by Gail S. Solomon
Special to NJJN

January 29, 2009

Three-and-a-half years have passed since Hurricane Katrina roared through New Orleans. Although the plight of the city no longer makes front-page news, the devastation persists.

So when members of Westfield’s Temple Emanu-El approached Rabbi Leah Doberne-Schor about convening a Mitzvah Mission to “The Big Easy,” she seized the opportunity. Working with Volunteer Expeditions, a travel planning service, Doberne-Schor, the temple’s associate rabbi, convened a five-day mission that touched the lives of volunteers and New Orleans residents alike.

Thirty-two participants ranging in age from 12 to 70 arrived in New Orleans on Jan. 14. The group spent their days working on local projects in the hard-hit Ninth Ward and Lakeview areas of the city, while meeting with residents and community organizations in the evenings.

“This was our temple’s first mitzva mission,” said Doberne-Schor. “It was powerful to see the group bond, committed to making a difference together and planting the seeds of social justice in their lives.”

Stunned by the breadth of the damage, group members were moved by the residents’ commitment to helping each other as they worked to restore their neighborhoods.

“These are not folks who are looking for a handout,” Doberne-Schor stressed. “They are working families. They owned their own homes. They are asking for help so that they can help themselves.”

During their stay, participants attended Shabbat services at Congregation Gates of Prayer, a 152-year-old synagogue, the second oldest in the city. The mission also took them to the Touro Infirmary, founded in 1854; the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association; and the Beacon of Hope Resource Center. In the evenings, they heard such speakers as Mark Schleifstein, Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer for The Times-Picayune; Josh Lichtman, director of Avodah, the Jewish Service Corporation; New Orleans City Council president Arnie Fielkow; and a number of clergy and communal leaders.

According to Doberne-Schor, New Orleans residents are hurt more by feelings that they have been abandoned by the nation than by the Aug. 28, 2005, hurricane. The presence of the temple group, the rabbi said, gave the residents hope and a sign that they were not forgotten, and they asked the volunteers to share their stories at home.

Participants will do just that on Jan. 30 during the temple’s annual Harris Gilbert Social Justice Shabbat at 7:45 p.m. Gilbert, a longtime national leader of the Union for Reform Judaism, was a driving force behind the temple’s social action programs. He passed away in 1997.

Frustration and hope

For Erin Knopf, a senior at George Washington University, joining the mission to New Orleans was a homecoming of sorts. She was born in Shreveport, La., and had wanted to go back for years, she said. During the mission, she lent a hand fixing a roof, painted a fence, and helped with mold removal.

Knopf explained that “Katrina wasn’t the disaster. The disaster was the levee infrastructure that had been neglected for too long.”

Also on the mission was her mother, Susan, who had lived in New Orleans and worked as a pharmaceutical representative in the lower Ninth Ward.

Susan Knopf, who lives in Warren, was astounded at the devastation she saw.

“They need absolutely everything down there,” she said. “We are thinking of running a collection twice a year and literally driving a truck down with furniture, clothing, and shoes.”

Jeff and Eleanor Peris of Scotch Plains said their participation in the mission was the continuation of a long family history of social action. They were frustrated to see how little had been done in New Orleans since 2005.

“There is much more to do,” said Eleanor Peris, “but our presence made the people feel valued. It gave them dignity — although that wasn’t our intent — and we felt tremendous hope rather than despair from them.”

Dr. Peter Della Bella of Montclair was among five members of Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield who joined the mission. “It’s so easy for the misfortunes of others to become nothing more than an abstraction to us. This trip made it real to me and made me feel connected to the larger community,” he said.

“What we did was just a drop in the bucket. But doing something, however small, makes a difference.”

Della Bella’s 12-year-old son, Lucas, chose to make the trip his bar mitzva project after seeing the Spike Lee movie When the Levees Broke. “I saw the mission as an opportunity to go and help,” he said.

Stephen Goldman of Mountainside and his 12-year-old daughter, Madison, teamed up on this mission not only for Madison’s bat mitzva project but also to spend quality time together.

Right after Katrina hit, Goldman said, he drove supplies down to Mississippi. He also did hands-on work years ago as a high school student in Jeanerette, La., through the American Jewish Society for Service.

Speaking with people affected by the tragedy was an important aspect of his experience.

Some of the New Orleans residents “told us that volunteers are their only hope that things will get better. Volunteers are the only hope they have,” Goldman said.

Inspired by her father’s having driven supplies to Mississippi, Madison said she wanted to get involved, too. She was struck by the fact that “these people have so much hope, even though they have lost so much. They want to keep helping each other. Seeing what they had to go through changed my perspective about what happened. I hope to do more of this. We’re changing the world, step by step.”

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