Imagine six to ten feet of water sitting between your house and your neighbor’s house. Now imagine that water filling your whole neighborhood, your whole city, county, and then an area roughly the size of seven Manhattans. Imagine losing everything you own. Imagine being displaced amidst the chaos that is FEMA. Imagine coming home a month after the storm only to find a slab that used to be the floor of your home. This is the unfathomable reality of New Orleans.
Words can’t adequately describe the destruction. Pictures do a fairly good job of showing the damage. Video is slightly better. But you really have to see it in person to understand the magnitude of the destruction — miles and miles of devastation in every direction.
I have trouble believing that in the year since I was last in New Orleans, little has changed in the Lakeview neighborhood, the site of the 17th street canal levee breech, and in the Lower Ninth Ward, which still resembles a war zone. The water lines on every building are a constant reminder of just how bad the flooding was and how long it lasted.
Office buildings and hospitals in the downtown area are still unoccupied and boarded up. Only about half of the public schools are back up and running, and enrollment is down almost 60 percent for this school year.
Almost all of the homes I saw were in the same condition they were in a year ago. In fact, there is little difference in the pictures I took last year from the ones I took this year. The main difference is the lack of debris in the streets. They are now passable, but in horrible condition. Most of the debris that was in the yards a year ago is still there, as are the ubiquitous FEMA trailers.
It was depressing to see what used to be someone’s home, someone’s whole life swept away. Imagine what you would lose if you lost your whole house. It was uplifting to see individuals who were able to rebuild, but whole communities need to come back to make this work. Occasionally there was a house with a “we’re coming back” sign in front of their empty or destroyed lot. But so much more needs to be done to bring New Orleans back.
The major problem is that about 50 percent of New Orleans’ pre-Katrina population will never return (only 40 percent have returned thus far). There is nothing encouraging them to come home. A significant number of businesses have gone out, so there is a shortage of jobs for people to return to. Few will want to return to the uncertainty of being able to earn a living, especially with families to support.
Most do not have the kind of money required to fix their homes, and they have problems accessing government funds. For example, I spoke with one cabdriver who needed $4,000 to fix his roof, but FEMA would only offer him the use of a trailer worth $60,000. Others are in constant fights with insurance and mortgage companies. Another factor is that people do not want to be the only ones to return to their neighborhoods. Too often, I saw only one house that had been rebuilt in a neighborhood. For those whose homes did not flood completely, contending with mold and toxic flood waters are very serious issues.
Organizations like Nechama, the Jewish Response to Disaster, provide free rebuilding help. Nechama’s mission is to coordinate volunteers to help those who cannot afford to rebuild.. They do not completely rebuild a house, but they gut it in order to help the homeowner with at least one step of the process. They also work with other interfaith groups to bring aid to the victims of natural disasters. Nechama has sent several groups on deployment to New Orleans.
The Jewish Community Center Association (JCCA) partnered with Nechama on my first day in New Orleans to help completely gut a YWCA battered women’s and children’s center. The project had been started over the summer, but halted when they thought they could never reopen their doors. We helped them get one step closer to reopening.
The conditions in the building were horrible. There was a hole in the roof, everything was waterlogged, food was still in the pantry, mold was everywhere, and even with a breathing mask the stench was overwhelming.
The Jewish community was in no way immune from the devastation in New Orleans. Prior to Katrina, there were approximately 10,000 Jews in the city, many of whom lived in the Lakeview area. They estimate that only 6,500 returned.
The interior of the orthodox synagogue, Beth Israel, was completely destroyed, and it will never reopen. The only things still intact are the stained glass windows. They lost half of their membership and had to bury their 7 Torahs, along with nearly 3,000 siddurim and other books. The remaining congregants now pray in the social hall of the nearby reform synagogue and are planning to move to a smaller location.
The Jewish Community Center building survived very minor damage and served as a FEMA headquarters until recently. They also lost a good portion of their membership and 30 percent of their board. They have restructured and lowered fees in hopes of attracting new members. The New Orleans Jewish Day School ran K-8 before Katrina with 85 students; now they have 25 students in two blended grades. The Federation is also rebuilding itself — this year is its first community campaign since the storm.
It is not all bad in New Orleans. The French Quarter was lucky in that it is on higher ground, therefore it did not flood. Restaurants, hotels, shops, and music are thriving and are almost back to normal. Walking around the Quarter, you don’t see or feel the devastation that you know is not far away. I happened to be there on the weekend of the NFC championship, and there was Saints spirit everywhere. The Saints were a very important unifying factor throughout this ordeal, and they were the source of a lot of positive news in the city.
A year ago, my reaction was anger and I couldn’t believe how something like this could happen. This year, it was so gratifying to have a very small part in the rebuilding. It added a totally different dimension — last year was about devastation, this year was more about resiliency in the face of the enormous obstacles that are still there. With a lot of help, New Orleans will return.
There are lots of opportunities to help, please check them out.

