150 Pounds Of Kosher Food Airlifted To Flooded North Carolina City For Yom Kippur
Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — Jewish families in Wilmington, North Carolina were able to eat a kosher meal before the start of Yom Kippur after the Chabad synagogue in nearby Charlotte was able to arrange the arrival of a helicopter carrying 150 pounds of kosher food.
After days with no contact due to Hurricane Florence, Rabbi Yossi Groner of Charlotte’s Ohr HaTorah was able to speak by telephone to Rabbi Moshe Leiblich of Chabad of Wilmington on Monday. Leiblich requested that he find a way to send kosher food, the Charlotte Observer reported on Wednesday.
A truck full of kosher food sent from Raleigh after the hurricane first hit had been turned away by authorities because of dangerous road conditions.
Groner’s son, Ben Tzion, contacted a friend who is a helicopter mechanic and was able to secure a helicopter for Tuesday morning. It arrived at the airport in Wilmington at 1:30 p.m. carrying kosher chicken and dairy products as well as ready-to-eat meals, which were delivered to families preparing for Yom Kippur, the newspaper reported.
“It was tremendous, and certainly a relief,” Leiblich told the Observer. “It gave us kosher meat until the stores are back to normal.”
The Chabad of Wilmington was expected to be the only one in the city holding Yom Kipuur services, due to the hurricane.
There are between 800 and 1,000 Jewish families living in Wilmington.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
