by
NJJN Staff Writer

As Passover approaches, Deena Gerber, executive director of Jewish Family Service of New Orleans, doesn’t have to worry about how the agency will provide the holiday food baskets it has distributed to the needy for 25 years.

That’s because last December, Evelyn Baron of Millburn stepped into her office and asked, “What can I do?”

Baron had flown to New Orleans with her three children, Eliza, Jaclyn, and Jon to help the Jewish community recover from Hurricane Katrina. The devastating storm had become personal for the Barons.

Four months earlier, Eliza, 20, had been in New Orleans visiting a friend from Camp Tel Yehuda, the Young Judaea summer camp in Barryville, NY. As Katrina approached, the friend’s family managed to change Eliza’s flight home. She would catch one of the last planes out of New Orleans before the hurricane struck. The experience tied them to the city and its tragedy. “That my daughter was there gave me a different level of understanding,” said Baron. “We experienced it — the panic in the first days, the ups and the downs —through the eyes of a family like us.”

Baron decided it would be important to get involved. “If you go down there, you can see it’s pretty amazing that this is our country. We were there at the end of December, four months later. It looked like it happened yesterday.”

In fact, as Gerber explained, “people are consumed with daily living here.… A lot of people still don’t have phone service. The mail is very spotty.”

For Baron, helping in New Orleans is all about serving as members of an extended community. “As I explained to my children, we live in a supportive community. We know we can count on them if we need them, and we have. We have also been givers. But what happens if we are all in crisis at the same time? We need to be an extended community.”

While Baron was in New Orleans in December, she grew frustrated with the work she was doing. A geriatric social worker who has spent most of her career in the Jewish community, she felt her skills were not being put to good use. For two days, she and her daughters had been assigned to JFS, going door to door to help people exchange medical equipment. She also helped people get rid of appliances that no longer worked.

Baron wanted a project that would not only take advantage of her experience; she also wanted to enlist the assistance of members of her synagogue at home — B’nai Israel in Millburn — who she knew would want to help out. She went to the executive director of JFS and asked for a tangible project to bring home. “I can do much more in a project like this than cleaning out people’s homes,” she said.

“It’s like a godsend,” said Gerber. “We just didn’t know how we were going to do it.” The Passover food basket delivery project is usually a “massive” volunteer effort, according to Gerber. It involves two staff people, one of whom hasn’t returned to New Orleans. Between 100 and 120 people receive the packages every year, mostly the elderly and people from the former Soviet Union; there are also smaller bags delivered to people in nursing homes.

The packages include enough kosher-for-Passover food for the seders and the whole week of the holiday: six eggs per person, matza ball soup, gefilte fish, jellies, chicken, apples, carrots, potatoes, onions, other produce, fresh and frozen foods, tea, macaroons, plus all of the ritual items for the seder plate.

The packages also include candlesticks, matza covers, Elijah’s cups, and other ritual objects created by religious-school children.

The day before Baron came in, Gerber said, she had told someone in her office regarding the project, “We’ll think about it — in Scarlett O’Hara fashion — ‘another day.’ Another day, Evelyn Baron walked in.” It was the obvious project for her, said Gerber, “and she just grabbed it.”

B’nai Israel agreed to take on the project. “Rather than [providing] blanket supplies,” said the congregation’s Rabbi Steven Bayar, “I wanted to work on a specific project. I thought it was a great opportunity.” The synagogue, which guaranteed JFS it would raise $10,000 and send down volunteers to manage the distribution, posted flyers and sent out a letter. Less than two weeks later, it had raised nearly half the total. It also received commitments from 16 congregants, including Bayar, to travel to New Orleans March 31-April 3.

Day by day

Finding the people who need the food, however, has proved a bit more complicated. “Of the people we sent packages to last year, we have reached only about half,” said Gerber. Lack of phone service and sporadic mail delivery are part of the problem. “We’re talking to rabbis…and putting the word out every way we know how.” Meanwhile, they still have “no idea” how many people will need the packages this year. They put in their usual food order anyway. “We’ll play it day by day,” Gerber said.

For Baron, the project is just the beginning. She has offered to set up a telephone reassurance program, calling people in New Orleans from New Jersey and New York just to reassure them and connect them to the outside world. Gerber, who didn’t recall discussing the project with Baron, nevertheless said she would be interested — once phone service is fully restored. Baron is also setting up a project through Dorot, the Manhattan-based project for the homebound and elderly, to offer its University without Walls courses free of charge.

Baron said her company, a franchise of Home Instead Senior Care, will pick up the cost.

Donations to the JFS food distribution project are welcome. Contact B’nai Israel for further information at 973-379-3811.

In addition to support, Gerber recommends a visit to New Orleans. “I really think people should come down and visit and see what’s going on. To keep Jewish life viable here, synagogues and Jewish institutions continue to need help. People are just consumed with trying to rebuild their own lives.”