Haiti: Haredi Rescue Team Stops Saving Lives In Order To Pray; Chabad Brings Kosher Wine, Halla And Food To Haredim

As the time for the chance to save survivors rapidly slipped away, ZAKA members stopped searching to pray Sabbath morning prayers.

'Jewish mission' underway in Haiti
Chabad.info

The ZAKA international rescue unit delegation in Haiti pulled eight students alive from the collapsed university building, 38 hours after the building collapsed. ZAKA delegation head: “You have to understand that the situation is true madness, and the more time passes, there are more and more bodies, in numbers that cannot be grasped. It is beyond comprehension.” It was a “Shabbat from hell” for the ZAKA International Rescue Unit delegation in Haiti.

Ahead of Shabbos, Chabad envoys worked hard to prepare kosher food and a proper Shabbos meal for Jewish aid workers already on the devastated island.

Chabad's emissary to the Dominican Republic, Shimon Pelman, said he arrived in Haiti in order to identify and assist Jewish residents and rescue workers, in order to provide them with challah and wine for Shabbat.

The six man ZAKA delegation (four from Israel and two from Mexico) arrived in Haiti aboard a Mexican air force Hercules, immediately after completing their work in recovery and identification in the Mexico City helicopter crash. 

On arrival, the ZAKA delegation was dispatched to the collapsed 8-storey university building where cries could be heard from the trapped students. After hours of work around the clock and working with rescue equipment provided by the Mexican military, the ZAKA volunteers succeeded in pulling eight students alive from the rubble, 38 hours after the building collapsed in the earthquake. 

In a disturbing email that Mati Goldstein, head of the ZAKA International Rescue Unit delegation managed to send to the ZAKA headquarters in Jerusalem, he writes of the “Shabbat from hell. Everywhere, the acrid smell of bodies hangs in the air. It’s just like the stories we are told of the Holocaust – thousands of bodies everywhere. You have to understand that the situation is true madness, and the more time passes, there are more and more bodies, in numbers that cannot be grasped. It is beyond comprehension.” 

Amid the stench and chaos, the ZAKA delegation took time out to recite Shabbat prayers - a surreal sight of ultra-orthodox men wrapped in prayer shawls standing on the collapsed buildings. Many locals sat quietly in the rubble, staring at the men as they prayed facing Jerusalem. At the end of the prayers, they crowded around the delegation and kissed the prayer shawls. 

Due to the breakdown in communications in Haiti, the ZAKA delegation which arrived from Mexico was unable to make contact before Shabbat with the Israeli Home Front Command delegation that is now in Haiti.

To donate to the ZAKA Haiti fund: 

https://www.zaka.us/haiti.asp

Understand what happened here:

1. ZAKA did not leave Mexico for Haiti immediately. Instead, ZAKA finished the recovery of the bodies of dead Jews in Mexico. Only when it finished did it go to Haiti.

2. Chabad's primary purpose* in Haiti was to bring ZAKA and a handful of other Jews wine and halla for the Sabbath.

3. ZAKA stopped saving lives to pray, make kiddush and eat. They did this even though every second counted, and lives were absolutely at stake.

4. 99.9% of the victims of this disaster are non-Jews.

Would ZAKA have acted differently is the 20% of the victims were Jews? Would Chabad?

Halakha makes a distinction between violating the Sabbath for to save Jewish life or to do the same to save non-Jewish life.

Basically, we always break Sabbath laws to save Jews, but we do not do the same for non-Jews unless other circumstances are at play. If not saving non-Jewish life would cause non-Jews not to save Jews or would cause non-Jews to hurt Jews, then we save non-Jews just as we save Jews. This is often expressed in halakha as "for the sake of peace."

Saving non-Jews on the Sabbath is the current official default position Orthodoxy takes, if there are not other alternatives available.

But all this rests on the perception of non-Jews, what they perceive Jews are doing.

Apparently, ZAKA and Chabad decided half or three-quarters of an effort is better than none.

You can also see ZAKA's Sabbath prayers reported in Yeshiva World and the Jerusalem Post.

* Chabad did bring 3 or 4 truckloads of vegetables to distribute. Of course, there is a dire shortage of clean water to wash and cook those vegetables, meaning Haitians who ate them are likely to get ill.