Jewish Stories of Katrina: Why They Matter 20 Years Later

Join us for our annual Audrey G. Ratner Lecture Series Program with Karla Goldman on October 17 at the historic Touro Synagogue in New Orleans as she discusses her work on studying Jews during Hurricane Katrina. This program will be during the 49th annual Southern Jewish Historical Society Conference.

"The hundreds of thousands of individual stories of displacement, despair, resilience, and survival left behind by Hurricane Katrina shine a rare spotlight on the communities and relationships in which we live and find meaning. Not surprisingly, it is the most desperate stories of abandonment experienced by the most impoverished populations of New Orleans and the massive governmental failure to respond effectively to the crisis that have become central to our collective understanding of the storm's impact and significance.

What follows is a brief exploration of some of the themes that shaped the Jewish experiences of Katrina, as reflected in the words of the some of the 85 narrators who participated in the Katrina's Jewish Voices Oral History Project, conducted by the Jewish Women's Archive (where Karla worked from 2000 to 2008 as historian in residence) and the Institute for Southern Jewish Life. The answer, perhaps, to the question of why we should preserve these stories comes in the stories themselves."

Special thank you to the TAWANI Foundation, Touro Synagogue and the Southern Jewish Historical Society for making this program possible.

Host or Publisher Stuart and Suzanne Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience