When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities in August 2005, it changed many lives irrevocably. Katrina and the flooding that followed devastated homes, neighborhoods, and community infrastructures. It scattered families and friends throughout the United States, wreaking havoc on people's emotional lives and their senses of “place” and “home.”

Jews from all over the United States have joined in the momentous job of repairing and rebuilding the communities affected by Katrina. Stories of Jewish individuals and groups traveling to the region to help are numerous. JWA has brought many of these stories together with those of direct victims of the hurricane to an online collection, Katrina's Jewish Voices.

One teenage girl, horrified by images of the flooded New Orleans Congregation Beth Israel, felt compelled to act. Thirteen year old Hayley Fields of Los Angeles decided to raise money to buy a new Torah for the synagogue. She started a non-profit organization, Every Minute Counts, and sold watches with that phrase printed on it, raising $18,000. This, along with contributions from other donors motivated by Hayley's initiative, was used to purchase a Torah and its dressings for Beth Israel. In August 2006, just before the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hayley and her family flew to New Orleans to help dedicate the new Torah. Hayley's decision to act helped mobilize her family, her synagogue community, and the larger Jewish community of Los Angeles.

There are many other stories from Katrina's Jewish Voices that broaden our understanding of the range of ways the Jewish community has responded to this catastrophe, and demonstrate how both the helpers and the helped have been changed in the process. During winter vacation 2005, nine teens and eight parents traveled to the Gulf Coast as part of the group TELEM: Jewish Youth Making a Difference, a program sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston. They spent four days gutting a severely damaged house owned by a young African-American couple who were expecting a baby. From morning till evening, the team worked together to haul away debris and rip the walls down to their studs to remove the mold. When the grateful husband, Nate, found out that his helpers were Jewish, he exclaimed, ” But I thought Jews only helped other Jews.” This remark made a strong impression on teens and adults alike and increased their commitment to helping non-Jews in the future. (Read more at http://katrina.jwa.org/object/10.)

Although they were not motivated by the promise of rewards, Jewish relief workers consistently remarked that they themselves had been transformed in the process of helping others. Oral historian Rosalind Hinton described the gifts she has found in the interviews she is conducting with Jews directly affected by the storm. (Read more about Katrina's Jewish Voices Oral History Project.):

Many people who have come to New Orleans to "help" have found that they are the ones receiving the gift. In some ways it is similar to being at the bedside of a dying person. There is richness to the experience, a kind of in-touchness with both ultimacy and the limits of being human, both at the same time. It is hard to explain what people have to offer who have lived so intensely over the past year…No one went through Katrina unchanged, at least not yet. They have a lot to offer other Jews, and other Americans.

As the Jewish community continues to help repair the shattered bits wrought by Katrina, we have opportunities to grow and learn about the power of Tikkun Olam and the complex and infinite lessons it has to teach us.