Staff Writer

The 19 members of the Union of Reform Judaism's Adult Mitzvah Corps brought drywall and insulation to help rebuild the homes of Jewish families in New Orleans last week. They also brought something less tangible, said Isabel "Liz" Dunst, but just as important.

Hope.

The people of New Orleans "feel very abandoned, very alone," said the Bethesda resident. "The idea that we were there really gave [the people we helped] some hope," Dunst said.

For example, there was the woman who, the morning after the group worked on her house, told them she had cleaned her kitchen for the first time.

"They're so spent" after the events of the past few months, and the group's visit had helped give her "the energy to clean up a little," Dunst said. She "felt some hope for the first time."

Dunst, 58, was the only Washington-area participant on last week's URJ mission to repair homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Each person paid his or her own way for the Dec. 25-31 trip; URJ provided a $5,000 grant to buy construction materials and supplies.

Dunst's congregation, Temple Sinai in the District, also pitched in with a $500 grant.

The union worked with the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans to plan the trip, with the federation helping to identify the four homes on which the group would work, said Rabbi Marla Feldman, the director of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism and a trip participant.

URJ wasn't the only group to send volunteers to New Orleans last month.

Some 40 Jewish volunteers, a team from the Baltimore-based Jewish Volunteer Connection, worked on homes as well.

"As soon as this happened, I wanted to do something," said schoolteacher Erica Berson of Alexandria. "The Red Cross was saying 'just send money,' but I felt so helpless."

So did Berson's friend, Renae Gross, also of Alexandria.

"I was waiting for an opportunity to be part of a group that was supporting this effort," said Gross, a government consultant. "We look at these houses and think about the Jews who are scattered throughout the world. Whatever we can do for these people, we're here to help."

This group of volunteers stayed on the eighth floor of the Touro Infirmary, a Jewish hospital that's running at only 50 percent capacity and therefore had plenty of extra space.

Chabad, meanwhile, sent some 50 college-aged volunteers to the city, where estimates are that at least 135 Jewish volunteers have done stints in Louisiana and Mississippi since Katrina, according to Adam Bronstone of the New Orleans federation.

Dunst, a member of the URJ national board and the movement's Commission on Social Action, previously had been on three Adult Mitzvah Corps trips elsewhere to build houses for those in need.

A partner at the Hogan and Hartson law firm in the District, she said that "hands-on" projects in which she can physically help others are important to her because she enjoys seeing "something at the end."

But last week's experience differed from previous ones. It was much more emotional, she explained, because participants were, for the first time, working on the houses of fellow Jews.

She recalled one man on whose house they worked as saying it had deepened his faith in Judaism to see fellow members of his community "coming to help ... in a time of need."

The group worked on four homes that had been severely damaged by the storm, three of which had been stripped "down to the studs," or skeleton, of the structure.

Participants put up insulation and drywall "so that there were rooms [again] by the time we were finished," Dunst said.

At the fourth house ‹ owned by one of the seven Jewish police officers in New Orleans, Brian Weiss, and his wife, Brooke ‹ the Mitzvah Corps "closed up" the home, clearing away trash and debris, boarding up the windows and laying a tarp over the top.

While the Weiss' house was not completely destroyed, Dunst said, many of the houses nearby were so ravaged that it is unclear if the family would want to rebuild a house without a surrounding neighborhood.

Dunst said the devastation of New Orleans was "much, much worse and widespread" than she had been led to believe from news reports.

She was overwhelmed by the "miles and miles" of middle- and lower middle-class houses that had been flooded and were now abandoned and uninhabitable, as well as the lack of electricity and working traffic lights in many areas.

"You have to see it to really grasp it," said Feldman, adding that "there are literally hundreds of thousands of homes that are uninhabitable or in need of repair."

The group stayed at five homes that had made it through the hurricane in good shape, although she said the owners of those houses were "torn and sad" because they had so many friends in the city who weren't so lucky.

They also visited one of the city's three Reform synagogues, Temple Sinai, on Shabbat and, of course, celebrated Chanukah during the week, bringing menorot ‹ as well as mezuzot ‹ to each family they assisted.

Dunst noted that the families the group helped were more accustomed to giving ‹ rather than receiving what they considered charity ‹ so participants were showered with gifts as well, from the New Orleans specialty of beignets to bags of special coffee blends.

But as the federal government has seemed to move on to other issues, Dunst said the residents of New Orleans also gave them a job to do ‹ to tell their members of Congress what they saw.

"They want us to witness what's going on," Dunst said. "[They want us] to make sure they're not forgotten."

JTA's Larry Luxner contributed to this article.