Members of Temple Emanu-El in Edison pose outside a house in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. They traveled to help clean up and offer aid to a city still devastated three years after Hurricane Katrina.
Photos courtesy of Temple Emanu-El
July 22, 2008
Forty-four members of Temple Emanu-El in Edison saw firsthand the devastation that remains three years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast.
Rabbi Deborah Bravo led a group ranging in age from 10 to 80 to New Orleans, where they helped with clean-up projects in the particularly distressed Ninth Ward and developed a connection with poor youngsters still feeling the effects of the storm.
Bravo said temple members connected with Lakewood Beacon of Hope, a New Orleans nonprofit grassroots group dedicated to rebuilding destroyed homes.
“I chose them because I wanted to make sure kids participated, and they allowed kids as young as 10,” said Bravo.
Helping to offset the $800 per person cost of the May trip were subsidies from the Union for Reform Judaism and from temple members Martin and Edith Stein.
Congregants worked two days cleaning up yards, homes, and plots, sites of destruction that had remained virtually untouched since Katrina.
“We really feel like we made a difference,” said Bravo. “One of the houses had not been touched in almost three years, and the washing machine still had water and clothes in it. We discovered the young couple who lived there just left everything and never came back.”
The group spent an entire day “gutting” the structure, removing and breaking down everything from inside, allowing it to be razed and a new structure built on the site.
Bravo said it was apparent that government, particularly the state and federal, have been lax in offering help, instead relying on organizations such as Beacon of Hope to do the work.
“It was very sad to see how bad it still is,” said Ariel Jaffe, 17, of Metuchen, who went on the trip. “If you stayed in the French Quarter you couldn’t tell anything happened, but when you ventured out into the Ninth Ward, there’s been very little improvement. A lot of houses are still unoccupied.”
A recent graduate of Metuchen High School, Ariel said she went on the trip because she thought it “would be a really good experience” before beginning Muhlenberg College in September.
During the Temple Emanu-El members’ visit to the New Orleans Free Academy, group member Anne Newman watches a girl spin her hula hoop while Ariel Jaffe, 17, plays a game with students.
“We had to go through people’s whole lives,” she recalled. “Their entire lives were just left there — photo albums, diplomas. Some people just left everything and never came back.”
The group established a relationship with the New Orleans Free Academy, cleaning its yard, helping teachers empty the school for summer, and engaging students in discussions.
The New Jersey visitors presented the school with a check representing donations from nine adults who became b’nei mitzva June 7 and other congregants.
“A portion of the class went to New Orleans,” said Sandy Wilson, the temple’s vice president of social action and herself a recent bat mitzva.
Ariel noted that some of the students at the academy had to go to Texas in the wake of the storm. She was especially impressed with the dedication of people like Gail Glickman, a special education teacher at the school who moved from Detroit to offer her services.
‘Positive and uplifting’
Glickman was among the guest speakers at a dinner hosted by the historic Touro Synagogue and its rabbi, Andrew Busch — a native of Highland Park — for the Emanu-El group on its first night.
Joining them at the synagogue was Pastor Bruce Davenport of St. John’s Baptist Church Social Ministry, which helps disadvantaged youngsters from the most devastated part of New Orleans. Two days later, the Temple Emanu-El members attended a baseball game featuring the New Orleans Zephyrs, a Triple A affiliate of the New York Mets.
“We had some extra tickets so we gave them to Pastor Bruce and he came with eight or nine kids,” said Bravo. “They had the time of their lives. None of them had ever been to a baseball game. These were unbelievably resilient kids.”
During their stay, temple members also toured the city and ate at a kosher Cajun restaurant. They heard from other business, government, education and organizational leaders, including a couple who started a home for abused women and children, which is being supported by their New Orleans synagogue.
The visitors also had breakfast with Arnie Feilkow, the Jewish president of the New Orleans City Council.
“We heard the most amazing stories,” said Bravo. “Despite all the devastation, we were all impressed everyone was so positive and uplifting. Ten years from now they said they would be the best city in the country…. Most of us said, ‘How can they find that optimism?’ But, they may very well be right because they were forced to start from scratch.”
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