Teaneck was in mourning this week for Ovadia Mussaffi and Lawrence Krause, killed by a falling tree during Saturday night’s nor’easter as they walked home from shul after Shabbat.

Teaneck was in mourning this week for Ovadia Mussaffi and Lawrence Krause, killed by a falling tree during Saturday night’s nor’easter as they walked home from shul after Shabbat.

As mourners gathered in the men’s homes for shiva this week, friends and family described both as friendly, sweet, and generous. Mussaffi, 54, is survived by his wife, Susan, and their four children. Krause, 49, is survived by his wife, Zahava, and six children, including a six-week-old daughter.

Born in Israel to Iraqi parents, Mussaffi served in the Israel Air Force. After the death of his parents he began to become more religiously observant. Coming to Teaneck more than 20 years ago, he owned Italian Connection, a clothing store in New York. For the past few years he was president of Cong. Shaarei Orah, Sephardic Congregation of Teaneck, where his loss appeared to be felt most by those he was close to.

Rabbi David Fine, religious leader of Temple Israel & Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood, recalls a book he was required to read in high school.

“The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” by Thornton Wilder, tells the story of several people who die in the collapse of a suspension bridge in Peru. A friar who witnessed the event tries to make sense of it, searching for some kind of cosmic reason for the tragedy.

“People always try to find explanations,” said Fine, who spoke to The Jewish Standard by cell phone Tuesday, since the synagogue’s telephone lines were still down because of the storm. But, he added, even after reading the book, he walked away unconvinced of a cosmic cause, concluding that the bridge collapse was simply an accident.

“Tragedy is random,” he said. “That’s what makes it so terrible. We’re at the mercy of the world. We try to control it as best we can, but events like this remind us of our humility.”

Avi Lewinson, back on Tuesday from surveying the storm’s detritus at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly, strove for some rueful humor. One good thing about Saturday’s storm, the JCC’s executive director told The Jewish Standard, was that “it forces you to purge right before Pesach.”

But he quickly turned serious, noting that eight people had been killed during the punishing wind and rainstorm, two of them from Teaneck. (See related story.) He did not know the area men personally, he added, “but we’re all brothers. One Jew for another.”

The JCC was up and running on Thursday, but the epic storm required an epic cleanup.

Jewish groups across North Jersey rallied this week to provide what aid they could to the thousands left without power after this weekend’s nor’easter.

“Unfortunately, over the past several months we’ve had crises in Haiti and Chile and now we have a crisis right here in our own backyard,” said Howard Charish, executive vice president of UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey.

The federation last year created its economic crisis fund to help those hurt by the economy. Through Jewish Family Service of North Jersey in Wayne and Jewish Family Service of Bergen and North Hudson in Teaneck, UJA-NNJ has opened the fund to aid those in need after the storm. But even as people regained power and began to assess damages this week, Charish said that the full extent and how much aid is needed won’t be known for a few more weeks.

It was miraculous, said Ruth Gafni, head of Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Milford. The town was “hit hard” over the weekend, she said, trees fell near the school, and the electricity went out. But the school was unscathed.

Schechter had scheduled parent-teacher conferences fot Sunday, and they were postponed to Monday.

On Tuesday, students came to school and enjoyed hot lunches, and the staff made sure everyone had a safe place to stay. “And the kids helped each other,” she said.

“It was miraculous,” she repeated.

It’s 2 a.m. in Israel’s holiest city. Do you know where your children are?

Probably not, if your kids are learning in one of the dozens of yearlong post-high school yeshiva or seminary programs in Israel, an increasingly frequent rite of passage in many Orthodox communities in the diaspora.

While some Israel-based “gap year” programs have strict guidelines about where their students can go during their free time, as well as curfews, others give their 17- to 20-year-old charges free rein to hang out wherever they please, even if it’s in Jerusalem’s bar district way past midnight.

Elliot Prager, principal of the Moriah School in Englewood, is a firm believer in “multiple intelligences.”

“Some children are outstanding in math and sports,” he said, “while others have a real talent in the arts.”

With that in mind, two years ago Prager sought out Matt Okin, director of the Englewood-based Black Box Studios, which provides collaborative theater workshops in local schools.

Some 30 students now participate in Moriah’s middle-school theater program, which is run as an afterschool club.

“They love it,” said Prager. “The proof of their receptiveness is that kids who participated in the first half [of the year] in both years have all come back for the second half.”

Unity is the underlying theme for the formal dedication of Cong. Ahavath Torah’s two-story, 60,000-square-foot synagogue complex, planned for the first weekend in March and culminating in the shul’s annual dinner honoring Rabbi Shmuel and Barbara Goldin.

Yeshiva University President Richard Joel is scheduled to join the Englewood congregation that Shabbat as scholar in residence during services as well as at a Friday night Oneg Shabbat and Saturday afternoon seudah shlishit. A festive Shabbat morning service is to be led by Cantor Chaim Muhlbauer, with Joel delivering remarks to the community.