LIFE IN THE BIG EASY STILL FAR FROM EASY
The week of January 22nd the JCC Association held its annual Executive Directors Conference in New Orleans. Having started my career in the JCC field at the New Orleans JCC I was excited to get back for the first time since Katrina hit 18 months ago. My wife Dawn was born and raised in New Orleans. After the storm her family spent nearly 6 weeks with us in KC. We heard all of the stories of lives being changed because of this natural disaster. 6 months after the storm Dawn went to visit her family and she took a lot of pictures. It was devastating to see all the damage that took place in areas of the town that I often frequented. Some businesses were gone and boats were stacked up on the lakefront.

Because I had seen these pictures and heard the stories I believed that once I went to New Orleans 18 months later I would be able to handle or understand the scope of what took place. I have to tell you that words are still not adequate to describe the trauma that New Orleans is still feeling. On Monday, January 22nd the 65+ executives at the conference had the opportunity to take a bus tour of some of the areas that most particularly impacted the way of life for the Jewish community. Prior to Katrina the Jewish population in New Orleans was a little over 10,000. Today it stands at about 6,500. We drove through lakefront neighborhoods that we all saw on television under water where we would once have seen kids playing outside and instead seeing homes that had been gutted waiting to be renovated. Some homes had been reconstructed, while others had for sale signs. FEMA trailers are still a normal site. We passed the 17th Street canal that breeched and was the cause of so much damage. Neighborhoods around it still trying to redefine themselves. We saw people out planting trees and cleaning. Our first stop was at Beth Israel Synagogue, a modern Orthodox congregation over 100 years old. The synagogue still looks the way it did after the flood waters disappeared. Still full of mold with books and photographic history sitting in what was once a Social Hall, rotting from decay. Torahs had to be buried because they were damaged beyond repair. The congregation has been using an additional chapel of a Reform Metairie congregation. This clearly being an example of differing ideologies coming together to help each other. Beth Israel’s building is now up for sale and the congregation is looking to rebuild elsewhere as the membership is now1/3rd of its pre-Katrina size.

The highlight of our day was a trip to the local YWCA. The agency has decided they want to renovate on their current site and as a result need help gutting the building to get started. Meeting us at the site was Nechama, a Minneapolis based Jewish Response to Disaster. All 65 Execs put on masks, hard hats and gloves and went to work knocking down walls and physical infrastructure that was damaged by mold and bug infestation. By the time we finished 3 hours later, we had a pile of debris a half a block long. It occurred to me the painstaking time and work it takes to rebuild a city. 18 months later New Orleans is still trying to get it done.

My reason for writing this is that all of us that visited New Orleans decided that we need to take this experience home to the communities we live. Outside of New Orleans, this great city has been forgotten, yet Katrina is a part of the daily conversation among its residents. The Presidents State of the Union Address failed to mention New Orleans or the Gulf Coast, furthering the idea that this is a forgotten city. The good part of the trip was the fact that the spirit of the people is high and they believe they will rebuild and be a better city because of it. The French Quarter and the tourist and convention industry is beginning to pick up. The history of the city is still wonderful, the food is amazing and it a great place to visit. If you get the chance to go to New Orleans, do it. Go visit and have a good time or go to just help in the rebuilding. This is the greatest natural disaster of our time in this country. As Jews we have an obligation to make our world a better place to live. Do not let this great city be forgotten!

