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As terror unfolded in Nice, local rabbis jumped to action

Rabbi Reouven Ouanounou was still in his office at the Chabad Lubavitch of Nice Côte d\'Azur at 11 p.m. on July 14 when he saw people running frantically in the streets
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July 15, 2016

Rabbi Reouven Ouanounou was still in his office at the Chabad Lubavitch of Nice Côte d’Azur at 11 p.m. on July 14 when he saw people running frantically in the streets.

The Chabad house is a five-minute walk from where hundreds had been celebrating Bastille Day with a fireworks display when a terrorist drove a truck into the crowd and began firing a gun, killing more than 80 people and injuring more than 200. When Ouanounou stepped outside to see what was going on, he was told to get back inside and lock the doors, he said. So he did.

Reached by phone shortly before setting out for Friday evening prayers on July 15, Ouanounou sounded tired as he discussed the tragedy that left at least three members of the Jewish community wounded and another two missing at the time of the interview.

Once it seemed safe to leave the house at around 1:30 a.m., Ouanounou made his way to a restaurant to pick up four counselors of Chabad’s Gan Israel day camp who had taken shelter there.

“They were really in trauma,” he said.

The four counselors had missed being hit by the oncoming truck by a few feet, running to escape it, according to a report from Rabbi Yossef Yitschok Pinson, the Chabad director under whom Ouanounou works.

The morning after the attack, Ouanounou made the rounds of area hospitals to seek information about the wounded and to bring food to their families for Shabbat.

He said he visited two wounded elderly Jewish women who attended the Bastille Day festivities. Neither was conscious when he showed up; both had been hooked up to artificial respirators. The sister of one of the women was still missing, he said.

Shortly after Ouanounou hung up to head to Shabbat services, a statement from the Nice Chabad on Chabad.org listed the Hebrew names of the victims: Raymonde bat Nouna, missing; Clara bat Nouna, hospitalized; Hafsia bat Miryam, hospitalized.

Meanwhile, Times of Israel reported that sisters Clara Bensimon, 80, and Raymonde Mamane, 77, had not contacted their families since the attack.

Ouanounou said he was reminded of the passage in the Leviticus where the priest Aaron learns his two sons have died suddenly.

“Vayidom Aaron,” the passage reads. “And Aaron fell silent.”

“There are no words,” Ouanounou said. “You can’t explain, just be there when they need, bring them food, drinks. You talk. That’s the only thing you have. It’s not a moment to find counsel… It’s not proper to encourage them to move forward. It’s not the moment. We don’t know what’s going to happen. So we’re hanging around with them and ‘if you need anything call me.’”

Ouanounou’s brother-in-law, Rabbi Yisrael Pinson, the co-director of Chabad of Greater Downtown Detroit, whose father is the Nice Chabad director, learned of the attack via a WhatsApp chat group with his family even before news had spread in the media.

“Before there was any news on any of the media, even in France, my sister was posting ‘I hear gunshots in the streets what’s going,’” he said in a July 15 interview.

Pinson’s parents were sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Shneerson to establish a Chabad presence in the French Riviera, where about 30,000 Jews live.

The Jewish community there is predominantly traditional Sephardic Jews who came to France in the 1960s from North Africa, he said. Chabad thus plays an important role in their lives.

Pinson said he followed the news of the July 14 attack closely through family members posting information of their whereabouts.

“It wasn’t clear that the terrorist had been eliminated, or there might be another threat,” he said. “The desire was there right away: How can we be there to help?”

Pinson said a number of his family members who hold various rabbinical positions in Nice rushed to the triage center as soon as it was legally allowable.

“The first reaction we have in the Jewish community is: ‘Were there any Jews that were harmed?’” he said.

But even after it was clear that no Jews were among the injured and grief-stricken at that time in the triage area, “they remained there for the whole night basically.”

“They couldn’t leave,” he said. “Because beyond our responsibility to the Jewish community, we’re responsible to all the people in the community, regardless of their religion and their background. So you had these rabbis spending the night with total strangers… literally staying with them, holding their hands, letting them talk, giving them the moral and spiritual support to go through this terrible time.”

Chabad has put up a webpage asking for donations to provide for the needs of families impacted by the terror attack.

The statement from the Nice Chabad concluded: “Men should put on tefillin. Women and girls should light Shabbat candles. Everyone should add in giving tzedakah. … Shabbat Shalom to all.”

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