Jewish communities, like others in the state, are taking steps to provide for their own needs. In Dallas, one of the region’s two Jewish senior centers lost both the main power and backup generator, forcing staff to quickly move residents to the area’s other senior center – thankfully it had a spare room, which recently opened .
Two Orthodox Jewish emergency units, Hatzalah of Dallas and the newly formed Texas Chaverim, both founded by a local, Baruch Shawel, sent out patrols to help residents with dead car batteries, medical emergencies and other problems.
“It’s been pretty wild here,” said Hannah Lebovits, a professor at the University of Texas-Arlington who lives in an Orthodox community in north Dallas, about the power outages that come with other problems, such as heat loss and water pressure. “Fortunately, in the Jewish community we very often quickly create our own mutual aid systems.”
Still, Lebovits said, “That shouldn’t be Chaverim. It should be the city of Dallas knocking on my door and checking on me. “
Also in Houston, Jewish leaders rely on coordination laid long before the unusual cold snap hit. Traumatized by the patchwork of Jewish response to the devastating floods from Hurricane Harvey, the Greater Houston Jewish Federation had been in early 2020, even before the pandemic.
After Harvey, each shul gave his own answer. They made their own food. It was not coordinated, ”said Jackie Fisherman, the network’s director and director of government affairs for the Houston Federation. “We thought there had to be a better way.”