The Storm That Nearly Swept Away Everything They Built: Rabbi Yaakov & Mushkee Raskin

The Storm That Nearly Swept Away Everything They Built

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“Our first Friday night after the hurricane, we had a local person who came to us. She says, “Rabbi, I didn't eat for three days." And in the darkness, we sat our first Friday night. We had, you know, canned food and I was able to put up some rice. So we had a little hot food. She was just crying and just saying, “Thank you."- Rabbi Yaakov Raskin

“The wind was very, very strong. My husband quickly took all our bed frames out of all the bedrooms, and the couches, and started, like, pushing it against those glass doors, or else we would be completely flooded.” - Rebbetzin Mushkee Raskin

“IBig yacht in the middle of the highway. Multi ton cement poles across the road, like sticks. Spaghetti of wires, live, everywhere.” - Mark Rosenblum

Produced by: Gary Waleik & Shneur Brook for Lubavitch International/Lubavitch.com - A Project of Machne Israel

Available on all major podcast platforms - and online at Lubavitch.com/podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Melissa was crazy.

SPEAKER_04 0:01

That's Mushki Raskin, Chabad emissary to Jamaica, along with her husband Yaakov. And the Melissa she's referring to is the deadly Category Five hurricane that devastated parts of Jamaica in October 2025, including the Raskins Chabad house.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Things were flying off the roof. Bingy sounds. Boom, boom, and then boom. The sounds that we were hearing from outside were unimaginable. Like you've never heard such sounds.

SPEAKER_04 0:34

But even as he desperately fought to keep his family safe and save his Chabad house, Rabbi Yaakov Raskin was thinking about what needed to be done once Melissa had departed the island's nation.

SPEAKER_06 0:47

It was like, what would the Rebbe tell me right now to do? How can we be there and help others and bring the light of Yiddish Gaidenter to everybody?

SPEAKER_04 1:04

Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world. But behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Back to our story in a moment. But first, I'd like to tell you about a great opportunity. You can partner with lamplighters in sharing stories of Chabad emissaries doing amazing work all over the world. Please consider dedicating an episode. You can email us at podcast at lubavic.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast at lubavic.com. You can also let us know how we're doing and about the schluchem you think we should consider for upcoming episodes. Please rate and review lamplighters to make it easier for other podcast listeners to find us. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.

SPEAKER_06 2:28

I grew up in Cote-Saint Luke, Montreal, Canada. I'm fortunate to be a third-generation Rabbi Shliach.

SPEAKER_04 2:36

That's Yaakov Raskin, whose parents are Rabbi Mendel and Rabinid Sora Raskin, who run a Chabad house in Cote-Saint-Luc, a residential suburb of Montreal. Raskin says his young life was centered around that Chabad house.

SPEAKER_06 2:54

Activities every day, excitement.

SPEAKER_04 2:57

Yaakov's grandparents, Rabbi Label and Razel Raskin, were sent to Morocco by the Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1960.

SPEAKER_06 3:05

And he pledged to give a special book to every grandchild called Sefer Hashlichis. All the Rebbe's talks about the importance of going out on the mission to bring Moshiach to be a shlich.

SPEAKER_04 3:17

Rabbi Label passed away in 2004, but Yaakov took the message to heart. Raskin studied in France, England, and New York. He did Mercos Schlichus all over the world, including in the ABC Islands of the Caribbean, Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao. He received Smicha in 2013. Mushki Raskin grew up in Crown Heights and attended Chabad schools in New York and Israel. She knew from an early age that she wanted someday to be an official Chabad Schlocha.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

So my parents were Schlochem in Panama. They were there up until before I was born. They actually were there for a few years. They left when the war broke out. It was very dangerous.

SPEAKER_04 4:06

The Wilhelms resettled in Crown Heights at the direction of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. There, Mushki's parents were totally dedicated to the Chabad community. Her father, Rabbi Zusha Wilhelm, served as Rosheshiva at Masivda Ohale Torah. Her mother, Esther, is still a principal at Base Rivka.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

I grew up with that very strong connection and I always knew that I wanted that.

SPEAKER_04 4:31

When Mushki began dating for marriage, her parents had a question.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Mushki, are we looking for somebody that's going out on Shlochas or you're staying pa? And it was always the Shlochas answer.

