HURRICANE KATRINA HITNew Orleans and the Gulf Coaston the morning of August 29,2005, devastating the city andcreating hundreds of thousands

of stories of tragedy, destruction, survival andresilience.

Neither the violent hurricane nor the U.S.government’s inept and inadequate response tothe crisis discriminated according to race,wealth, or religion. In August 2006, just oneyear after the event, the Jewish Women’sArchive (JWA), a women’s history archivelocated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and theGoldring/Woldenberg Institute of SouthernJewish Life, located in Jackson, Mississippi,initiated Katrina’s Jewish Voices (KJV), an oralhistory project dedicated to telling the stories ofJewish lives affected by the disaster.

By December 2007, KJV had conducted 85interviews on digital video with members ofthe Jewish communities of New Orleans, theGulf Coast and Baton Rouge, and collecteddigital artifacts in an online archive, thusamassing a comprehensive and diverse collec-tion of stories about the Jewish community’sexperiences of Katrina.

But is there a uniquely “Jewish experience”of Katrina? “A city is made up of differentcommunities, and the hurricane did not dis-criminate among them,” Gail Twersky-Reimer,director of the JWA, tells The JerusalemReport. “So we should know how each com-munity fared, for better or worse.Understanding how the Jewish communityresponded to itself and to the needs of otherstells us an important story about the Jewishcommunity in New Orleans and in America,and about the meaning of community inAmerica in general.”

New Orleans is home to one of America’soldest Jewish communities. The first Jewishsettler came to New Orleans in 1757, and thefirst Jewish congregation was chartered in1828. Before Katrina, New Orleans had athriving Jewish community of some 11,000and served as the hub of regional Jewish life.

“The interviews conducted by KJV point tothe ways that Jews understood their own livesand the life of this important Jewish communi-ty,” says Twersky-Reimer.

IN A COMPREHENSIVE, UNPUBLISH-ed paper, based on a public lecture present-ed in 2007 and made available to The

Report, Michigan University Prof. of SocialWork Karla Goldman writes: “These Jewish

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in the U.S. and the “best place to weather therecession.” Ad campaigns have targetedmainly the Northeast seaboard and Midweststates, not necessarily the South or West.

“We’re not going to people who arehappy and content to get them to come here.So we went to places like Cleveland, Ohioand other dying Jewish communities andsaid to them, ‘Why not come here?’And wewill give you a sweetener if you do,’” Weilsays.

According to the Federation, some 800Jewish newcomers have moved to the city.Of these, some 250 have taken advantage ofthe help, which includes cash grants, mov-ing expenses and up to $15,000 in interest-free housing or business loans, as well asfree membership in a synagogue and theJewish Community Center.

Weil says that the Federation has alsoreceived inquiries from around the world,including from Morocco, Ukraine and evenIsrael. But he is quick to add it does not inany way want to compete with the JewishAgency and Zionism by drawing awaypotential immigrants to Israel. “We givethem the cold shoulder and ask them to con-sider aliya instead. We don’t want to com-pete with Israel,” he says.

They are also targeting the 3,000 plusJewish students who study at the IvyLeague Tulane University in Uptown NewOrleans, where Jews make up some one-quarter of the graduate student body. TheFederation has set a target of some 50 grad-uates each year who are also eligible forsimilar benefits.

Kevin Falik, the new youth director at theUptown Jewish Community Center, said hehas taken advantage of the incentives andreceived moving expenses and help withleasing an apartment after moving to NewOrleans from Houston, Texas. “This is a fan-tastic program,” Falik says, and particularlypraised the efforts made to arrange meetingswith other young Jewish adults.

“I was not exactly here to rehabilitate thecity at first,” Falik says. “But in my positionas teen director, I feel I have rehabilitated agroup of people who are always over-looked.” He boasts that membership in thelocal B’nai B’rith Youth Organization hasalmost tripled in the four months he has beenworking in New Orleans.

“The Newcomers’ Program and the com-fort of moving to a place with people who areso welcoming makes New Orleans a place Iwould tell Jews to move to,” Falik says. •

Katrina’sJewish StoryKatrina’s Jewish Voices, an oral history project, aims attelling the stories of how Jewish lives were affected by the hurricane

Eetta Prince-Gibson

KARLA GOLDMAN: This strangeAmerican Jewish community may indeedhave a logic of its own’

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COVER STORY

voices of Katrina demonstrate the surprisingways in which so many New Orleans Jewsexperienced the storm and its aftermath fromwithin the context of Jewish identity, commu-nity, and memory.”

