The Tsunami Relief Effort Reveals a Thai-Jewish Connection
By John Krich

BANGKOK. It took a wave akin to the Great Flood of Noah, but it was the tsunami that landed me at my first Friday night Sabbath celebration. Never mind that as a thoroughly nonobservant Jew, I couldn't follow the Hebrew prayers or songs, or that I had to be prompted to break the challah bread, sip the sweet kosher wine, or keep my borrowed skullcap from slipping off.

After a lifetime of disinterest in Judaism, my night in Bangkok gave me a curious first glimpse of what my religion was all about. The tsunami also exposed a deep and abiding connection between Thailand 's unique blend of relaxation and religious tolerance- and the young people of Israel . Around 100,00 Israelis make the pilgrimage to this Buddhist kingdom every year, seeking, in the words of Bangkok 's long-time resident Rabbi Yosef Chaim Kantor, 35, “a place with no time clock” after brutal three-year stints in the Israeli army.

“ Thailand is a place the world could learn from, where everyone is accepted,” seconds Rabbi Nechemya Wilhelm, 32, who has spent 10 years here. Or, as Ben Yaniv Hamo, a wispy 22-year-old at the Shabbat service put it, “The beaches, the prices, the women, the food-why shouldn't we love it?” So great is the Israeli influence here that side alleys around Khao San Road , the backpacker center strewn with cheap hotels and crafts shops, teem with falafel joints. And even my Thai father-in-law, who one managed a resort hotel on Koh Samui, seemed to know about the special preparations and requirements for celebrating Jewish holidays that I couldn't even begin to identify.

So when I began scanning the Internet for tsunami-relief activities, I shouldn't have been surprised to find a Web site called www.jewishthailand.com filled with accounts of heroic rescues and photos of bearded, black-suited rabbis-as incongruous on the palm-fringed, body-strewn beaches of Phuket as saffron-robed Thai monks would be in an Eastern European shtetl-tending to whichever lost souls wanted to be part of their tribe.

Over the decades, Bangkok's three-story Chabad House, established by the world-wide strictly Orthodox Lubavitch organization-and two smaller meeting places in Chiang Mai and Koh Samui- have dealt with every sort of travel emergency from stolen passports to drug overdoses, along with the hysterical entreaties of Jewish mothers as to their wayward child's whereabouts. Still, says Rabbi Kantor, “About the only thing we never planned for was a tsunami.”

But on that Sunday morning, rabbi relief went into swift action. “In moments like this, we have to become the eyes and ears of the entire Jewish people,” declares Rabbi Kantor, who, among other duties, had to cope with worried Jewish parents flying in from Israel , the U.S. , and even South Africa .

Rushing south to the disaster scene from Chiang Mai, then working around-the-clock for three days and nights, the Jerusalem-born Rabbi Wilhelm made the rounds of all the local hospitals, and searched posted lists of the missing for Jewish names. In the temporary morgues, he wore a surgical mask over his untrimmed facial hair. With his full length beard, sideburns, and black hat, the 32-year-old was a recognizable figure. “I guess,” the rabbi jokes, “I look pretty Jewish.” But, he quickly adds, “We helped anyone who asked, no matter what, we invited them to search our data base.”

He worked alongside Israel 's consul in Thailand , Yaacob Dvir, who was on the very first flight that landed in Phuket after the disaster, in setting up a full-fledged forensic facility in an office at a local hospital. Together, they helped locate the bodies of 11-month-old Mattan Nesima, torn from his mother's arms, and Jacobo Hassan, a 19-year-old Mexican Jew on his honeymoon. The rabbi kept vigil with each body, since Jews believe bodies must be shown respect and be accompanied until the moment of burial. But he described his duties as “a matter of giving people a shoulder to cry on, or fining small ways to help them reclaim their lost dignity-like runnig out and buying a new pair of glasses for one survivor.”

By the Tuesday after the Sunday disaster, a squad of 15 Israeli police had arrived, along with three special volunteers from Zakad, an organization highly experienced at identifying bodies. “Every time there's a bomb in Israel , he's the first one there,” Rabbi Wilhelm says of Yehuda Meshi Zahav, the Zakad Chairman who is an observant Jew who sports a black vest and curling, untrimmed gray sideburns. But even Mr. Zahav, who was on the scene for earthquakes in Turkey and the Bali terrorist bombing, calls his stint in Phuket “the toughest work we've ever had. The hot weather, the condition of the bodies-instead of looking for one among fifty, this was one among five thousand.”

His team spent several days looking in vain for a women whose only identifying mark was a missing fingernail. His team ended up identifying 25 bodies-including five Israelis lost thus far, out of some 2,000 estimated to have been vacationing in the area. When Thai officials asked for a handful of gas masks and coffins, the Israeli government shipped 500 masks, 3,000 body bags and six tons of medical supplies. “Everywhere we went, people told us they'd been taught Israelis were bad guys, but we turned out to be heroes,” says Mr. Dvir.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Kantor, who had flown home from a family wedding in the U.S. , had to deal with the overflow of Israelis returning to Bangkok from the disaster scene. “It was bedlam, a lot of these kids had nothing left but their bathing suits,” he says. They needed money, places to stay, even food. The staff at Chabad House's kitchens worked 24 hours a day, putting out kosher meals-varying from chopped chicken livers to Thai chicken with basil-cooked by a Thai who spent four years working in an Israel hotel.

For two weeks after the disaster, the kitchen air-lifted more than 20 kosher meals per day down to Phuket, and sent others to hospitals around Bangkok . Thanks to this, the Israeli police and embassy staff, plus Zakad volunteers could properly celebrate the Sabbath meal in their Phuket hospital office. Meanwhile Rabbi Wilhelm returned to Bangkok to preside over a Shabbat dinner-an urgent celebration of life-in the large, upper dining hall of the Chabad House.

“All Shabbat celebrations are special, but this one was electric,” says Rabbi Wilhelm, who was sent to Thailand a decade ago by the world-wide Lubavitch organization. He describes the miracles that came along with the disaster, “like the Jewish family that missed their flight to Phuket at the last second… Or the woman who arrived in a boat with 42 Jews at Phi Phi Island just as the wave hit. Unable to swim, she could only recite Hebrew prayers, until a log lifted her out of the water, and Thai boatmen threw her a robe-a rope from Heaven, she called it.”

Even a week later, at the Shabbat dinner I attended, the solidarity among the young people, with tans and puka shells that made them look like they'd just strolled in off the beach, was amazing. Rabbi Wilhelm's preaching and dancing amidst his own four small children, was especially fervent.

This unique feeling of community may have been in part due to the fact that Israelis who might be separated by religious or political disputes back home were united here by their common home-sickness.

The feeling of community and the depth of these rabbis' commitment was almost enough to get me to enlist. Could it be true that one people, my “chosen people,” are particularly adept at handling emergencies? But at moments like this, it doesn't really matter if one group has a superior handle on coping with disaster. When a wave hits, it just helps to believe it.

Mr. Krich is a Kuala Lumpur-based staff reporter for The Asian Wall Street Journal.