Flint Jews Offer Fresh Water and a Helping Hand

by Ronelle Grier – Chabad.org

The national spotlight is again on Flint as Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder gets ready to testify before Congress on Thursday as to what state officials did or did not know, or do, regarding the city’s lead-tainted water supply.

With the country still focused on the economically beleaguered city, Flint’s close-knit Jewish community is doing what it has always done in times of crises: looking out for one another and helping the most vulnerable. In this case, it’s working to ensure that residents obtain supplies of safe water and/or filters for in-home use.

A number of bold initiatives have been proposed to help the Flint community, but In the meantime most assistance has come from the grassroots level. The family of Rabbi Yisroel Weingarten of the Chabad House Lubavitch of Eastern Michigan, along with Jewish volunteers, has been doing their part to assist those in need, especially the elderly.

“Our goal is that people who need to be looked out for are looked out for,” says Weingarten. “We’ve been going to the homes of people who are affected—those we know and those we don’t know—making sure they have water and filters because this problem isn’t going away.”

The problem dates back to April 2014, when state government officials took a cost-cutting measure and decided to temporarily switch Flint’s water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River while a new supply line was completed. Soon afterwards, residents began to complain about the appearance, taste and smell of their water. The city reverted back to the Lake Huron water supply in October 2015, but damage to the city’s lead pipes had already been done.

The extent of that damage gradually became known, in large part because of the efforts of local pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, who discovered that lead levels in toddlers were double and, in some cases, triple the levels that existed before the switch. It is estimated that nearly 10,000 children have been exposed to lead levels high enough to cause significant health problems, including skin lesions, anxiety and cognitive deficits. There was also a sharp rise in the number of cases of Legionnaires’ disease—a severe form of pneumonia—10 instances of which have been fatal, which experts are attributing to the high levels of lead in the water system.

After Snyder declared a state of emergency on Jan. 5, the National Guard was called in to hand out bottled water and water filters for home taps. As the situation drew wide-scale attention, communal leaders, organizations and celebrities across the country pitched in to raise funds and send aid to the ailing community, already hit hard in the nearly two decades since the last automobile-manufacturing plant—once the mainstay of Flint’s economy—closed for good.

The consequences of the water debacle, which are ongoing, include several lawsuits, the resignation of four government officials and multiple investigations to determine who was responsible for allowing a catastrophe of such magnitude to occur. And a federal class-action lawsuit was recently filed representing a group of seven Flint families who claim the water has chronically sickened them.

‘You Do What You Can’

Meanwhile, Rabbi Weingarten, like other Jewish leaders in the area, is trying to mitigate the damage and keep residents safe. A recent initiative involved Jewish boxer Dmitry Salita, sometimes referred to as the “Hebrew Hammer.” Salita, a Michigan resident who has studied with Chabad Rabbi Zalman Liberow in Brooklyn, N.Y., contacted Weingarten and volunteered to bring more than 500 cases of bottled water to a Flint distribution center.

Salita and his group, which included other members of the boxing community and their coaches, rented a U-Haul to deliver the cargo and stayed to help with the distribution. After delivering the water to Art Van Furniture, one of the local collection centers, the group was asked to move it to a second location where residents could drive through and pick up water.

“They were pressed for time, but they did it; they stayed until all the water was distributed,” reports Weingarten, who lives in the adjacent Flint Township, which has fared better than Flint proper over the years and received its water from a different source than the city of Flint. “It was an example of Kiddush Hashem, sanctifying G‑d’s name … it was a good feeling.”

For Salita, who has family and friends in Flint, helping a community in its time of need was a natural outgrowth of his Jewish values: “I’ve been taught when people need help, you do what you can. I was very happy it all came together.”

The efforts of Salita and his colleagues were also aided by representatives from the Jewish Federation of Flint and Bishop Roger L. Jones Sr. of the Holy Temple Ministries in Flint. According to Weingarten, Jones had high praise for the local Jewish community and the way everyone joined together to help those in need.

Several truckloads of water were also delivered to a Boys and Girls Club in Flint so that the children could take home cases to their families. Likewise, water was delivered to Our Lady of Guadalupe Church for members of the Hispanic community, many of whom didn’t know about the water crisis due to the language barrier, or who were reluctant to open their doors to the National Guard or Sheriff’s Department to receive deliveries of water.

‘I Try Not to Let It Get to Me’

Jeanne Aaronson, 86, among the people who have received water deliveries through the Flint Jewish Federation, which continues to check up on her. After the water source was switched in 2014, Aaronson’s concerns were allayed when she received a letter from Flint city officials assuring residents that the water, while not up to its previous standards, was safe to drink. Her confidence faded when she came to a phrase at the end of the letter warning those who were elderly or had compromised immune systems to take additional precautions.

“My 13-year-old dog, also elderly and with a weakened immune system, was lying at my feet, so I called our vet. He said the dog should absolutely not be drinking the water,” said Aaronson, who has lived in Flint since 1958. “I decided if he couldn’t drink it, then I shouldn’t either, and I started using bottled water.”

One month ago, Aaronson, who is homebound and legally blind, stopped using tap water for cooking or making coffee after reading in a news article that heating the water does not make it any safer. Although she did receive a water filter, she has not had it installed because she fears it will be too cumbersome for her kitchen sink.

“Every day, I listen to the news, and every day, there’s something new. I try not to let it get to me,” said Aaronson, who worked as a professional oboe player and music teacher for more than 55 years.

A longtime synagogue member who thinks the Weingartens are “wonderful,” she has sadly watched the Flint Jewish community shrink in the five-plus decades she has lived in the city. Her family, which includes three married children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren, is scattered throughout the United States and Israel.

“While I miss not having them close, this is no place for them [here],” she says, adding that her biggest concerns are how the tainted water will affect local children and the long-term viability of the community. “Who’s going to want to move to Flint?”

‘An Older Population Now’

The Flint community, Jewish and non-Jewish, has had its fair share of economic hardship over the last several years. Once home to several General Motors manufacturing plants, Flint flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, it doesn’t seem so long ago when the Weingartens—who went on shlichus in 1986, the year the first of their 11 children was born—can recall a thriving Jewish community of more than 1,500 families.

Today, the rabbi estimates the number of Jewish families in the city of Flint and the outlying Genesee County area is about one-third that size; still, those who remain have formed a cohesive community. “The older people passed away, the younger people moved away and didn’t come back, ” he says. “It’s an older population now, with very few children, but the people who are here are solid.”