For the Jewish community of New Zealand, the devastating earthquake that hit the city of Christchurch on Feb. 22 struck close to home.
Israeli backpacker Ofer Mizrahi, 23, was among the 75 people confirmed killed in the quake as of press time, and up to four other Israelis are missing and feared dead. The city’s Chabad house was destroyed in the quake, and another Christchurch synagogue reportedly suffered damage.
With hundreds of Israeli backpackers visiting New Zealand each year, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said there could be up to 150 Israelis in Christchurch. On Feb. 23, Israel’s consul to New Zealand, Teddy Poplinger, said that his staff was working to contact all Israelis who were reported to be in the area of the quake when it struck.
Mizrahi, from Kibbbutz Magal near Haifa, was in a car with three other Israelis when a building collapsed on them during the 6.3-magnitude earthquake that ripped through the city around lunchtime, according to Rabbi Shmuel Friedman, a Chabad rabbi in Christchurch.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, whose Jewish mother escaped Austria on the eve of the Holocaust, said the quake could turn out to be his nation’s “darkest day.” Israel has offered to send food and medicine to help.
Of New Zealand’s 7,000 Jews, about 2,000 live in Christchurch, with the majority in Auckland and Wellington on the North Island.
David Zwartz of Wellington, a former president of the New Zealand Jewish Council, said he received a text message from Bettina Wallace, the immediate past president of Canterbury Hebrew Congregation, the main synagogue in the region, saying that the synagogue had been damaged but was fixable.
Friedman, a New York native who came to Christchurch three months ago to do Jewish outreach work, was inside the offices of the Chabad center with an Israeli backpacker when the first tremor jolted the city just before 1 p.m. local time.
“All of a sudden walls, ceilings started coming in on us, the shake was shifting us side to side,” Friedman said.
“We just ran. I have no idea no idea how we managed to get out of there,” he said. “There were many people in the street in panic and shock. It was not a pretty scene. There were people running out of buildings, a lot of screaming, damage, smoke.”
Later in the day, Chabad announced that the building, which also housed the city’s only kosher cafe, had been toppled.
The body of the Israeli who was killed in the quake could not be retrieved immediately.
“The body is still in the car where the building collapsed,” Friedman said Feb. 22. “Emergency crews are still working on people who can be saved.”
Rabbi Mendel Goldstein, the chief rabbi of Chabad in New Zealand, said he was frantically fielding calls and e-mails from worried parents in Israel.
Friedman noted that many of the Israelis in the city helped in the rescue effort.
“A group went in to help evacuate people in buildings which were collapsing. They were experienced from the army,” he said.
This week’s quake came less than six months after a tremor rocked the city last September. It was higher in magnitude but did less damage.