(PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE)

It was just another one of those extraordinary stories that come out of the Hurricane Harvey clean-up effort. But what a story!

As part of their humanitarian clean-up campaign, working with the Jewish and Christian communities hardest hit by Hurricane Harvey, the ZAKA Search and Rescue team were sent by Pastor Becky Keenan from the Gulf Meadows Church to help clear the homes of members of her congregation.

It was almost a week after the hurricane flooded his home that Adrian could finally return. “The moisture had turned the house into a swampland,” he explains to Joshua Wander, one of the ZAKA Israel volunteers.

However, the only items in the home to be miraculously untouched by the flood damage were his prized library of Jewish inter linear Hebrew/English study texts including Tanach, Chumash and other Seforim. “All my secular books were destroyed, but the pages of these books are still dry, still usable and without any mold.”

Adrian, one of Pastor Keenan’s congregants, studies the texts to better understand the Jewish people, to seek “cohesion between Jewish and Christian communities. We are trying to build a bridge here”.

ZAKA Chairman Yehuda Meshi-Zahav is proud of the hard, physical work the volunteers are doing with everyone in need in Houston. “Our sages tell us that God created man in his image. Not just Jews, but all men. ZAKA is a humanitarian organization that provides assistance, regardless of race, religion or gender.” Noting that the Christian community in the States is very supportive of Israel, Meshi-Zahav is pleased that ZAKA volunteers are able to bring help from the Holy Land when it is most needed.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)