Repairing the World, Focusing on Biloxi
By Harry Silverman,
Regional Executive Director, Southeast Region, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism

I just got back to the office after three days in Biloxi with NAASE, the organization for the Conservative movement’s executive directors.

What an incredible experience it was!

Our group consisted of 15 synagogue executive directors from across the country, Rabbi Moshe Edelman, who is the director of United Synagogue’s congregational programming and standards departments, and me. We were there because NAASE’s president, Glenn Easton of Congregation Adas Israel in Washington, DC, had decided to hold the group’s board meeting in Biloxi and to combine the meeting with a tour of the disaster area, updates on the situation, and a day of volunteer work. I was asked to help coordinate the program for NAASE.

On Tuesday evening, the group was updated by Steve Richer, who is both president of Congregation Beth Israel in Biloxi and executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau; LoriBeth Susman, a Beth Israel past president who sits on the Southeast regional board; and Rafaela Monchek, a young woman from south Florida who works for FEMA in Biloxi.

On Wednesday, we volunteered with Hands On Gulf Coast. Hands On really has its act together!!! It has been doing an amazing job of coordinating volunteer work in the community. For a summary of its accomplishments, click here. Hands On arranged for us to work on a severely damaged home, so we went with one of their crew chiefs to a house in Gulfport. The homeowner, who we did not know, had already removed all of the family's belongings, including the furniture and appliances. Other crews already had removed the interior walls. Our job was to remove all the remaining insulation and layers of flooring, down to the subfloor. When we finished, another crew would come in and remove all the mold so that the house could be refinished.

Late Wednesday morning, the home owner, Roger Elamore, drove by the house. He and his family had to buy another home nearby in which to live. He didn’t know we were working on the house; he just came by to check on things and found us there, and talked to us about his experience. He and his family had evacuated before the storm, he told us. When they returned after the hurricane, they found that their house had been flooded; tidal surge waters had risen five to six feet inside the house and destroyed everything. As is typical in the gulf coast, Roger’s insurance company claimed that most of the damage was flood related, and because he was not covered for such damages it paid him only $25,000 for what it called wind related damages. That $25,000 they paid him is less than he still owes on the house. Still, he considers himself lucky; most of his neighbors received little or nothing at all from their insurance companies. He is planning to sell this house for whatever he can get and was extremely grateful for our assistance. He told us how moved he was that total strangers from around the country came here to help him.

Later that day, Roger returned to his house with a photo of his family. With tears in his eyes, he told us that he just wanted us to see “who we were working for.”

That evening, over dinner, we talked about our experience that day. I told the group that 18 of us had spent a full day doing about one fifth of the work that had to be done on just one house in Gulfport. When you consider that about 48,000 homes on the Gulf Coast had been damaged, you begin to get a feeling of the enormity of the work to be done there.

On Thursday morning, we went to Beth Israel to join the congregation in a Shacharit service led by Rabbi Edelman. The synagogue building is too heavily damaged to be used, so we held the service outside. It is interesting to note that Rabbi Edelman served as a scholar in residence at Beth Israel on August 26-28, 2005. As it turns out, that was just before Katrina’s onslaught on August 29; it was the last service the congregation held in their synagogue before the storm. Our service, also led by Rabbi Edelman, was the first held at the synagogue site since the storm. The congregation has been meeting in a local church, which coincidentally also houses Hands On.

Following services, Steve Richer took the group on a tour of the Gulf Coast area to give the NAASE leadership an idea of the scope of the destruction. NAASE’s leadership was so moved by the experience that the board voted to give a $1,000 donation to Hands On and a to-be-determined monetary contribution to Beth Israel, and to donate a new Torah cover to the congregation.

The directors who came all hope to encourage individuals, families, and groups from their congregations to go to the Gulf Coast to continue the recovery effort.