SPEAKER_04 4:47

Mushki met Yaakov Raskin in early 2013. While they were dating, Yaakov had a question of his own. Mushki passed the Willingness to Travel Far Test, and the Raskins were married in the summer of 2013. Shortly after their marriage, the Raskins began looking for a place to establish a Chabad presence. Rabbi Mendel Zarchi, the head shliach of the Caribbean, suggested Jamaica. So Raskin reached out to the Bachram who visited Jamaica the year before to get the list they'd compiled of the 80 or so Jews known to live there.

SPEAKER_06 5:29

And he started going through the list, calling the people, say, by the way, maybe you guys would be interested in a chabat house. They all said, Of course, we would love one. And the next step was to get down to Jamaica to check it out in person.

SPEAKER_04 5:44

And so in the spring of 2014, the Raskins left for the island.

SPEAKER_06 5:49

We were living on Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights. So from Kingston Avenue, we flew to Kingston, Jamaica. We're gonna check out Jamaica, scout out the island to see if it's possible to open a chabatos over here.

SPEAKER_04 6:01

They rented a car and spent the first week of their exploratory trip trying to avoid the potholes and stray goats on roads in and around Kingston.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

And as soon as we got on those roads, like, oh my, thank God we know where that spear tire is.

SPEAKER_04 6:17

So you actually got a flat tire?

SPEAKER_01 6:20

We did.

SPEAKER_04 6:21

But it was well worth it. The Raskins met scores of people on their list.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Giving them a Shahmanis and talking to them about Purim, giving them something in connection to an upcoming Yamtif, and we rented an Airbnb in Kingston, and we actually had a beautiful Shabbos meal then. Did not expect the amount of people that would come.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

Which was over 20. And then they noticed some interesting details about one person on their list.

SPEAKER_06 6:50

His name was Mr. Raymond Dawick of Blessed Memory. The only Jew that had said on the list that he's kosher.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

So that was intriguing. Like, oh wow, somebody on the island keeps kosher.

SPEAKER_04 7:00

The Raskins wanted to visit Raymond, but he was in the hospital.

SPEAKER_06 7:04

We find that the room, a knock on the door, and as this lady opens the door, she gives a shout.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Huh? Kani's brother? What are you doing here in Jamaica?

SPEAKER_04 7:16

I'm like, wait, who's this? It was Debbie Flax. She and her husband Michael are supporters of international chabad houses. Raskin had met the Flax while visiting his sister, Khani Madasov, the Schlucha in Monaco.

SPEAKER_06 7:32

And I and I go, Mrs. Flax, what are you doing here? She says, Raymond is my uncle. And since he got ill, we came to be by his bedside.

SPEAKER_04 7:42

Rabbi Raskin helped Raymond wrap Tefillin and say the Shmah, and then the Flax asked him why the Raskins were there.

SPEAKER_06 7:50

We're thinking maybe we're gonna open a Chabad in Jamaica, we're not sure. And yeah, they shared to us. Oh my gosh, that would be amazing. Raymond would always love a Chabad house here.

SPEAKER_04 8:00

But the Raskins weren't yet sure that Jamaica was their place. They visited Montego Bay, Mandeville, and Ochoros. The Raskins returned to New York and weighed their different possibilities in Jamaica, the U.S., and Canada. They wanted clarity, so they made a trip to the oil to write a letter to the Rebbe. What happened next still astonishes them.

SPEAKER_06 8:24

And we wrote in the letter that we should have a clear answer from Hashem. And just like the Rebbe guided my grandfather to go to Morocco and my father to go to Montreal, so too, he should take us like a father holds a son by the hand, and we should merit to a clear answer which location should be our flickers for life.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

And just then, while the Raskins were still at the oil, Rabbi Raskin got an email from the Flax that said, Raymond unfortunately passed away. We're bringing his body to Israel. Would you come to the Leviath?

SPEAKER_04 9:00

Raskin had about 24 hours for that trip and little time to plan for it, but he went.

SPEAKER_06 9:23

He asks me, Rabbi Raskin, with his nice English accent. So what's going on? Are you gonna open Chabad in Jamaica or not? I said, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

And the next thing he said was, it was Raymond's dream to have Chabad in Jamaica.