Cary J. Minkoff, MSW
Executive Director
JCC of Greater Kansas City

The following email went to Gary Lipman’s board from New Orleans and reprinted with his permission:

Today began in a way similar to our usual JCCA board meetings…an early start with a few routine committee and task force meetings followed by breakfast. But unlike any of our other meetings, the day then departed from the usual routine. The entire JCC board (about 70 people from throughout North America…mostly lay people with a few executive directors sprinkled in) boarded buses to go on a tour of New Orleans. I’m not sure what others expected, but what I saw was shocking. Nearly eighteen months following this disaster, broad swatches of this once amazing and vibrant city still lay devasted…barren…abandoned…literally rotting away. We toured the 9th ward, the breach at the 17th Street Canal, poor areas and wealthy areas. While the story told most frequently in the media immediately following the storm was the story of the poor neighborhoods and the racial and sociological divide between black and white, rich and poor, Katrina was an equal opportunity disaster. While those with some means may have had an easier time evacuating the city, the devastation destroyed many well off neighborhoods as well. Nearly 800,000 housing units were either totally or substantially destroyed by the flood waters that rose as high as 10 -15 feet in some areas. Most of these have not yet been repaired or replaced…in fact a large majority haven’t even been gutted or torn down. They just lay there, as a constant reminder of the horrors.

We drove by the homes marked on their roofs or siding with giant “X” marks…with each quadrant of the “X” indicating the date that rescue and or recovery took place, the intials of the rescue/recovery worker and with the bottom quadrant indicating how many people were found dead. As we went through block after block, all I wanted to do was pray that that bottom quadrant was marked with a zero.

We visited the orthodox shul…totally destroyed with no hope of being rebuilt. The shul president met us and talked about burying over 3,000 prayer books and six torahs nearly six months after the storm. As we walked through one partially gutted room, faded and stained pictures of the shul’s past president still hung on the moldy walls. Memorial plaques and honoree plaques were strewn on the ground…those few things that were even partially salvageable had been removed. The sanctuary sat lifeless and abandoned with pews broken apart and scattered.

And then finally we arrived at our target destination…the one full service YMCA in New Orleans. The neighborhood around the building was speckled with a few homes in the process of being rebuilt and others still showing no signs of present life or even any likely signs of future life. Here, we all filed out of our buses, met by representatives of Nechama, A Jewish Response to Disaster. Two African American women, board members of the Y, also greeted us to thank us for coming to New Orleans, to their neighborhood, and to their Y to help. Our task as a board (to be continued on Monday with the executive directors) was to totally gut the inside of this Y so that the rebuilding process can hopefully begin. This wasn’t one of those “dress in your finest and let’s paint a few walls” type of activity. This was hard physical labor…tearing out heavily molded sheet rock, ceiling tiles and grid work, studs, and carrying out not only the product of our labor, but also the abandoned contents of the building.

When we entered, tears came to my eyes as well as so many others. While the building was a damp and dark cesspool of bugs, mold, and waste deteriorating daily for nearly 1 ½ years, the contents looked like something we would find in our JCC. The early childhood wing had children’s books, toys, blocks, kids desks and chairs and much of what one would expect in a facility housing a day care program. When the storm came and the waters rose, everything was just frozen in time. It’s one thing to tear down walls…an entirely different experience to cart away the soaking, molded contents that kids had been using only days before the Hurricane struck. I’d imagine that the offices looked much like ours…as we carted away abandoned desks, computers, refrigerators, air conditioning units.

Finally, as the day began to draw to an end (we needed to get back to the hotel to prepared for Shabbos), we gathered as a board…as a community, in front of the building and planted a tree, a traditional Jewish sign of renewal, as together we all said the shehekianu. We didn’t complete the task today, and we may not complete it on Monday, but just being a part of this experience allowed all of us who preach to value, importance, and obligation to tikun olam to live it.

