On the sixth day since a massive earthquake crumbled buildings and shook mountains in the impoverished country of Nepal—before recent warnings of a new earthquake to come forced everyone back indoors—the focus of Chabad’s efforts have been concentrated on providing sustained humanitarian aid to thousands of people who have lost everything in the rubble.
“How much sadness and pain rest in these winding alleys of our poor city,” says Chani Lifshitz, who co-directs Chabad of Nepal with her husband, Rabbi Chezky Lifshitz. “Thousands of men, women and children have been left unclothed without the most basic necessities—with not even a roof over their heads. They’ve lost their few precious possessions. Refugee camps have been set up in every possible corner, and flimsy tents made of torn cloth have become homes for the lucky ones.”
Lifshitz visited a number of such camps on Thursday, accompanied by Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement; Rabbi Chaim Eliezer Ashkenazi, a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in Thailand, who coordinates many large-scale logistical Chabad operations in the Far East; and Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, executive director of Merkos Suite 302 in New York.
The delegation brought hygiene supplies, hot meals, fresh water and fruit.
“Tiny babies are thirsty for water, their eyes empty and dead, their small faces wizened like those of old people,” continues Lifshitz. “Wherever we went, people fell on our necks, begging for some food, for more water. We promised them that we would not forget them. We will be back tomorrow, and then again, the day after tomorrow. We will be there for the as long as they need us.”
Just before she left to return to the Chabad House, Lifshitz recalls that a woman with a pinched, wrinkled face approached her. “All she wanted was a hug,” she says. “We hugged for a very long time. Her tears remained on my shoulder long after we parted ways. How much strength did I get from that single hug ... ”
Yet even as they turn their attention to the growing humanitarian crisis, the Lifshitzes remain at the epicenter of the search-and-rescue mission they have been directing since Saturday night. At the very same time that they were visiting the tent camps, they dispatched Yehuda Rose—a British-born aid worker who flew in after the disaster struck—to Lukla, searching for stranded Israeli backpackers in an area devastated by the quake.
Like many of Chabad’s volunteers, Rose has been dividing his time between search forays and feeding the needy, yesterday distributing hot food in one of the Kathmandu’s poorest sections.
As of early Friday morning, he had yet to return from his mission, spending the day and night in the mountainous areas.
To help with the earthquake relief effort, visit the special relief fund page: www.Chabad.org/Nepal.
Start a Discussion