Not surprisingly, much of the media atten-tion during the Katrina crisis, and in its after-math, focused on New Orleans’ poor, needyand largely African American community.Jayne K. Guberman, director of KJV for theJWA, acknowledges that the Jewish communi-ty of New Orleans was, in contrast, a privilegedcommunity in terms of status, education andpersonal and community social and financialresources (including insurance to cover thelosses).

“Privileged individuals and families, too,had to cope with loss, displacement and at leasttemporary homelessness,” Guberman tells TheReport. “These interviews show that even priv-ileged lives are fragile, and they point to theimpact of the loss of our most essential con-nections.”

Furthermore, she notes, the massiveresponse by Jewish organizations and individ-uals demonstrates how America’s well-orga-nized Jewish community, with its extensivenetworks and established outreach connec-

tions, was able to make a real difference tofamilies, individuals and communities.

The National Disaster Committee of theUnited Jewish Communities coordinated anddistributed some $28 million in aid, quicklyand efficiently, to Jewish and non-Jewish com-munities – in sharp contrast to the governmentagencies’ inability to mobilize the resourcesostensibly at their disposal.

The timing of the interviews was particular-ly important, says Guberman. “We interviewedmost people about a year after the event. On theone hand, this was close enough to the eventfor the interviewees to still feel the impact in avery emotional, almost visceral way. On theother hand, this year also gave them timeenough to gain an initial sense of perspective,to reflect on the communal as well as the indi-vidual experience, providing us with valuableinsights and conclusions.”

THE INTERVIEWS REVEAL THATJews in New Orleans attempted tounderstand the storm and its destruction

within a Jewish framework, says Guberman. “People suddenly realized that they had no

idea what would be left of everything theyowned, no certainty about their future, no

access to their financial resources and, for peri-ods of time, no idea where many of the impor-tant people in their lives were. And while manyof them did have resources – a place to go, aprofession and skills they could use in theirnew community – they were comforted by asense of Jewish belonging and community.”

The importance of community was felt bothin its disruption and in its presence. “The dis-orientation of not knowing where people wereand gratitude for the connections made possi-ble by technology were recurring themes inthese narratives,” writes Prof. Goldman, who isalso director of the university’s JewishCommunal Leadership program. Indeed, oneof the first projects initiated by the organizedJewish community was to gather informationand create a data bank simply of locations, con-tacts and e-mail addresses.

“There may be no other oral history projectwhere the phrase ‘God bless computers’appears as often,” she quips. Not surprisingly,Goldman continues, “Many Jewish survivorsof Katrina turned to Jewish historical frame-works to help give meaning to their experience.In the terrible experience of displacement anduncertainty about where loved ones might havegone, many found a resonance with past histor-ical experience.”

True, she acknowledges, “From a historicalperspective, any suffering on the part ofAmerican Jews can seem almost trivial, over-

Judge Miriam Walzer, who survivedas a girl in Nazi Germany

“What you learn is that it’s a reallyequal opportunity shocker for every-body. The phones don’t work, theradios don’t work, you don’t havemoney, you don’t have identification,you don’t have anything to wear, youdon’t have a house, your doctors aregone, your friends are gone, the city isin chaos, and you’ve gone through itonce before, because when the war wasover my hometown looked like the citynow does. I still remember that.Bridges destroyed. Things just stickingout, things smoldering. When I was achild. How often do you have to dothis? How often do you have to seethis?”

Excerpts from an interview conductedfor Katrina’s Jewish Voices

JAYNE GUBERMAN:Having to cope with loss and displacement

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powered by the long and extreme history ofJewish persecutions elsewhere, culminating inthe Holocaust,” but for many of Katrina’sJewish victims, “Jewishness turned out to offernot only communal support and personalstrength, but also a lens through which toprocess an otherwise alien experience.

“Unlike Europeans, with their experience ofwar, or Israelis, with their intimacy with uncer-tainty, most middle-class Americans have nofirsthand experience with massive loss and dis-placement. Most American Jews, reinforced byaffluence and numerous supportive institu-tions, have taken their security in America forgranted.”

“There was also a very practical Jewishcomponent to the way that many New OrleansJews navigated the storm’s aftermath,”Goldman writes. “What was so striking afterKatrina was that whatever one’s level of iden-tification or affiliation and whatever the loca-tion or nature of the receiving community, Jewsfound that if they sought assistance as Jews(and often even if they didn’t), there was aJewish community there eager, ready, and pre-pared to assist them.