Will New Orleans ever recover? To some degree it has…the human spirit and desire to renew competes each and every day with the sense of hopelessness that so many must feel. But the job has barely just begun. It’s a job that doesn’t just belong to those who live here, either now or pre-Katrina. It is a job that belongs to all of us…as Americans, as Jews and as caring and compassionate human beings. While we may not ever return New Orleans to its future glory, neither can we abandon it.

I’m sorry if this seems to run on and if its grammer and spelling is off…sitting down and writing this has been as much a part of my catharsis as it has been about sharing the experience.

Shabbat Shalom to all of you…have a wonderful weekend.

Gary

When Allan, Ann Eisen, Steven Rod, and the NECHAMA staff first discussed the “Day of Service” program concept none of us understood what this event would come to mean to so many people. While we all had some idea of what could be accomplished, both in terms of performing meaningful and necessary work, and having an impact on those who would participate, none of us, myself included, could have imagined what actually happened in those few hours.

Yes, together we hauled tons (yes tons!) of debris out of the ravaged YWCA, and we felt good to be helping those who needed our help. But who would have imagined the new friendships and strengthened relationships between people and institutions that emerged from these few brief hours: JCCA and a needy YWCA, NECHAMA and JCCA, Board and Executive Leadership, old colleagues and friends united around a single purpose, and even Minneapolis and St. Paul talking to each other about working together when we all get home!

It was a very special two days, one’s that I will not soon forget. I want to thank Allan, Ann, and Steven for having the faith to put their lay and professional leadership into NECHAMA’s hands, and I want to thank our staff and volunteers, and everyone who participated over those two days for proving once again that the Jewish Community wants to be present at the scene of natural disasters, that we have the ability to help out in very tangible ways, and that in so doing, we help the larger community understand who we are, what we stand for, and what Tikkun Olam means.

We hope there are no more disasters, but if there are, we hope to see you there.

Warmest Regards to the entire JCCA family.

Jon Weiss, Director
NECHAMA - Jewish Response to Disaster

I am sitting on a plane on my way back from a draining, but inspirational week in New Orleans. We began with the JCC Association Board Retreat, followed by our annual executive seminar. Each group of close to 100 people, came together for “normal” business, study, and learning together, but “normal” stopped at that. This was an experience that has no parallels in my JCC career, as we truly “gave something of ourselves” to this very challenged city and community.

Just a year ago, then chair Ed Kaplan, his daughter Martine, and I visited the New Orleans JCC on the occasion of their first “post Katrina” board meeting. We brought with us a $250,000 check, representing gifts from the JCC family to assist them in their reopening. We realized immediately that money alone would not suffice to express our ongoing support for their efforts to rebuild. We decided at that time to forego our “usual” locations for these retreats and seminars, and to show our support by bringing our colleagues to New Orleans. I believe sincerely that the participants in both programs took away as much as they gave, as simply “spending money” was a small part of what happened.

One might think that “touring” the area some 16 months after this natural disaster would show incredible progress in rebuilding, and that “looking through the windows of the tour bus” would provide a picture of devastation and reconstruction that would suffice to move everyone beyond their expectations. But being JCC people who truly believe in repairing the world, we went even a step further. Following that tour through the area of the canal break, the Lakeview area where so much of the Jewish community had lived, seeing block after block of destroyed homes that are much the same as they were that day in August 2005, we went to Beth Israel, the orthodox synagogue that was flooded. Many of us saw the Torahs being taken out through the water, but standing in the rotted, empty synagogue moved everyone once again. Hearing that over 3000 prayer books and 7 torahs were buried in the cemetery, that the remnants of this Orthodox congregation are meeting in a Reform temple , might have been “enough.” But then each group continued on to the YWCA, which housed a day care center and women’s shelter, a sister agency that didn’t decide until two weeks ago to try to reopen. With the help of “Nechama-A Jewish Response to Disaster,” a wonderful organization from Minneapolis, we donned masks, helmets and gloves and literally “tore apart” and cleaned up this building. Our board members created a debris pile about a block long, and so large that you couldn’t see people on the other side. Each participant was seemingly drawn to “complete” the clearly unending task. Three days later, when the executive directors returned, the city had already removed the ‘pile,” and created yet another of similar size. To a person, the experience was described as “incredible,”: “once in a lifetime,” “moving,” and other words beyond everyone’s belief. I have the feeling that we have made important new friends, not just with Nechama (www.nechama.org), but with the YWCA leadership who were moved to tears by our dedication. We’ll be keeping you posted regarding the reopening of this wonderful agency and how we might help, along with the projects and critical work that Nechama provides.

