 outside of the country have been killed in the one-of-a-kind storm, and more than seven million people in 13 states were without power.
Hurricane Sandy, which washed ashore Monday evening just south of Atlantic City, took dead aim at the most populous region of the country, home as well to the majority of the country's Jews. In its wake, it left a trail of devastation that may take weeks to restore, if not longer.
Thousands of Israeli airline passengers and Americans in Israel trying to return home had their flights to the U.S. canceled on Monday and Tuesday. Israelis trying to get home also remained stranded in New York, New Jersey, and the DC area. In all, more than 14,000 flights reportedly were canceled due to Sandy.
Meanwhile, basketball players from Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston were left stranded in Dallas on Sunday night, after the team’s participation in the weekend's Memphis-based Cooper Invitational Tournament.
Assistant coach Rabbi Richard Kirsch and 11 of his players were offered hospitality by students and families at Yavneh Academy in Dallas.
“Yavneh is a community embracing and validating all that is ‘Am Yisroel chai,’ the togetherness we live as Jews,” Rabbi Eliezer Rubin, head of school at Kushner, told The Dallas Morning News. “This is an unconditional and unilateral act of kindness, and it is appreciated by our faculty and our families.”
The Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago set up a relief fund Monday night for victims of the storm, with the Jewish Federations of North America and Union for Reform Judaism following suit the next afternoon. — JTA
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