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April 3, 2009
A little southern hospitality
A revitalized New Orleans has much to offer Jewish tourists.
LORNE MALLIN
New Orleans
Like the "Shalom Y'all" T-shirt in English and Hebrew at the Kosher Cajun Deli, New Orleans makes you feel very welcome and offers some unique attractions for Jewish visitors.
I flew here from Vancouver at the same time as my daughter, Lisa, arrived from Ottawa, where she's in grad school. We were greeted by Morrie Bishop, a Louisiana cousin we had never met. In fact, we didn't know we had southern Jewish family until Morrie's family tree popped up on the Internet with 9,600 names, including my own.
Our arrival coincided with the first night of Chanukah, which we celebrated by lighting candles with Morrie and his sister, Alana. We lit the menorah in a lovely guest apartment in a Decatur Street building that Alana and her husband, Jim Monaghan, own next door to their watering hole, Molly's at the Market, in the historic French Quarter.
Morrie and Alana's late father, Crawford Alexander Bishop, was Catholic. Their Jewish mother, Arlene, and her sister, Deanna, had the maiden name Epstein. We trace our common ancestry through Israel and Kunya Shuer, who were the parents of my grandfather, Abraham Shuer, and Arlene's grandmother, Anna Victoria (Shuer) Epstein.
It was such a delight to meet our cousins, who were very gracious hosts. The next day, Morrie took us to the Kosher Cajun Deli in Metairie, a suburb to the west of New Orleans, where we enjoyed potato and sweet potato latkes and a kosher twist on New Orleans' famous Po'boy sandwiches – "shrimp" (fried fish, really) served on a sub loaf with cocktail sauce, lettuce and tomato. Nearby is Casablanca, a kosher Moroccan restaurant.
One of New Orleans' tastiest attractions, Café du Monde, has recently been certified kosher. It serves the best beignets (a kind of French doughnut) and café au lait in the French Quarter. Until Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2003, the Quarter also featured the Kosher Creole Kitchen, but the owners left the city after the flood.
Before Katrina, there were about 9,500 Jews. That fell to 6,000 at the start of 2005. But the population is back up to about 7,500, in part because of a newcomers' incentive plan that has attracted "about 650 Jews, mostly young, many from the northeast," Michael Weil, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, told New York's Jewish Week newspaper. "And many are moved by the idea of tikkun olam (repairing the world); they feel, as we do, that today, New Orleans is Jewish pioneering country."
That spirit attracts many Jews as "voluntourists" – volunteer tourists who spend all or part of their vacation doing good work. The opportunities to help rebuild New Orleans are still there. One can explore the possibilities online at www.jews4neworleans.org/tag/rebuilding-together-new-orleans.
Lisa and I helped build a house through Habitat for Humanity, served Christmas dinner to 300 seniors, and volunteered at a New Orleans Hornets NBA game, where we were thrilled to see them play the L.A. Lakers.
New Orleans is a fun place to visit. We enjoyed great food and exciting music, both in the French Quarter and in neighboring Faubourg Marigny, where we caught jazz at the Spotted Cat and ate a deep-fried turkey dinner at 13, which is another place owned by my cousins.
We also enjoyed being Jewish tourists. Some of the highlights:
• The New Orleans Holocaust Memorial, in Woldenberg Park on the bank of the Mississippi River, is a striking visual prayer in memory of the six million Jews killed. The sculpture is made up of nine panels, each with different designs. As you view the sculpture from different angles, the designs on the panels meld to form 10 distinct images. The Israeli artist, Yaacov Agam, is a pioneer of kinetic art.
• The local Chabad House hosted an entertaining olive press workshop, plus a Chanukah dinner. Rabbi Mendel Rivkin involved several participants in preparing the press and squeezing fresh oil. It was a treat to light a large menorah outside in shirtsleeves in the balmy weather.
• The many Jewish cemeteries are a window into the city's Jewish heritage. We explored one called Chevra Thilim Cemetery on Canal Street with interesting headstones dating back into the 19th century.
• The National World War II Museum is fascinating on its own, but we also were able to see Lives Remembered: Photographs of a Small Town in Poland 1897-1939, a travelling exhibition by the Holocaust Museum Houston. It illustrates Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust through more than 100 photos of Szczuczyn, Poland. It closed Jan. 30.
• We toured plantations and homes, including the Hermann-Grima House, which was originally home to a Jewish merchant named Samuel Hermann. The elegant 1831 French Quarter residence, with former slave quarters at the back, has been designated as a national historic landmark.
• Lisa and I were privileged on a Shabbat morning to be called to the Torah at Touro Synagogue, a Reform congregation in the Garden District that traces its roots to 1828 and is named after the philanthropist Judah Touro.
At first, New Orleans had Jews, but no Judaism. In the 18th century, Sephardi Jews, escaping the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, took a circuitous route to the French colony of Louisiana. They were subject to the infamous Code Noir, which formally banished Jewish settlers. A few people remained in contravention to the code and lived secretly as Jews.
While the Jewish world here has ebbed and flowed over the many decades since, today's Jews of New Orleans are determined to have a strong future.
Lorne Mallin is a Vancouver freelance writer and editor.
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