Praying with their Hands: Reflecting on New Orleans

While Jews across the country spent the Christmas holiday gorging on Chinese food and taking in a good movie (or two… or three), a group of young Jewish adults spent last week repairing the world – or, more specifically, repairing New Orleans.

Twenty-nine volunteers aged 25-35 participated in the Reform Movement’s Young Adult Mitzvah Corps, spending five days doing hard work in the Big Easy by repairing some of the extensive damage Hurricane Katrina did to a residential home in the Lower 9^th Ward. Group co-leaders Barb Weinstein (Legislative Director of the RAC) and Naomi Abelson (Manager of Congregational Relations for the Commission on Social Action) wrote a blog post every day of the trip and microblogged on Twitter, chronicling their experiences volunteering, worshipping and socializing in New Orleans. The local news station even took notice, covering the URJ volunteers’ work in a Christmas Eve news package that interviews Naomi.

Abraham Joshua Heschel once said that when he marched for civil rights in Selma, Alabama, he felt as though his feet were praying. Last week’s volunteers displayed a similar philosophy, getting down to the dirty, physical aspect of volunteer work by painting, hammering, nailing and creating; in every sense of the words, they were certainly praying with their hands. And though their trip is over, the impact is lasting – the house the Young Adult Mitzvah Corps participants helped rebuild will be worked on by volunteers from other organizations until its completion – and the same can be said, we hope, about the entire city of New Orleans.