c. 2006 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS _ Thousands of Jewish families, stressed by almost eight months of loss and uncertainty after Hurricane Katrina, drew together at sundown Wednesday (April 12) to celebrate Passover and reclaim a sense of normalcy and continuity in a world remade by disaster.

In many places they looked out over decorated tables missing the faces of family members exiled to Houston, Atlanta or places more distant.

Some gathered in homes still under repair from storm damage, or more frequently, in new surroundings because a traditional family gathering place was damaged or destroyed.

A group of Jewish college relief volunteers from California who spent the day gutting flooded houses sat with strangers, Christian and Jewish, at a ritual Passover meal, or Seder, for college students at Temple Sinai.

In Metairie, Chabad Jewish Center hosted a larger-than-usual Seder for an estimated 180 people unable to do their own in storm-damaged homes.

And for the first time, Jewish organizations in New Orleans hosted a community Seder at a downtown hotel for 200 people stripped of family or adequate housing after Katrina. But for that, said Barbara Pailet, one of the organizers, they might have been alone or unable to host a Seder on the most important family day of the year.

The home-based celebration commemorates the greatest story in Judaism: the Israelites’ deliverance from bondage in Egypt. Part universal ritual, part local family custom, the annual dinner that starts the eight-day season is the touchstone of family and identity for millions of Jewish families.

The Passover Seder defines happy normalcy in the bosom of family, but in New Orleans after Katrina it became heavy with special meaning.

“People are striving for normalcy in a very familiar ritual, despite the fact that without doubt it’s not normal this year,” said Rabbi Andrew Busch of Touro Synagogue.

Before Hurricane Katrina hit last summer, the city’s Jewish community was estimated at 12,000, heavily concentrated in lakefront neighborhoods and Metairie. Both areas flooded, driving tens of thousands of families out of the city. Some are still gone; many of the rest have not yet settled their futures.

“At our house, we’d usually have 40 or more people for the first night of Passover,” Pailet said. “This year I was having trouble getting it to 18.”

For Pailet’s family this will be the first Passover without Lena Pailet _ “Bubby” _ the family matriarch. She died in October, a few weeks after being evacuated from New Orleans. She was 97, one of the uncounted victims of Katrina.

Many other families are scattered.

“I just sent an e-mail to an elderly cousin in Tampa who lived here until Katrina. I told her we’re going to miss her, not having her with us,” said Jackie Gothard. “But I asked her, `Why is this year’s Passover different?’ And my answer was that it’s really special because no matter what our losses in physical belongings, we’re still here.

“We’re here and still connected. When I look around the table and see everybody safe, that will make it a very special Seder.”

But for many that sense of normalcy is still out of reach.

“There are people not living here anymore who are back in town for the Seder just to be with family, so it’s bittersweet on every level,” said Busch.

This holiday is less chaotic than the High Holy Days, which last autumn fell just a few weeks after Katrina devastated the city.

Busch opened that 10-day season in a borrowed Unitarian church in Baton Rouge, followed the next morning by a service at his temple in New Orleans, and then commemorated the holiest day, Yom Kippur, in Houston.

Even now Busch’s recovering congregation receives regular assistance from Jewish organizations around the country. Two congregations in Florida have helped underwrite Touro’s traditional congregational second Seder meal tonight, he said.

In the same way, Jewish organizations around the country donated ritual objects _ the Seder plates, cups and matzo covers _ for an unusual community Seder at the Hilton Hotel.

Just before sundown hundreds of families converged on the third-floor ballroom to take advantage of a post-Katrina Seder co-hosted by Jewish Family Service and Hadassah, a women’s service group.

Among the guests: Rosalie and Harris Dulitz, who now live in a trailer in front of their son’s Metairie home. Ordinarily, they would have hosted 30 to 50 friends, Rosalie Dulitz said. With her kitchen out of commission the Dulitzes and their guests moved en masse to the hotel.

The pre-eminent family time caught some college students away from loved ones.

“This is my first Seder away from home,” said Miriam Burman, a 19-year-old sophomore from Santa Clarita, Calif., who was spending the week with two dozen Southern California college students gutting houses.

“But I talked to my mom this morning. I assured her I’m going to keep kosher and keep the rituals. She’s not happy, but she understands this is something I really want to do. I love helping people.”

Burman and friends spent the day helping clean out a ruined downtown restaurant. “I met this lady, Leah Chase. She’s an amazing lady. I fell in love with her.”

At Temple Sinai, Rabbi Debbie Pine, the incoming leader of Hillel, a Jewish campus organization, prepared to lead Burman and others in the commemoration, which would include lots of explanations for non-Jewish guests. She, too, knew the event had special meaning.

“Each year, we are to feel that we have personally been through the Exodus. And this year, we’ll feel that more than ever,” she said.

And, she said, there was another Passover theme especially appropriate to the first Passover after Katrina:

“At the end of the meal, we say, ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ meaning redemption under way but not yet finished,” she said.

“All Jews are called to usher in the Messianic era. We say that we are not free until the world is free.”

“And in the same way we are not whole until the city is made whole again.”

MO/JL RNS END

(Bruce Nolan writes for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. Michelle Hunter contributed to this report.)

Editors: To obtain photos of the New Orleans Seder, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

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