Remembering The Floods
I lived in the United States from 1989 to 2013. During the first 10 years in Philadelphia, I was surrounded by friends and intersecting communities around the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Many lived in a few adjacent neighbourhoods and became active in a range of local, national and international causes. As with my undergraduate education, a great deal of learning happening outside the classroom.
In 1993 massive floods, the largest in many decades, devastated cities and communities along the might Mississippi River. Now, as a Canadian child, I could not have told you anything about the Mississippi except its characteristic spelling. Moving to the states, I brought with me a general understanding of the geography of the Northeast Coast and was developing a sense of place in the mid-Atlantic; that the Mississippi River was not confined to that state was news to me.
News of the flood came with devastating images. Nine states were affected, infrastructure damage was severe, and some areas remained flooded for months. Costs rose to the billions, and though the death toll was low compared to what would occur during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the 1993 flood affected an area more the three times the size of that later disaster.
Even though I had never been to most of the states touched by the river, I was living there. In that country, news of an American disaster, even in those analog, land-line days, could be intense. I felt compelled by the news and connected to what was unfolding, even if I was multiple states an weather systems away.
One evening I gathered a bunch of friends together from the neighbourhood and from rabbinical school for a Mississippi Mud Pie party. Folks could either bring their version of the concoction, or a cash donation, or both. We would enjoy each others’ company for an evening of tea, sweets and conversation, and our donations would be bundled up and sent off for flood relief efforts.
One friend who came to the party also brought some ‘tude, scoffing at the likely measly impact our little donation would have, and pointing to the larger factors and issues related to the political underpinnings of the flood’s likely causes. I think I was stunned into not reacting – I don’t remember what I said, but obviously the words and stance remained with me, and I’ve often thought about it. This was someone I deeply respected and admired, whose work was about sustaining financial and strategic resources in social justice spaces.
The modest cheque that our mud pie party collected surely did not make much of a sustained impact on the flood zone. But the experience of responding to the muddy, watery disaster stayed with me – not that I have necessarily resolved any of the questions that arose that day, or since.
What I have recognized, though, is that this confluence of water disasters, places and neighbourhoods, and where I see myself in relation to those places and disasters, reverberates in my body and soul and possibly in yours as well. The “unnatural” – in quotations because these events of course occur in and are of nature – floods, tsunamis, thunderstorms, along with the less visibly dramatic, ongoing events like ocean level rises, are elemental to life and our existence. Even if the geography classes of my youth did not teach about American rivers, I sure was taught that the 70% of the earth is covered by water, leaving less than a third of the globe for land and habitation. And we know that the oceans are reclaiming even more of our measly portion.
After the biblical flood in the book of Genesis, God sets a rainbow in the sky as a sign of a promise that “the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures, all flesh that is on the earth.” [Genesis 9:15-16, emphasis added]. We often say that our Jewish story starts in Genesis 12, with Abram-Abraham and a covenant made just with “us.” Yet the lineage begins with Noah, with the descendants of Shem leading to Terah, who begot Abram [Genesis 11:10-26].
Each of our stories start in water – in the womb, on the planet. This may be why news of watery disasters touch us so deeply. However you connect and whatever touches you – and especially if you were impacted by the rains of July 1, 2026 right here in Ottawa-Gatineau – I pray that your neighbours, near and far, are paying attention. I’m here with a pie, if that’s what you need.
Rabbi Liz