It may seem trite to say in such simple words, but I am so proud to have the opportunity to lead this JCC movement. There were longtime friends and colleagues in this group, but I saw each of them in a beautiful new light, one which I don’t think any of us expected. We all say that JCC people are unique people. This past week was just one more example of how true that is. To everyone who was a part of this New Orleans experience, I express my deep gratitude for joining us and accepting our desire to “do something just a bit different.’ To those who were not there, please know that you, too, should feel very proud of what we have done and continue to do every day.

TO: JCC STAFF

Many of you know that I am in New Orleans this week attending the JCCA Executives Seminar. Having never been here before, I am “jazzed” by staying in the French Quarter which is a unique and needless to say exciting place to be. While I have been quite busy attending sessions and plenaries, I have been able to enjoy several strolls around this truly extraordinary place.

Yet to be in this relatively small area is to miss the bigger picture of what is the stark reality of this City — something I experienced first-hand yesterday.

Our group of JCC Execs boarded two buses and headed out of the French Quarter making our way through the city towards where the 17th Street Canal gave way the day after Hurricane Katrina hit.

The devastation here is so much more man-made than nature-made — New Orleans has survived major hurricanes. But it is hard to see how it will survive the breaking of the levees. All of you have seen the photos but unless you have seen the damage found in block after block after block after block after block after block after block after block after block after block after block after block….. it is truly hard to fathom the large-scale devastation of the city unless you see these blocks roll by.

We stopped to visit Congregation Beth Israel where Synagogue President Jackie Gothard met us and described in painful detail the destruction of the synagogue’s building (not its spirit or future). Some of you remember the photos of the Torah scrolls from this synagogue being rescued in a boat moving across the sanctuary in very high water. To hear Jackie share the story of the synagogue’s loss of these seven Torah scrolls was heart wrenching.

But she also shared the remarkable story of the congregation’s gift of a Torah scroll donated by a young teen in California who single-handedly raised over $18,000 to purchase it for this Orthodox congregation which is currently meeting in a Reform synagogue’s building elsewhere in the City. I find lots to think about there about how we as Jews are really all one people.

In a small lounge of the synagogue most of the photos of the Congregation’s Past Presidents still hung on the wall. Two had fallen off the wall but remarkably the frames were unbroken as they lay on the dirty, smelly floor. The lounge was a moldy remnant of what was surely a beautiful room. Yet these faces of leadership seemed to cast a protective, if melancholy, glance over the entire shell of the building.

At the conclusion of our tour, we stopped at the city’s only YWCA for about two hours to work. The Board of the Y hopes to get the building in shape to be renovated so it can re-open sometime in the future and provide desperately needed services to a lower income section of the city.

Wearing masks to protect us from the mold, we labored for the most part quietly and somewhat reverently — some of us knocking out wet pieces of drywall, others carrying out wheelbarrows and buckets full of debris and others removing file cabinets, computers etc.

The building was eerily empty and time was frozen. Katrina struck on a Monday and on the previous Friday, staff left this building fully intending to come back to work if not on that Monday, soon after it. 17 months later, the building is frozen in time quite literally. We learned that much of the Y’s staff, like so many others, evacuated New Orleans that fateful weekend and some have not returned yet. Found amid the rubble a couple days earlier (when the JCCA Board was also working there) was the framed M.S.W. diploma for the Y’s Director who now lives elsewhere — again like so many others. Someone will make sure she gets the diploma.

In one room used by the Y’s preschool, an upper section of wall remained dry and intact and was painted bright orange. Below this upper section of painted wall, the rest of the wall was gone. Still hanging on the ceiling of this nursery school room were two colorful birds made of paper (they were dry). I thought of Noah’s dove which flew away from the Ark after the storm. I so much want to hold onto the hopefulness suggested by that image.

