One year ago, I was sheltering in my basement with my daughters and our dog as Tropical Storm Helene tore through our community just outside of Asheville, N.C. We watched through a window and listened as a dozen trees fell, trapping us and encircling our home with debris. Each time they heard another tree snap, my girls ran to the innermost area of the basement. Inexplicably, I stood paralyzed, watching the destruction. When the whole house shook, my 9-year-old anxiously asked, “Did a tree just fall on the house?” 

Even before seeing it, I knew. “Yes,” I answered.

“Is it OK?” 

“I don’t know yet, honey.” 

All forms of communication were down and 911 was unreachable. For that terrifying morning, we were alone. 

The day before the storm, I was on a call with other JCC executives across the country planning an upcoming conference. I blithely told them that I had closed the Asheville JCC for a couple of days because, “Apparently we’re getting a hurricane? But we’re in the mountains. They always protect us.” As it turned out, my ancient Blue Ridge Mountains were no match for Helene. 

The moment the winds died down, the first person I saw was a friend and neighbor, frantically climbing over a felled pine across my driveway to check on us and take us to his undamaged house. We lived there for the next week. Cut off from the rest of the world with no power, water, internet, cell service or gasoline, we spent the first days of the aftermath relying on and caring for anyone we could reach within a couple miles’ radius. 

In my neighborhood, neighbors mucked a flooded house and chainsawed to clear countless driveways. Those who had solar panels and generators provided charging stations and refrigerator space. Gratefully, the friends we moved in with had both a well and the solar panels to power it. They provided coffee in the morning, dinner at night or a quick midday shower to anyone who came by. Our children played together and learned to sidestep the downed powerlines that surrounded us like Silly String. 

I received my first contact with the outside world two days later in the form of a text from my friend and fellow JCC CEO in Florida. “Hey, just checking on you. You safe?… You have tons of folks willing to help. You’re not in this solo.” 

In that moment I knew that the entire country was paying attention. Shockingly, the outside world seemed to know more about what was happening in our mountains than we did. We didn’t yet see how widespread the devastation was throughout the region — our view was from the trenches of our homes, our neighborhoods, our bridges. 

“This is going to be a marathon and not a sprint,” he texted. “Go slow and steady. It’s what we do. Whatever you need you will have when you need it.” 

My Jewish community who lived beyond the reach of Helene’s devastation was already by my side. For the first time, I sobbed.

Soon thereafter, with my family’s safety and shelter stabilized, my focus shifted to the Asheville JCC’s employees, members and board members who had lost everything; to those who fled town to find power, water and shelter; and to those who stayed behind to try to stitch it all back together. I envisioned securing philanthropic support that would enable the JCC to cover at least a month of payroll (Would that be long enough, I wondered? There was still no timeline on power or water restoration) and providing scholarship support to any family who could not afford to pay for childcare services that they were not receiving during the closure. I knew that Western North Carolina’s philanthropy would be immediately depleted, that I would need to look outside our region. I left town for a couple of days for stable cell and internet access to share our JCC’s most immediate need and my vision for meeting it.

That’s when the North American Jewish community began to say “Hineini — I am here.”

Without a second thought, and with gentle care and concern, the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation and The Leon Levine Foundation together funded 75% of our initial goal. Then I watched unsolicited donations pour in through the JCC’s website from my Jewish communal teachers, friends, colleagues and strangers from across Jewish North America. For the second time, I was reminded that our hurting, little, mountain-town’s Jewish community was not alone. 

The flood of tzedakah and mitzvot continued. 

A colleague connected me with Nechama Jewish Response to Disaster. When its CEO described their work during a phone call, I cried again, choking out, “That’s exactly what my community needs.” Nechama staff arrived trained and ready for disaster relief before we even knew where to begin. Their team spent their first nights on the floor of the JCC, and their days mucking homes, removing drywall and providing tikvah — hope. 

Jewish Federations of North America swooped in with Starlinks and porta potties for every Jewish congregation and organization in town. They funded microgrants to people whose tourism jobs were on hold, whose wells were destroyed and who needed groceries and gas and chainsaws and generators. JFNA’s support continues even now, providing ongoing scholarship to impacted families.

 The JCC Association CEO, director of JResponse and Charlotte JCC leadership arrived to bear witness to the destruction, hug our leadership team tight and plan reopening and recovery support. They brought gifts for my daughters and food from Charlotte that we reheated in the flickering light of my kitchen, still impacted by the broken power grid.

Early Starters International transformed the JCC’s social hall into a welcoming, trauma-informed play space for families with young children who had seen and experienced so much. Children did art and played make-believe while moms and dads shared storm stories, something I discovered to be a healing ritual for nearly everyone who endured the storm.

The Charlotte and Durham JCCs deployed a dozen JResponders, employees trained to assist JCCs across the country in the wake of disaster. They arrived one month after Helene to assist in reopening essential operations without potable water. The JResponders relieved after-school staff, played guitar and sang with early childhood education children, removed debris and schlepped potable water to makeshift hand washing stations throughout the building. Their greatest contribution, however, was a ruach, spirit, that lifted ours.

The Friday the JCC reopened essential services, a b’nai mitzvah student from Charlotte delivered dozens of challot that he had handmade, braided and baked in his family’s kitchen. His gift of challah was the first many had tasted in a month, and he and his parents together delivered them to members of the Jewish community who had lost their homes or were struggling in the aftermath of the storm, as well as the JCC’s early childhood and after-school classrooms.

Because of these acts of chesed, lovingkindness, we had the wherewithal to turn to our neighbors and provide recovery support that we were well-positioned to give. For weeks while the city of Asheville had no running water, JCC staff and volunteers pumped water from our pool and provided it to anyone who needed water to flush their toilets. The Asheville JCC’s “Fill for Flushing” initiative gave relief to members, donors, employees and neighbors; pop-up “flush brigades” even drove the water to the elderly and subsidized housing.  

Each step of this journey validated who we are as Jews. We are a people connected by an intricate and vast web of Jewish geography. We are a people with shared values of tzedakah, tikkun olam and Hillel’s teaching: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” And we are a people who recognize that as an ultra-minority we can support and care for one another as no one else can. 

Disaster uniquely taught me: We Jews are bound by ahava — love. 

Ashley Vandewart Lasher is the executive director of the Asheville Jewish Community Center in Asheville, N.C., the community where she grew up. She shares her story one year after Hurricane Helene in an effort of remembrance, healing and gratitude.