Monster Hurricane Maria Strikes Puerto Rico — Rosh Hashanah Services Cancelled
(JTA) — Puerto Rico’s three synagogues closed for Rosh Hashanah as Hurricane Maria pummeled the island.
The synagogues, all in San Juan, canceled Wednesday evening services for the Jewish New Year and urged members to stay home, according to The Times of Israel.
Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Wednesday morning after causing widespread destruction on the Caribbean island nation of Dominica. In Puerto Rico, which has 3.3 million residents, power outages were expected as strong winds ripped trees out of the ground
Leaders of the Jewish community, which numbers around 2,000, said there was no choice but to cancel the Rosh Hashanah services.
Diego Mandelbaum, a leader at Shaare Zedek, a Conservative congregation and Puerto Rico’s largest synagogue, told The Times of Israel: “This is a situation that speaks for itself. This isn’t even a decision, it’s an impossibility.”
Yadhira Ramirez Toro, a leader at the Reform Temple Beth Shalom, said people had been urged to stay home.
“Nobody’s supposed to leave their houses,” Toro told The Times of Israel.
Puerto Rico is still recovering from Hurricane Irma earlier this month, which led to widespread power outages on the island.
Rabbi Mendel Zarchi, who runs a Chabad house in the San Juan suburb of Isla Verde, was using his synagogue to provide shelter for people in need. The synagogue was built to be able to withstand a hurricane.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO