Ma'ayanoter Does Good

From the current issue of Jewish Action (the OU's magazine), some good reading:

Hannah AshSixteen-year-old NCSYer from Teaneck, New Jersey and student at Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for GirlsThe hurricane was something so powerful, so awe-inspiring and so tragic, I knew I had to do something to help.I cleaned out someone’s basement in Seagate. I was pawing through someone’s stuff that was now trash, covered in disgusting grime and muck. Everything was off the shelves, piled on the floor, covered in sewerage and water. A man told me he had to throw out his grandfather’s Shas from Europe. It’s so unfortunate; so many memories, pictures, videos—ruined. I tried to treat all of the destroyed possessions with care.
All these people were standing outside talking about their homes and stores; people were trying to accept the damage and move on. [They’d say], “All this pain had to be for a reason; it came from Hashem. We need to clean up and move on.” They were trying to sound brave, but you could sense that if someone said the wrong thing, they would break down.
There’s something about the connection between one Jew and another. People in the community said, “I can’t believe so many came to help me. Go to this person, he needs help, she needs help.” It was really one house after the other. I felt exhausted, but also very fulfilled.

I really can relate to the emotion.  When I accompanied the 12th grade to help Nechama (a national disaster relief organization) clean up a Shul in Manhattan Beach I found myself separating water-saturated siddurim and chumashim from the non-sheimot debris.  I had to take a stack of the Rabbi's sermons, some nearly forty years old, and put them in a garbage bag; a life's work washed away in days.  Still, mixed in with the heart break of the work was a sense of purpose that I probably would not have gotten at the mall.  Great job Hannah - keep making us proud.