Center serves as local haven for hurricane victims

As the effects of Hurricane Katrina become more serious with each day that passes, the Lubavitch-Chabad Jewish Center in Gainesville is working to keep the hope and faith alive.

Tulane University’s Chabad Director Rabbi Yochanan Rivkin, who left New Orleans last week with his wife and four children, created a temporary command post at the center, through which hurricane survivors can communicate with relatives and find nearby relief centers.

Rivkin and Rabbi Berl Goldman, director of the center, led a small prayer service Wednesday evening for those still in New Orleans. It began, “Deliver me, O God, for the waters have reached unto my soul.”

Goldman said Rivkin and his wife, Sarah, have been working day and night to help people who have left New Orleans to get in touch with nearby Chabad centers. They are also serving as messengers, sending e-mails or calling people whose relatives they have been able to reach in New Orleans.

Today, for example, a woman was able to reach Rivkin to say she had made it out of New Orleans to Alabama. Rivkin immediately sent the girl’s grandmother an e-mail.

“We’re talking about mind-numbing devastation,” Rivkin said and stressed that faith is comforting when dealing with disasters like this.

“Faith helps show that life is more than just material possessions,” he said.

The Rivkins have attended conferences in Gainesville in the past and decided last week they would come here when New Orleans received an evacuation order.

Though they thought it would be only for a few days, they are now unsure of when they will go home.

The Rivkins said their family of six will stay with relatives in New York if they are unable to return soon to New Orleans.