Three days from today, on Oct. 28, Jamaica will mark one year since Hurricane Melissa struck our island. To commemorate that anniversary, a 62-foot statue called “Together We Rise” has been erected along the hip strip.
As you drive in, on the right side of the road, two forearms rise out of the ground, their skin carved with the grain of tree bark. At the top, two hands clasp together, one gripping the other’s wrist the way a rescuer grips someone being pulled from the water. Small human figures climb the length of both arms, each one reaching back to pull up the person below.
The artist, Scheed Cole, says the scenes near the base show people fighting to survive the storm, including a soldier pleading with a woman who is close to giving up. Higher up are a construction worker and a man carrying bananas, signifying Jamaica going back to work and back to the land.
From the clasped hands a slender trunk shoots upward and opens into branches. Cole calls it a tree of life and gave it 14 leaves: one for each parish, each modelled on a healing plant.
When I saw it, I thought of a verse that Jews sing every Sabbath as the Torah scroll is returned to the ark: “It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it” (Proverbs 3:18).
Cole has given that verse a shape, a tree growing out of people holding on to one another.
This is a beautiful tribute to remember how, in the days and weeks that followed the harrowing storm, neighbors reached out to help their neighbors, strangers opened their doors, and anyone with the means pitched in.
While Melissa is one year in the past, its effects are still being felt. Not just in the critical infrastructure that hasn’t been fully brought back to normal. Not just in the tourism industry, which has yet to recover. Not just in the Western parishes where the landscape and the buildings were permanently transformed.
The effects that will last the longest live in the hearts and minds of everyday people. We all remember the terror we faced in those five hours. The uncertainty of whether we would make it through the storm. Those memories may fade with time, but they never go away. The impacts on the mental and emotional health of children will be felt for a very long time.
Lots of parents are still struggling to send their children to school as they are still trying to bounce back and rebuild their lives, homes and livelihoods, and some may still be going through difficulties at home.
That is why Chabad of Jamaica has begun a program to promote youth mental health. We arrange visits with children in vulnerable communities to bring hope and reassurance, as well as to provide them with supplies, books, toys and snacks.
One of the social workers in our program, Coleen Lawson-Tayler, said: “It is always a great and warm feeling seeing how happy the children are and how excited they are when they see us and knowing that we not just come, but things are brought for them.”
Amid the despair many feel, one year later, I always turn to the Torah for guidance and inspiration. Each week, we read a specific Torah portion, and Jewish tradition teaches that the weekly portion offers wisdom for our specific situation happening exactly at that time.
Two weeks ago, we read about Noah and the flood. God filled the earth with heavy rains and floodwaters, which did not subside for an entire year. This past Shabbat we read that God tells Abraham, at the age of 75: “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).
He was uprooted from everything he knew and sent toward a place God had not yet named. He was uprooted and told to take a journey with no destination.
Melissa did something similar to us. Overnight, the Jamaica we knew was gone, and none of us could see what lay ahead. Abraham walked forward with faith. Those I interacted with in the weeks and months after the storm had a similar level of faith. As it says in the book of Job: “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.”
However, it’s normal to have doubts and questions. People from all walks of life have asked me where God was during Melissa. How could a merciful God allow this to happen? I will not pretend to explain why tragedy occurs.
However, Jewish sages have taught that when things don’t make sense, the question can run in the other direction. In the opening chapters of the Torah, Adam eats from the tree of knowledge. God asks him a question, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). A chapter later, God asks Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” Cain answers with a question of his own: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9).
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad, was once asked by a Russian official why an all-knowing, all-powerful God would need to ask such questions; didn’t he already know? The rabbi answered that God asks this of every person in every generation: Where are you in the world, and what have you done with the days you were given? He is challenging us to rise to the occasion.
When life seems bleak, God’s question is both a motivation and an inspiration that we are not powerless. We are not victims. While tragedy and natural disaster may come upon us, we’re not allowed to throw up our hands. We must take responsibility and understand that at the end of the day, we are indeed our brother’s keeper.
That is the question in front of every Jamaican this week. A year after the storm, do we know where our neighbors are, and are we still looking out for them?
In the days after Melissa, neighbors checked on neighbors, and families who had lost a great deal opened their doors to people who had lost everything. Let us all remember the sense of responsibility and care we all felt for one another in the days and weeks following the storm.
Let Oct. 28 be more than a day of remembrance. Let this anniversary be a call to action. Much work remains to be done, and each of us has a role to play. Whether it is a small action like checking in on a friend or a larger action like donating time to help rebuild, we can each do something.
Last October, the storm wreaked havoc on the island. This year, we are called to continue the kindness we all witnessed in those early days.
