In the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, despair as well as amazing fortune have struck Gulf Coast Jews. Here are some of their accounts.
houston | Jennifer Pollack and Andrew Friedberg would have been married this past weekend at New Orleans’ Temple Gates of Prayer had Hurricane Katrina not turned their city into a wreck.
It took the couple 12 hours to evacuate the Crescent City on Saturday, Aug. 28, and they now are living with Friedberg’s parents in Houston. The couple received a special blessing at Houston’s Temple Emanu El two days after their arrival and were still hopeful for a New Orleans wedding. The next morning, however, the levees were breeched — and their plans, along with most everything they owned, were sent adrift.
Yet, it did not take the couple long to make up their minds on where to go next. After discussing it with their parents, they chose to drop anchor in Houston and move forward with their wedding plans. The challenge would be to have everything ready in five days time.
“There are several different reasons why we decided not to postpone our wedding,” explained Pollack on Friday, Sept. 2, just two days before the ceremony would take place. “It’s a mitzvah to be married, and Andrew and I feel that by still having our wedding this weekend we will be doing something good for our families, and something particularly special for the entire New Orleans Jewish community. We believe that this might be a source of hope for the many who are feeling hopeless. Jewish tradition says to gone on.”
Pollack’s father, Jack, called the couple on Saturday morning, Aug. 28, advising them to evacuate the city. She said she thought he was kidding and hung up the phone. Her mother, Peggy, called next, and told them to turn on the news. Before evacuating New Orleans with their extended family, the couple made a trip to Lowe’s Home Improvement, where they bought plywood to protect their home from Katrina’s torrents. “And, of course, this turned out to be a complete waste of time and energy,” Friedberg lamented. “These were precious hours that we could have used to pack our things. But we thought that we’d only be gone for two or three days, so we essentially left everything behind.” Everything would include Pollack’s wedding gown (and accessories), Friedberg’s tuxedo, their wedding rings, ketubah and wedding gifts.
“Looking back though, I’m just glad we made it here safely,” he said. “This whole experience puts life into perspective. We lost more in one day than most people will lose in a lifetime. Yet, we made it out with each other, and that’s all that matters. Stuff can always be replaced.”
Stating her marital vows two days later, Pollack would say that they “lost everything … yet lost nothing at all.”
“Everybody in Houston has been so wonderful and generous in helping us make this happen,” Friedberg added. “We would not have been able to pull this off without their support. It took us nearly two years to plan our first wedding, and now we have less than a week.”
new york | For Tad and Lani Breaux, a Jewish couple from New Orleans, evacuation meant leaving behind something far more precious than their physical belongings: their 4-day-old child.
Zachary Breaux was in the neonatal intensive-care unit at a New Orleans hospital when his parents were forced to run for their lives, thinking that as in past hurricanes, their evacuation would last only several days. They ended up in Houston, safe but uncertain about their young son’s fate.
Desperate for information, they turned to Adam Bronstone, the director of the New Orleans Jewish Community Relations Council and the head of communications for the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. Bronstone, in turn, contacted several potential sources of information, including U.S. Army officials, in a frantic attempt to track down Zachary.
They found him in the late afternoon on Sept. 1, Bronstone said.
Zachary, it turned out, had been shuttled out of New Orleans as the storm powered its way toward the gulf. He had been put on a plane along with 60 adults and three children and shuttled to Cook Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas.
Later that evening, Tad and Lani Breaux were reunited with their missing child. They were flown to Fort Worth aboard a plane provided by Angel Flight — a nonprofit organization of pilots and other volunteers that arranges free transportation on private aircraft in response to medical and other compelling human needs.
baton rouge, la. | Rabbi Barry Weinstein and his congregation at B’nai Israel Synagogue in Baton Rouge, La., started a grass-roots shelter operation for evacuees fleeing the New Orleans area during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. With designated Red Cross shelters reaching capacity all around Louisiana, Weinstein opened his arms and his doors to anyone that needed a place to stay or food in their mouth.
“As a student of the Holocaust, I know full well how Jews and others were abandoned so often during the war years and so many people were bystanders and couldn’t find a way to help,” Weinstein said. “This whole episode reminds me of the sufferings. It really is a parallel — a storm, a threat, poor, underprivileged people. What some of these kids went through we can’t even imagine.”
More than 100 people are passing through the synagogue each day, while up to 70 are spending the night every evening. Congregation members are answering the call with donations and food, while others are volunteering their time around the clock.
Sleeping bags and cots fill rooms where religious school would normally be taught. Diapers and baby clothes line the area where they have oneg Shabbats. And a conference room has been converted into a makeshift hospital room.
Dorothy Marshall, a schoolteacher from Williamsburg, Va., decided to come to the area because she felt her help was needed. When she couldn’t get all the way down to New Orleans, she wound up at B’nai Israel.
“Everybody back home thought I was crazy for coming all the way here,” Marshall said. “They said I would be bitten by alligators.” Instead, she has become another welcoming face at B’nai Israel that is helping hundreds cope with our nation’s greatest natural disaster.
houston | Julie Wise Oreck, a New Orleans resident evacuated to Houston, sent an e-mail to friends that seems to sum up the situation of many of those directly hit by the hurricane:
“We must all bear witness to this tragedy and know how many are affected and how bad it is for everyone. Frankly, although it is incredibly depressing, it is also necessary for us to know how many others are affected and how … it is beyond horrible and sad and impossible to comprehend.
“Each day I wake up and think what can I do today to be productive in making our life as settled and OK here in Houston as possible.
“I am fragile and sad …have patience with me …we need each other and you. It is difficult for me. I cry a lot and I am trying to move forward …but there is no real forward yet.”
Michael C. Duke, Matt Samuels and Marc J. Samuels of the Jewish Herald-Voice, Chanan Tigay of jta and Larry Brook of the Deep South Jewish Voice contributed to this report.