Special to WJW

Roger Elmore had lived in the house on Rich Avenue for 30 years when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast last August, flooding his white, one-story 1954 home with six feet of water and caving in part of the roof.

"It's hard to imagine, but we're about broke now," the Biloxi, Miss., resident said as he watched 17 members of the Conservative movement's North American Association of Synagogue Executives drag to the curb the remnants of his house's walls and floors, rendered unusable by post-hurricane mold.

"I paid State Farm more than $800,000 over 30 years, and I got $25,000 from them, which I put down on the other house we bought," Elmore lamented, saying he still owes money.

"I've got two kids in college and I'm retired," he said, but he will likely need to return to work despite crippling "gout in my ankles, my knees, my fingers."

Elmore's home, which the family plans to fix and sell, was selected by HandsOn Gulf Coast, part of a national pro-bono network of more than 1 million volunteers, for internal demolition by the NAASE members who came to the area for their annual meeting.

While HandsOn does some roofing work on the houses that have been hit, its volunteers focus mostly on the removal of damaged portions. Responsibility for renovation and repair is left to the homeowners.

For the NAASE volunteers, last week's effort was out of the ordinary.

The group normally holds its spring board meeting in New York, but this year president Glenn Easton decided on a different approach, suggesting that the trustees spend time on a tikkun olam, repairing the world, activity.

"We've traded Broadway for Biloxi," said Neal Price, NAASE senior vice president for programming and executive director of the Hebrew Educational Alliance in Denver.

Easton suggested the Biloxi vicinity since the congregation where he is executive director, Adas Israel Congregation in the District, already has a relationship with a synagogue in Biloxi that was severely damaged by Katrina.

"Adas Israel has adopted Beth Israel and provided support and assistance," Easton said. Among the things Adas has provided to Beth Israel were $10,000 for immediate relief, lulavim and etrogim for Sukkot and thousands of dollars' worth of gift cards to local stores. "We also sent down, at our expense, two experts in synagogue architecture and building to help their building committee evaluate their synagogue damage and whether to rebuild on their existing site or build on a new location."

The volunteers flew into Gulfport on Tuesday of last week, where they were briefed by a FEMA official and synagogue leaders. Beth Israel president Stephen Richer, also executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, gave an overview of the destruction and status of the general community. The executives had brought with them toiletries and thousands of dollars of gift cards to Sears and Wal-Mart for local residents.

The next day, HandsOn officials briefed the group, which then spent nine hours at the Elmores' now-empty home, smashing old tiles, pulling up kitchen linoleum and floor slats, removing 52-year-old nails and ripping out moldering insulation.

"I was impressed by the physical labor of colleagues who are used to spending 10 or 12 hours behind their desks," Easton said this week.

"Most of us are charged with the responsiblity of keeping our buildings intact, and here we spent the entire day taking a building apart, floor board by floor board," Easton said.

Of the 17 volunteers, four came from the Washington, D.C., area.

"We've all seen this on TV, but it's much more devastating to see it firsthand," said Marsha Newfeld, of Ohr Kodesh Congregation in Chevy Chase. "To listen to the president of our organization talk about how 85,000 buildings were wiped out ‹ well, you really have to see it. It's just devastating."

Despite a floor-board-removal incident at the Elmore home that left her jaw smarting, Judith Kranz of Kehilat Shalom in Gaithersburg was glad to get the chance to volunteer.

"I said, 'If we go, we should work,' " Kranz said, noting she didn't think the trip should turn solely into a photo op. "Everyone agreed with that, and I'm glad it worked."

Kranz said both her rabbi, Mark Raphael, and board supported her participation.

"It was so much more meaningful for me that we saw the owner of the house and he told us his story," she said.

Elmore came to see the volunteers twice, the second time with a photo of his family ‹ "so we could see who we were doing this all for," Kranz said.

Wanda Newman was more fortunate than Elmore, in that her home was further along in its renovation.

Back in 1946, she and her husband had bought one of the first houses built on Rich Avenue. Although her house also had been destroyed, by last week there was no mold. The home's floorboards were new and a good deal of the furniture had been replaced, along with the kitchen appliances.

"I've got flood insurance," Newman explained. "I went to stay with my daughter in Long Beach [Miss.] before the storm, and the next morning, we were just in shock."

Her house had been destroyed, flooded by water that had come up 6 feet and then receded.

"Everything inside my house, everything I had with my husband for 60 years, was gone," she said. "This is the only house I've had since I married. I just love it, and I'm still here fighting all this."

Michael Simmons, executive director of Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, said he was compelled to come down to the Gulf Coast for NAASE's meeting this year so he could help people like Hawkins and Elmore.

"When this came up for discussion, I was very supportive of it," Simmons said, sitting on the driveway of Elmore's house after lunch. "I'm just flabbergasted at the devastation. It's unbelievable to me that this is happening to Americans, that people are living in substandard conditions."

He'd like to to encourage congregants to volunteer for similar efforts, and wonders "why the military hasn't done more, why the National Guard isn't here."

The following day took NAASE volunteers to Congregation Beth Israel. Richer pointed out and named the ruins of beach-front properties on the way: Waffle Houses with their signs completely punched out by hurricane winds, souvenir shops with their first floors missing, houses with crushed stairways, even the partially wrecked historical home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Beth Israel is located just two blocks inland from what one year ago would have been a crowded beach.

Severe mold has left it smelling as if it hasn't been inhabited in decades. The backs of the kitchen cabinets are missing, thanks to wind-driven rains, and much of the ceiling in the entryway to the building lies in pieces on the floor. One of the few rooms to remain largely unharmed is the sanctuary, whose Torah scrolls were removed for safekeeping prior to the storm.

"We don't really care to fix up the moldy parts of the building," Richer said, noting the congregation is deciding whether to fix up the sanctuary, while demolishing and building anew the rest, or move to a new location. "The current location is very close to the beach and a casino bought land right across the street, so if we stay we'll be staring at it. Insurance paid us $130,000, but I'm sure we need a million either way ‹ to build it up or to move."

The NAASE volunteers weren't the first to come help out, but Richer would like to see more. "We'd really like people to come down for a weekend, do some work like this group did, because I think we're going to see a lot more challenges," he said.

Rabbi Moshe Edelman, director of leadership development and congregational programming at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, joined the NAASE team at Beth Israel.

As a scholar in residence on the Shabbat before the hurricane hit, he had been the last rabbi to lead a service at the synagogue before Katrina wrought its devastation, and caught the last flight out of Gulfport.

Last week, he became the first rabbi since Katrina to lead a service at Beth Israel. During the Shacharit (morning) service, he related the coming Torah portion about the shmita, a sabbatical year in which Jewish farmers are instructed not to plant crops so as to let the land rest, to NAASE's recent voluntarism.

The parsha is also about "the ability to live wherever you want, to have that peace," he said. "Maybe we have added peace for one family this week, and today we can go away feeling that we have contributed just a little bit."

Anath Hartmann visited Biloxi as a guest of the North American Association of Synagogue Executives.