New Orleans is not all better.
Whenever I’m asked about how things are, I want to say, “We’re doin’ fine. We’re all better now.” But I can’t.
When a city is so completely destroyed that everything needs repair, when even the houses that didn’t flood had trees through the roof, when the street car rails were washed away and every major city building needs hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars of work, when the infrastructure, including electricity, water, and waste disposal systems, are so backlogged that the city can’t replace streetlights or fill potholes large enough to endanger your car, or plug leaks in the deteriorated water system, and fast food restaurants are forced to pay bonuses and hire 15-yr.-olds because they can’t get enough workers, and everywhere you look is a soggy mess of construction debris which never seems to get carted away, and when the wind blows in from the east the whole city reeks of “Eau de Rotten Refrigerator,” where do you begin?
I know it’s hard to be patient with us. When the subject of New Orleans arises, I see people rolling their eyes. They’re thinking, “We’ve heard enough already; let’s move on; old news; boring.
There are rockets being fired on Israel and the northeastern U.S. had its own flood, and there are a million other stories to attend to.”
But if the rest of the country is sick of it, imagine how we feel, driving through a massive graveyard of houses and rubble every day on the way to work or school. It’s almost the only thing people living in New Orleans talk about. Still.
If you were a fly on the wall of a restaurant, no matter how plain or posh, you could flit from table to table and hear the same conversations: Who is having disputes with their insurer; who is replacing their [roof, floors, landscaping—pick one]; who has left or is leaving town; who is selling/buying a house; who has been fired because their business is moving, etc., etc., and so on, and so forth, ad nauseam.
We need to get on with our lives? You’re so right. But how? New Orleans is like San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. It will take years — five, 10, maybe more, to rebuild.
Not asking ‘why?’
The good news in the Jewish community is that, if I may use a dangerous phrase, the national Jewish community — led by United Jewish Communities — is keeping us afloat. It has been and continues to be generous, compassionate, and yet demands results and accountability.
The dollars we’ve received from the North American Jewish community are keeping our synagogues from losing their mortgages and paying our most important Jewish community employees, from rabbis to social workers.
We’ve lost numbers. Once an active community of almost 10,000 Jews, the number of New Orleans Jews now hovers in the 6,000-plus range and families come and go daily.
Some who intended to move back have found the business climate too difficult or have been stymied by the slow pace of rebuilding. Others became sick of thinking about the problems here and moved away.
Those who remain continue to be “survivors” in a daily struggle to maintain one’s equilibrium in an uncertain climate.
We feel vulnerable to the next big storm, the whims of local, state and national governments, and the insurance industry. We do not know where to live or whether we will be able to support ourselves in the future.
Worst of all, we hear the grumbling of our neighbors — “Why rebuild New Orleans?” they say — and we can only snap back, “Why rebuild Florida and the rest of the Gulf Coast after its hurricanes? Why send aid to frozen North Dakota every winter or to the nation’s heartland in a drought? Why help out when tornadoes hit Kansas or forest fires decimate Colorado or southern California?”
The national Jewish Community never asked the “why” question about New Orleans, just as it does not ask the “why” question when helping Jews in Argentina, Ethiopia or Israel. Instead, it sent a clear message to the Jews of New Orleans that we are one and the same people: Am Yisrael, the Nation of Israel.
New Orleans Jews look forward to the time when we can give more and receive less. In the meantime, however, we gratefully receive and give our thanks to a national community that has come through for us in our darkest hour.
We will not be “all better” for years to come, but the American Jewish community gives us the strength we need to go forward, to persevere, to survive, and to rebuild.
Julie E. Schwartz is editor of The Jewish News in New Orleans.
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