SPEAKER_06 9:43

He says, listen to me. If you open Chabad in Jamaica, I'm giving you my brother's house to start off in, and we're gonna be your first supporters. Sunday, we asked a blessing for a clear answer. Wednesday night, we have a location to start off in and our first support. As soon as I called Rabbe Zarki and I told him the news, he said, Mazleton, we have the new Sheliak. And here we are.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

We always say, because of the story that we did not choose Jamaica, Jamaica chose us.

SPEAKER_04 10:24

Mushki and Yakov Raskin returned to Jamaica in the summer of 2014. Their only possessions were two suitcases, two boxes of kosher food, and one safer Torah. They stayed the first six weeks in Kingston at Raymond's brother's house as promised. They met local families and organized activities, meals, and a summer camp program for eight children.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Which was like, wow, like we just said hi to these people, and all of a sudden we're having a beautiful camp.

SPEAKER_04 10:54

Things were going well in Kingston, but they were very intrigued by the possibilities in Montego Bay, a city in northwest Jamaica.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

And we started meeting the people there. A lot of tourists come through the doors, and we realized that the Tigo Bay is probably the place that we should set up a permanent place.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

So the Raskins rented a townhouse in Montego Bay and prepared for the 2014 high holidays. They had good turnouts for Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur on the first night of Sukkos in their new community.

SPEAKER_06 11:28

My wife prepared a whole meal and nobody showed up. I remember dancing with the security guard of the complex.

SPEAKER_04 11:37

But during Cholomoid, the Raskins went out looking for Jews who wanted to observe the mitzvah of Lulov. They knocked on the door of one man.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

It was his first time ever saying the blessing on the low of an ester eight. He comes outside and he starts to shake and he bursts out in tears. And that really left a very, very strong impact on me and I'm sure my husband as well.

SPEAKER_04 12:04

Word spread about the Raskin's presence in Montego Bay. Their Hanukkah in the Sand menorah lighting event attracted nearly 100 people that first year. They held chabatons in local hotels that drew hundreds, and they made takeout available for those who wanted to keep kosher. Their community of residents was growing, but by 2017, the Raskins realized they needed a better way to reach tourists.

SPEAKER_06 12:32

And we felt we're missing a big opportunity of people coming off cruise ships. People are not able to find us easily. So we started looking where we can find a little storefront where people can find us.

SPEAKER_04 12:44

The idea was to open an informal welcome center with a kosher restaurant. One day they were driving down Jimmy Cliff Boulevard, named for the famous Jamaican singer and songwriter, and a small retail space caught Mushki's eye.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

There was an existing ice cream store there, and I'm like, this is what we need. A nice weird little lot, not like anything grand, and this would be perfect.

SPEAKER_04 13:09

It was on the main drag, visible to more than a million tourists per year, the perfect spot to declare to all of them that there was a chabad on the island. A few days later, the commercial real estate agency they had been in touch with called to say that the shop was closing down. In no time, they had signed a lease and opened kosher hotspot.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

People could just like come in, chill.

SPEAKER_06 13:34

You want to order falafel great, kosher food, falafel, fish and chips, smoothies, people wrapped to fill in for the first time in their life. So we call it T-O-B, fill-in on the beach. And nine years later, thousands of people on vacation walked through the kosher hotspot.

SPEAKER_04 14:02

And again, there was Hushka Pratis. For Pesach of 2019, Mushki's parents, Rabbi Zusha and Esther Wilhelm, came from New York as they sometimes did for holidays. They had noticed a beautiful nearby villa for sale.

SPEAKER_06 14:20

But it was totally out of our budget. We didn't even think we'd be able to get it.

SPEAKER_04 14:24

But Zusha Wilhelm had other ideas.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

And he took a walk on one of the Yemtif days and he saw a for sale sign at one of these houses. And he came back and he said, Mushkiangle, like this house is great. We should look into it.

SPEAKER_06 14:39

And uh my father-in-law, the big Russia Shiva, he calls the number up during cola mode and uh starts negotiating with them. He calls me up, he says he should check it out.

SPEAKER_04 14:49

They submitted an offer and it was accepted. Hundreds of supporters helped them raise the down payment, and they began transforming the villa into a permanent Chabad house. But Chabad of Jamaica also needed a mikveh.

