World g g 2 6 r r 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