Working for the Jewish community in Ukraine, I have participated in many trainings and seminars. However, I have never experienced such a touching, educational and well-organized one. During the seminar we met different people: the president of Jewish Federation and his wife, executive director of Jewish Family Service, various Jewish citizens of New-Orleans, and many others. Although all these people were different, they were strongly connected by the catastrophe that had happened in New Orleans and they all had a story to share. Conversing and listening to them was an amazing experience for me since I come from a country where sharing of emotions is considered to be almost a shame. All the people we met were very sincere when telling us about the return home after Katrina, how terrified they were to see what had happened with their houses and with their city where they had resided from generation to generation. The wife of the president of the Federation told us how happy she and her husband were to find parts of their children’s Bar and Bat-Mitzvah pictures, how wonderful it was to realize that they could live at home again, and how terrible the feeling was that everything they owned had been destroyed by the Hurricane.
There is no way that people will forget about the horrors of Katrina, but it is of vital importance to remember that this catastrophe offered so many opportunities for the people of New Orleans, chances to start new lives, chances to become stronger and strengthen their will and beliefs. I am sure that people who were lucky to survive that terrible hurricane value every moment of their lives much more than they previously did.
-Ira Gubenko
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