SPEAKER_06 15:04

One day I sent out a message to 2,000 people on WhatsApp. We started the mikveh in Jamaica. We didn't have the plans of everything yet, but like we decided we're gonna take the first step, make the pit at everything, so we show something concrete, not just theory.

SPEAKER_04 15:21

And then something amazing happened. Rabbi Yaakov Raskin heard from Michael Flax after a seven-year absence.

SPEAKER_06 15:29

He sent me a message. I said a few weeks is three weeks, put it on my calendar. Oh my God, that is the day of his uncle's yard site.

SPEAKER_04 15:39

Remember that the flax uncle was Raymond. On that very day, Rabbi Raskin called the Flax.

SPEAKER_06 15:47

Says, tell me, how much is it for the Mekvah? And what do you need to finish the Chabad house?

SPEAKER_04 15:54

After the quiet months of COVID and more than three and a half years of construction and lots of other challenges, what had once seemed like a distant dream finally became a reality. In late December 2022, on the eighth day of Hanukkah, Jamaica's Jewish community celebrated with the Raskins the opening of a deluxe new Chabad house dedicated in memory of Rabbi Zusha Wilhelm, who passed away in 2022, and the Rose Dawek Mikvah. Now this would seem to be the perfect storybook ending, but in October 2025, disaster.

SPEAKER_05 16:35

Breaking news this morning, Hurricane Melissa, now a category five storm, the latest advisory coming in from the National Hurricane Center.

SPEAKER_04 16:43

Melissa approached the Caribbean as a Category 1 hurricane, but by the time it made landfall in Jamaica, it was Category 5. Melissa sustained winds of nearly 200 miles per hour, took lives, and crushed Jamaican infrastructure as it made its slow crawl across the islands. The Raskins had secured their windows with plywood barriers and had placed sandbags all around the house to keep water out. Because the mikvah had no exterior windows or doors.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

And we stayed the upstairs floor of the Chabad house, which is like our apartment area. And it started getting really heavy. My kids were coloring and everything was fine up until the main glass doors of our upstairs living area flew in. The wind was very strong. My husband quickly took all our bed frames out of all the bedrooms and the couches and started like pushing it against those glass doors, or else we would be completely flooded. The sounds that we were hearing from outside were unimaginable. Things were flying off the roof, banging sounds like boom, boom, and then boom. And like you've never heard such sounds. It was about five hours and then it stopped.

SPEAKER_03 18:47

That's Mark Rosenblum.

SPEAKER_04 18:49

He's head of school at Hillel Academy, an international school located in Kingston. Mark is a regular at Chabad of Jamaica events and very fond of the Raskins. So after confirming that his school had been largely unaffected by the hurricane, Mark's thoughts turned to them.

SPEAKER_03 19:07

Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi, Muski, Muski, Muski, children. And I'm just super anxious.

SPEAKER_04 19:16

Mark couldn't communicate directly with the Raskins because of outages. So he picked up a friend and they headed out on the highway towards Montego Bay, a two and a half hour drive to the northwest on a normal day. But as night fell, they began to witness scenes of devastation.

SPEAKER_03 19:34

Big yacht in the middle of the highway, multi-ton cement poles across the road, like sticks, spaghetti of wires live everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 19:45

They carefully wove through the obstacles until hours later they arrived in Montego Bay. They walked with their flashlights up the muddy road to the Chabad house.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

The car in the driveway has a big air conditioning unit that flew off the roof. Nothing left on the roof. There was a gazebo. Yeah, that's gone. He didn't even know where it was.

SPEAKER_04 20:06

Mark found the Raskins and their children in the pitch black, looking out over the sea. They were shaken, but fine.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

And we all are at the banister on the patio where we hold all those Shabbats, looking out in the dark, and I don't even notice that the Rabbitson went inside somewhere. And she comes back with food! I said, Muski, where did you even get that? She said, I have reserves of things. I was like, really? And she's like, Well, it's right here, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 20:37

Not all had been so fortunate. Melissa was the strongest recorded storm ever to strike Jamaica. 95 people lost their lives in the hurricane, and hundreds more were injured. Damages totaled over 12 billion US dollars. It was presumed it would take months, even years, to recover.

