World
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Renewal
Amid
The Jewish
community
returns and
rebuilds
along the
Gulf Coast.
Chabad on Campus National
Relief Mission volunteer works
amid the rubble of Congregation
Beth Israel's education wing in
New Orleans.
Margie Fishman
Special to the Jewish News
Discolored waterlines show how high the water got at
Congregation Beth Israel in New Orleans.
s the resident gabbai for
Orthodox Congregation
Beth Israel in New
Orleans, Meyer Lachoff's job was
to scrounge up enough people -
for the twice-daily minyan.
And scrounge he did. Every
day on the phone. For 35 years.
Lachoff died in August at his
nursing home, waiting to be
evacuated from a city under
siege by Hurricane Katrina. His
remains were stored in a freezer
until he could receive a proper
Jewish burial.
Earlier this.year, Lachoff's son,
Irwin, was crushed that he
couldn't recruit enough men
from the congregation to say
Kaddish for his father. "It could
be the death of the Orthodox
community:' he said of Jewish
New Orleans after the storm.
Katrina's devastating floodwa-
ters have receded, leaving a dias-
pora in their wake.
Slightly more than half of the
3,600 Jewish households that
existed in pre-Katrina metropoli-
tan New Orleans had returned by
the end of January, when many
schools and businesses reopened
according to the Jewish
Federation of Greater New •
Orleans.
Federation officials are hopeful
that 80 percent of the population
will return by summer's end, an
unofficial deadline for evacuees
to decide whether they will go
home or make new lives for
themselves elsewhere.
For those who choose to give
New Orleans and its failed levee
system another chance, it is
unclear what Jewish resources
will be available to them or what
their community will ultimately
look like.
Many Jewish agency officials
in New Orleans are confident
they can get by with donations
this year without having to elimi-
nate programs. But in a hemor-
rhaging Jewish community with
a limited ability to pay, operating
losses could be staggering in
subsequent years as New Orleans
slips off the national radar.
"It's going to take us two to
three years before our syna-
gogues are on firm footing:' said
Rabbi Robert Loewy of Reform
JP4I
Congregation Gates of Prayer in
suburban Metairie. •
To be sure, the community has
suffered a blow:
• The two Orthodox syna-
gogues in New Orleans remain
closed.
• The two largest Reform con-
gregations, Temple Sinai and
Touro Synagogue, have combined
their Hebrew schools to cut
costs.
• The New Orleans Jewish Day
School, one of two Jewish day
schools in the area, has delayed
reopening until August because
it doesn't have enough children
to fill its halls. Middle school
grades will be eliminated.
• New Orleans Hillel will pare
down its programs for Tulane
University and Loyola University
students this semester, spending
more time in the dorms with
comfort food in tow.
• New Orleans won't be one of
the cities hosting the JCC
Maccabi Games as planned this
summer. Instead, only three
•
cities will be hosts.
• Even the New Orleans Jewish
Renewal on page 28
February 16 • 2006
27