Florida Shliach Displaced by Fire

N. MIAMI BEACH, FL [WSVN] — A rabbi, his wife and their eight children are looking for a new home after their house was destroyed by flames.

An accidental fire, which started either electrically or by a candle, according to the fire department, reduced their home, located at 2045 NE 186 Drive to ruins Sunday morning.

Rabbi Rafi Rosenberg described the scene when he first saw the flames. “Right here used to be my bed, my wife’s bed and a night table, and when I came in here, the night table– we both read a lot so we had a big stack of books– and the books were already on fire.”

The father was in the back room giving two of his kids a bath when the flames ignited. Three of his other children were also home when the fire ignited. His 6-year-old daughter came running back to alert him about the fire. “I told my father, I said, ‘Papa, there’s a fire inside the house,’” said Devorah Rosenberg. “He was just trying to put the fire out with a blanket. Then my father told everybody to get out of the house.”

“My children right away, it’s the first thing that came to my mind. I ran to grab the two kids who were in the bath, wrapped them in towels right away, brought them outside, just left them in the front yard. There was a neighbor watching.”

Wife Hindi Rosenberg, who was teaching Hebrew school when the fire happened, said they were at first baffled about how the fire started. “We had no idea how it happened,” she said.

She also said it was a close call for the family. “My daughter was sleeping less than a foot away from that night table. Had she been sleeping for another 10 minutes, I mean, God knows what would have happened.”

This Rabbi overseas about 100 families at their synagogue in Skylake. Now they are the ones on the receiving end of the generosity of their community. “We’ve been getting calls off the hook saying, ‘How can we help, how can we help?’ and it’s just an incredible thing to be part of such a beautiful community.”

Rosenberg already knows the trauma of suffering a fire. His synagogue was nearly destroyed two years ago by flames. Now, he said, he will have to make plans to rebuild his own home.