SPEAKER_06 20:58

But Jamaican people are resilient. We know how to rebuild. And as the previous Rabbi said, our bodies are in Gaulus, but to the Shabbat, it could hit our buildings and our physical needs. We can't hit our spirits.

SPEAKER_04 21:12

So the Raskins began reaching out to Jamaicans from all walks of life to help them recover. They began with Mark Rosenblum, who jumped in his Jeep the next day to distribute water to anyone he could find.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

I became the rabbi's hands, and I wasn't the only one.

SPEAKER_04 21:29

In conjunction with several relief agencies, the Raskins brought in supplies.

SPEAKER_06 21:34

We brought in five containers and we helped thousands of people right away with food and drink and tarps and clothes and shoes, anything they needed.

SPEAKER_04 21:45

The Raskins opened up what was left of their Chabad house.

SPEAKER_06 21:48

So we were able to become a shelter. We had Jews, non-Jews giving out food, generators. Our first Friday night after the hurricane, we had a local person who came to us. Rabbi, I didn't eat for three days. And in the darkness, we sat our first Friday night. We had you know canned food and I was able to put up some rice, so we had a little hot food. She was just crying and just saying thank you. We turned over the kosher hotspot, and over there we were giving out meals to anybody who needed for two months.

SPEAKER_04 22:19

Chabad of Jamaica even partnered with sponsors to fund two full-time social workers who'll be on call until January of 2027.

SPEAKER_06 22:29

Going to local schools, talking to children to take care of their mental health. Our focus is to get people back on their feet.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

So I happen to be in Montreal when the hurricane hit.

SPEAKER_04 22:41

That's Sybil Barenholz. She's a seasonal resident who has a home in Hanover Parish on Jamaica's far western tip. She met the Raskins shortly after they arrived in 2014 and says she fell in love with Shabbat dinners and with the Raskins' children. Sybil absorbed about 60,000 Canadian dollars worth of damage to her home. But that didn't stop her from joining relief efforts and even leading one very important one.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

I heard that one of my neighbors in the village had had a stroke and that he was in the hospital. And after three weeks, when they brought him home, I would go visit him every morning and bring him a porridge or a homemade vegetarian soup, and he would cry to me, you know, grown man 49 and cry to me and tell me uh he can't live like this, he can't have his sons taken care of him, they go to work all day.

SPEAKER_04 23:34

The man lives in a small shack in the mountains above Montego Bay. Rabbi Raskin had just received an emergency shipment of wheelchairs, so he and Sybil delivered one of them to his door and had it assembled there in his home.

SPEAKER_06 23:50

So we're we're happy to present you this uh wheelchair. Thanks, Allah.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

And he was so thankful and grateful. Then he got strong enough to get into that wheelchair and just roll himself to the door where he could see outside.

SPEAKER_04 24:13

Rabbi Yaakov Raskin says his Chabad house is now 90% rebuilt.

SPEAKER_06 24:19

And uh we're we're full of gratitude to the Ibishther that we're here to tell a story.

SPEAKER_04 24:23

Now, focus is turning from hurricane relief toward the expansion of programs for the island's approximately 500 resident Jews and the roughly 25,000 Jewish tourists they meet most years. The Raskins hosts Shabbos meals for hundreds of tourists and locals every year. There's also a weekly barbecue with kosher jerk chicken and other island delicacies. And Rabbi gives a weekly Torah class in Kingston, where he hopes to establish a full-time presence. And they're distributing hundreds of arc boxes all around Jamaica and also at Kosher Hotspot, which they've rebranded as the Ark Center.

SPEAKER_06 25:05

This ARK box is a Tedaka box that stands for three words, acts of routine kindness. My dream is one day that every single Jamaican should have this charity box. They should think about doing acts of goodness and kindness to make the world a better place. And uh we're so humbled and honored to be the Rebbe's ambassadors, and we wish we can do more and more and more to bring the Shia closer through another act of kindness.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

That's what allows us to continue and go strong.

SPEAKER_04 25:47

I'm Gary Wallach. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters, stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast at lubavic.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast at L U B A V I T C H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine, or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit Lubavitch.com slash subscribe. Lamp Lighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.