A month after the Night of Miracles, when a devastating fire tore through Jerusalem’s Sorotzkin enclave, Anglos return home with renewed gratitude and grit

Photos: Flash90, Personal archives

It’s been over a month since a devastating fire raged through a row of apartment buildings in the “Sorotzkin B” alley behind Jerusalem’s Rechov Sorotzkin, leaving about 80 families homeless in the Tuesday morning predawn chill. But now that the last families are back at home — thanks to the incredible chesed of hundreds of good people who rallied to their aid — residents whose adrenalin pushed them down smoke-filled stairwells and over porches, along with many others who spent hours trapped inside waiting for salvation, can finally look back with clear vision at the many, many nissim they lived through on that charcoal night.

In Jerusalem’s Unsdorf neighborhood, a hub for young Anglo families, the row of buildings behind Rechov Sorotzkin — the Sorotzkin B enclave — has its own flavor: Many residents are struggling kollel yungeleit or families who live in material simplicity for Torah. More than half of those displaced by the fire are Americans, many of whom are renters who don’t have homeowners’ insurance, a family support network in Israel, or much experience in navigating small emergencies — let alone major ones like a massive fire that upended so many lives, damaging apartments and destroying dozens of cars and personal storage facilities in the adjoining parking lot. Yet these families have discovered an inner resilience in the face of overwhelming material loss, and a commitment to continue to live in G-d’s courtyard, having felt His embrace as they emerged whole and essentially unscathed when logic would dictate injuries and even deaths.

On that Leil Shimurim of November 23, hundreds of residents of the apartments on Rechov Sorotzkin B were awakened to a nightmare of flames and heavy smoke that prevented most of them from leaving their apartments. By the time they were evacuated up to two hours later, many reported being sure they were going to die, like the helpless victims trapped on the upper floors of the Twin Towers.

But it was a night of miracles: After dozens of dazed parents and little children finally emerged — glasses, hair, and skin covered in soot — all those taken for medical evaluation were released from the hospital after a few hours of observation.

One family, living in an apartment without a porch that would have given them some breathable air, opened their freezer and breathed into that as the thick black smoke entered every corner of their house. In another apartment, the mother was in the hospital after having just given birth, and the father was trapped in the blaze alone with seven small children, who were eventually rescued by firemen with a ladder through their window. Another family, five flights up on Sorotzkin 31B, decided to make a run for the exit down the stairs through the thick smoke, which made seeing each other impossible. By the time they reached the bottom, they realized that one of the children was missing — unable to see in front of him, the little boy had run back inside and spent the next two hours alone in a smoke-filled house, hiding in panic under a blanket while his family waited in terror.

Next door, in Sorotzkin 33B, the electricity was down and it was pitch-black by the time the F. family woke up. Groping their way through the thick smoke and darkness, they managed to gather their children and make a run for the main exit — which led them right into the fire outside. With each parent holding onto several children, they soon realized that one little girl was still inside. She was eventually rescued by her father, who ran back into the smoke-filled building through another roundabout entrance (the one they’d escaped from was no longer accessible) and through a series of miracles, was able to extricate her — both of them finally emerging blackened but whole. Meanwhile, their ten-year-old daughter, who had run ahead through the blaze to safety and found herself separated from the rest, was sure she was her family’s lone survivor. When they were finally reunited, she told her mother, “I didn’t know what to say first, Vidui or Shema.”