Good Tuesday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the opening of Yachad‘s new kosher food stand at Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium, which is staffed by people with disabilities, and feature an opinion piece from Abby Levine. Also in this newsletter: Harold Israel, Dr. Miriam Adelson and Emma Igual. We’ll start with ongoing relief efforts by Jewish nonprofits in Morocco.
The hundreds of thousands of people living in the area around the epicenter of Friday night’s earthquake in central Morocco, even those whose homes are still standing, require “the most basic of the basic” supplies due to the devastation caused by the 6.8-magnitude tremors, Israel Sabag, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s country director, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross last night.
“You can start with water, with generators, with lights, with first aid, with bandages, with food. It’s the most basic of the basic. And the number [of people] is huge. And the need is huge,” Sabag said, speaking over the phone from Marrakech, where he has been operating since soon after the quake.
Even as aftershocks have died down, Sabag said the overwhelming feeling in Marrakech is one of lasting terror. “Unfortunately, the people stay in fear,” he said. “People believe that [an earthquake] will happen again, so people are sleeping at night in the street, especially people whose houses were damaged. They’re afraid that even if [a small earthquake hits], their houses will fall. I keep hearing the Arabic word for fear. This is what people are repeating all the time, this feeling of fear.”
A number of Jewish organizations have arrived in Morocco in recent days to assist in the relief effort, with some groups like United Hatzalah focusing on search-and-rescue, while others, like JDC and IsraAid primarily distributing humanitarian aid and assessing the communities’ needs for further help. The Israeli government, which immediately offered assistance, has not yet sent an official aid delegation as Morocco has not approved the request, nor has it accepted aid offers from a number of other foreign countries.
Ethan Schwartz, who is part of IsraAid’s mission to Morocco, said his team has been traveling around the affected area, distributing aid and working to local partner organizations to assess the immediate and longer-term needs of the communities. “We are hearing a lot of needs. Of course, shelter is a big one because so many people lost their homes or their homes were damaged,” Schwartz told eJP. “There are even whole villages that are no longer habitable.”
Schwartz said IsraAid is currently relying on its existing emergency fund, but is also “fundraising actively” in order to pay for its mission to Morocco. “It’s really the way that philanthropists can make a difference in an emergency,” he said.
A JDC spokesperson said the organization’s relief efforts are primarily being funded by Jewish Federations of North America, which launched an earthquake relief fund on Monday. (Individual federations have launched similar initiatives as well.)
Read the full story here.
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