“Moreover, the local Jewish communities

responded to the challenges they confrontednot just in an immediate, reactive way, but withstrategic and thoughtful planning that enabledthem to draw upon the strengths they had beenbuilding over a century of philanthropic com-munal effort. In the midst of so many govern-mental and organizational failures, the Jewishcommunity leadership quickly identified short,medium, and long-term goals and set out toreach them.”

First to be addressed were the immediateneeds, and the Jewish organizations quicklydecided to provide every Jewish individualaffected by Katrina with a $700 cash payment– crucial for people who had fled the risingwaters with little more than the clothes theywere wearing, and had no access to their bankaccounts or to credit.

After a lifetime of comfort and prosperity,many in the community were uncomfortable asthey were, of necessity, turned into the recipi-ents of charity. Goldman writes that “Jews hadto learn that the full meaning of tzedaka [char-ity] entailed not just a willingness to give char-ity but the ability, when needed, to accept it.”

MUCH OF THE JEWISH COM-munal response was directed towardrescue and relief efforts for non-

Jewish residents and communities of the GulfCoast. According to Guberman, these includedthe direct rescue of stranded individuals, thedistribution of gift cards so families could pur-chase basic necessities, millions of dollars infinancial assistance to smaller Gulf Coast com-munities and projects in the area, and thou-sands of hours put in by Jewish volunteersfrom around the country.

Goldman writes that the locus of immediateJewish relief work was the nearby Baton RougeJewish community, “which threw all its energyand resources into bringing Jews and otherssafely out of New Orleans. A coordinated effortbetween the city’s Jewish community and thesheriff of East Baton Rouge resulted in a seriesof increasingly dangerous rescue missions.

“The rescuers were able to gain entry intoNew Orleans because they came with a list ofnames and addresses of missing persons.People of all backgrounds were brought out,cared for, sheltered, helped to find new homesfor the short or long term, and provided with transportation by the Jewishcommunity.”

The Jewish community was unquestioning-ly responsive to the needs – and many Jewsfrom Baton Rouge set off on repeated rescuetrips to New Orleans wearing bulletproof vests

to protect them from the lawlessness and vio-lence in the flooded city.

In conclusion, Goldman writes: “Katrinashowed the rest of us that this strange AmericanJewish community, with its scandalous tastefor shellfish and its full investment in a cityfrom whose central rituals (like Mardi Gras) ithas long been excluded, may indeed have alogic of its own.” •For more information on Katrina’s JewishVoices, visit: http://katrina.jwa.org/For more information on the Jewish Women’sArchive, visit: http://jwa.org

Lainie Breaux, whose newborn sonwas transferred from a local hospitalto an unknown destination and locat-ed only after three days

“And remember we’re the luckyones. That’s what we have to remember.We were the first good news, our storywas the first good news to come out ofNew Orleans.

“Maybe also turning 40 has mademe become more aware of communityin general. It’s been an evolution,because before you’re married andwhen you’re young, you don’t necessar-ily connect to the community. You knowyou’re Jewish, you know you belong tothe community, but you may or may notreally have anything to do with it. Butthe Jewish Family Service in Dallasand the Jewish Family Service in FortWorth and the Jewish Family Service inHouston – the response that our storybrought was amazing.”

Excerpts from an interview conductedfor Katrina’s Jewish Voices

Cantor Joel Colman

“Throughout the long history of Jews,there have been significant events. Whenwe think about the Portuguese Jews 500years ago, who had to get out of Portugalwithin two days. And, of course, theHolocaust and the pogroms in Russia andparts of Poland. And you think about thesignificant events in which people losttheir community or something happenedin their community; and they came backand it wasn’t the same. This is one of thoseevents, it truly is.”

Ann Levy, Holocaust survivor

“The biggest thing that made animpression on me is when we came backto New Orleans and we were told that theJewish community from all over theUnited States had collected money andsent it to the Jewish Federation here. Andthat everybody needed to register becausethey had money for us. I had a very, veryhard time with that. Because, I guess, itbrought back memories…When we firstcame to New Orleans, we were dependenton the Jewish Federation, on the Jewishcommunity here, which helped us find anapartment and furniture and all of thethings that you need when you’re startinga new life. My husband said, ‘We’re goingto register at the Jewish Federation forthe $750 that everybody was going toreceive.’And I said, ‘I can’t do that. I don’twant to do that. But even the banksweren’t working right and so I said, ‘OK.’And then I found out that everybody did,so I guess that was OK.”

Excerpts from an interview conductedfor Katrina’s Jewish Voices