Continuing coverage of the collapse of a high-rise apartment building in Surfside, Florida.
Surfside tragedy
The Latest
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Fast Forward Dispatch from Surfside’s only kosher market
To get a sense of how Surfside’s Jewish community has grown in recent years, head to Kosherland, a humble three-aisle grocery located a few blocks from the collapsed Champlain South condominium, and try to buy milk. Kosherland is the only kosher market in Surfside, and soon it will expand into the neighboring two storefronts. But…
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News At the center of the Surfside tragedy, a rabbi helps people hold onto hope — and mourns his former neighbors
When Fred Klein, the rabbi in charge of providing counseling services to the grieving survivors of the Champlain Towers South disaster, looks out onto the rubble of the collapsed building, he can’t help thinking of the people who used to be his neighbors. Klein grew up in Miami not far from Surfside, and when he…
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News ‘A veritable sigh of relief’: How the world’s Jewish community came together to bring aid to Surfside
SURFSIDE, Fla. (JTA) — “I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew,” Steve Eisenberg tells me. We’re standing in The Shul of Bal Harbour on Sunday, in its social hall under construction. Two days earlier, on Friday evening just before Shabbat, it was piled high with blankets, clothing, mattresses, food and toiletries for the…
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News From Ground Zero to Surfside, a bond between tragedies emerges
With a residential tower in Surfside, Fla., reduced to a smoking heap of debris several stories high, and families near the site holding onto slim hopes of their loved ones’ rescue, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik found himself revisiting the trauma of September 11, 2001, when he was the Jewish chaplain for the New York City Fire…
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Opinion The Surfside disaster was a terrible wakeup call. Will we listen?
An unfathomable tragedy is unfolding right now in Surfside, where eleven people are confirmed dead and 150 still missing. The collapse of an apartment building — without warning, and for reasons that remain unclear — defies expectation. Tragedies like these are moments of shattering. We are praying for the families of those who have perished…
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Opinion The Surfside disaster is our generation’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory moment
On Shabbat afternoon, March 25, 1911, the top floors of the Jewish-owned Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Lower Manhattan went up in flames. Due to the building’s structural flaws, the number of people working at the time, and the lack of responsive emergency personnel, 146 lives were lost in just 18 minutes. As labor attorney Jonathan…
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News Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava is a source of pride for local Jews under haunting circumstances
SURFSIDE, Fla. (JTA) — Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava speaks fluent English and what she calls passable Spanish, but some of her constituents use a Yiddish word to describe her. “She’s heimishe,” said Jacob Solomon, the longtime president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, using the Yiddish word for homey and reassuring. “And she’s…
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News ‘It’s time to give’ — Israeli rescue team arrives in Miami to help in Surfside condo collapse
As of Monday afternoon, there were 150 people – over 50 of them Jewish – still listed as unaccounted for in the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida. As the search under the implacable, sodden pile of rubble dragged on into a fifth day, turning up only scattered remains and more…
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