What each of us did yesterday was clean out one corner of one room of one building among thousands of buildings. That is something I guess. Our Jewish tradition teaches that whoever saves one life, it is as if the person has saved the entire world. I suppose the same principle also applies to cleaning out one corner.

JCCs are in business to help people, create community and make the world a better place. Beyond the things I am writing about here, I have also gotten a great deal out of the many conference sessions I have and will continue to attend here in New Orleans this week.

I will be back in the office on Friday. We have a lot to do together.

L’shalom

Kevin

This past week I visited New Orleans as part of a delegation from the national Board of Directors of the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America.

We toured many of the devastated areas; saw some of the actual levee breaches; met with current residents of New Orleans who were displaced by Katrina and saw how the city is coping with the huge disaster that occurred over a year ago. We were also privileged to join a workforce to help rebuild a local YWCA battered women’s and children’s shelter.

We went into many different neighborhoods – many that were not shown on national TV – where the middle and upper class population resided. I say resided because this in past tense. Blocks and blocks, complete neighborhoods stand vacant with broken windows. You can see water marks on the sides of the buildings indicating where the water settled and sat and big “X”s chalked on the fronts with coding that explained if the home was condemned, why (toxic water), and whether anyone deceased was found inside.

Some of the homes had FEMA trailers in front of them where the homeowners were living while they were repairing their homes. Some had “For Sale” signs. Most were dark and barren.

Every so often, we passed a home with a sign that said “Coming Home”, where some hardy souls had moved back into their home.
The scary part is that they could be the only occupied home on a street – and at night, the streets are very dark and dangerous.

For those brave families who returned, the infrastructure is still not there. Streets have potholes the size of refrigerators; water pressure is lacking and electricity is spotty. Many have no choice since their mortgages will not be forgiven by the lenders and home values have plummeted, making the real estate almost valueless – who knows if they will ever go up again.

We visited what was left of a synagogue very near one of the levee breaches, passing a rusted boat laying on it’s side in the middle of the street on the way; seeing empty concrete footings where many of the homes in that area were just wiped off their foundations. This was the Shul that was featured on the news with the photos of the rabbi wading in the water to retreive the torah scrolls.

The only things left in the building beside mold and debris, are the stained glass windows which miraculously survived. The only things they were able to save were the brass memorial plaques and candelabras. The ruined Torah scrolls, prayer books and machzerim were all buried in the cemetery. Will they rebuild the Shul? Probably not. The number of temple members that have come back to New Orleans is only half of the original membership – and that congregation will not be able to survive in it’s former home.

The Jewish population of 10,000 has shrunk to 6,500. The current president of the New Orleans JCC told us her story – the evacuation, her daughter’s Bat Mitzvah in the “diaspora” without the friends she grew up with; coming back to her home to see the destruction; her resolve to stay and rebuild. My heart goes out to her and her family. I know they will never be the same.

We participated in a work crew at the YWCA. We wore hard hats, masks and work gloves and were assigned to different foremen, also volunteers, from a disaster response group called Nehama, who divided us up and told us what to do.

What was left of the “Y” was dark inside; water was dripping from the ceilings; there was exposed insulation from the rotted drywall; there were roaches. The empty building was filled with mud and debris; broken glass and broken dreams.

Along with my friend Yael, I assisted in cleaning what was once a food pantry in the Y’s kitchen. We threw out rusted cans, moldy paper plates, broken food processors and catering equipment, and ruined snacks. I was brought to tears (yet again) when I discovered an unbroken box of plastic Skippy peanut butter jars under the rubble – they were so normal in such an abnormal place – the blue on the label was bright against the grayness.

We filled up several wheel barrows and dozens of heavy plastic bags and dragged them to the curb where the huge mountain of debris grew and grew. When it was time to stop, our group felt like we really accomplished something, albeit a small, small part of the renewal of New Orleans.

In Jewish tradition, as we left the building, we planted a tree and said a Shehechianu.

Dale Filhaber

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