Katrina's Jewish Voices
Overview
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast on the morning of August 29, 2005, it brought in its wake not only broken levees and scattered populations, but the devastation of a unique Jewish community that had been nearly 250 years in the making. Despite the storm's profound impact on the local communities and the dramatic response of the Jewish community nationwide, the Jewish story of Katrina remains largely untold. The Jewish Women's Archive (JWA) organized Katrina's Jewish Voices, a two-part project using online collecting and oral history, to fill the void and ensure that the Jewish experience of this catastrophic event will become a part of the history of America and of American Jewry.
Online Collecting Project
The Katrina's Jewish Voices website is JWA's online collection project to collect, preserve, and present the American Jewish community's experiences of Hurricane Katrina and their recollections of the Jewish communities of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
Developed in collaboration with the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, the online collection welcomes members of the Jewish community—women and men alike—to tell their own stories of how the storm affected them, and to share their memories of the New Orleans and Gulf Coast Jewish communities. The project is collecting digital artifacts in a variety of forms, including photos, blog postings, podcasts, emails, essays, sermons, and other first-hand accounts, from American Jews nationwide.
These collections will serve as a vital resource for future historians of the American Jewish experience, as well as for those interested in exploring how individuals and different faith communities responded to this vast humanitarian crisis.
Oral History Project
JWA, in partnership with the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life (ISJL), will conduct 100 in-depth video interviews with members of the Jewish communities of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and the Gulf Coast. This oral history component of Katrina's Jewish Voices will enable a wide cross-section of these communities to serve as "historic witnesses" to a watershed event in its (and our) communal history.
The interviews will be permanently housed at ISJL and made available on the Katrina's Jewish Voices website. Dr. Rosalind Hinton, a visiting scholar at Tulane University's Newcomb College Center for Research on Women and a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, will conduct the interviews.
The public is invited to suggest names of family, friends, and colleagues using the Narrator Nomination Form.
The project seeks to identify potential narrators—both women and men—from different sectors of the New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Gulf Coast Jewish communities to share their stories. To achieve a diverse and representative group, project staff will pay attention to criteria such as gender, age, affiliations, occupation, role within the community, people's experiences during and after the hurricane, as well as their decisions about whether or not to return.
Katrina's Jewish Voices Project Staff at JWA
Jayne K. Guberman, Project Director and Director of Oral History
Ari Davidow, Director of Online Strategy
Ruth Pearlstein, Program Manager
Ellen Kanner, Director of Development
Gail T. Reimer, Executive Director
Jaymie Saks, Chief Operating Officer
Collaborating Institutions
The Jewish Women's Archive would like to thank the following collaborating institutions for participating in Katrina's Jewish Voices and for encouraging their communities to add their voices to the online collection.
- Congregation Gates of Prayer, Metairie, Louisiana
- Jewish Endowment Foundation, New Orleans
- Jewish Federation of Greater Baton Rouge
- Jewish Federation of Greater Houston
- Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans
- New Orleans Hillel
- New Orleans Jewish Community Center
- Northshore Jewish Congregation, Mandeville, Louisiana
- Touro Synagogue, New Orleans
- United Jewish Communities
Supporters
Katrina's Jewish Voices is funded by generous individuals and foundations. JWA would like to thank the following major donors:
- The 350 Fund: The American Jewish Historical Society, Celebrate 350: Jewish Life in America, and the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in celebration of 350 years of Jewish life in America.
- Jan Aronson
- Asher Calechman Family
- Jewish Endowment Foundation, New Orleans
- Jewish Federation of Greater Baton Rouge
- Southern Jewish Historical Society
- The Wise Women
JWA welcomes your contributions of financial support. If you have any questions about making a contribution, please contact us.
Media Inquiries
You can download recent press releases from the JWA Pressroom, or contact Ruth Pearlstein, Program Manager, at or reach her via phone at 617.232.2258.
About the Jewish Women's Archive
The mission of the Jewish Women's Archive is to uncover, chronicle, and transmit the rich history of American Jewish women and their contributions to our families and our communities, to our people and our world.
Since its founding in 1995, the Jewish Women's Archive has been developing innovative formats and collaborative partnerships to transmit the history of American Jewish women and their accomplishments to a broad public. JWA seeks to make known the contributions of outstanding Jewish women of achievement as well as the profound—but often unacknowledged—impact Jewish women have had within their local communities.
One of the first organizations in the Jewish community to recognize and invest in the potential of the Internet for academic, cultural, archival, and educational purposes, JWA continues to innovate in its use of technology to convey and provide access to Jewish women's stories on its website.
A national, non-profit membership organization headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts, JWA is entering its second decade of changing the way history is researched, recorded, and taught.
For general information about the Jewish Women's Archive, please see our "About JWA" page.