Jews for New Orleans

Sharing a meal

Corps members live communally in their Jefferson Avenue house uptown

Purim Masks

Corps members prepare for Purim celebrations by creating masks

Planting trees in Central City

Rachel Glicksman works with residents to beautify the neighborhood

Celebrating Chanukah

Corps members welcomed coworkers and community members to their home

Learning about Bayou Bienvenue

Alum David Eber teaches the group about deforestation in the cypress swamps

Highlighting the Jewish Community's Involvement in Rebuilding New Orleans

This site is hosted by AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, which launched its New Orleans program in the fall of 2008. AVODAH engages young people in direct work on the causes and effects of poverty in the United States. This work partners Corps members with service providers and residents in low income communities and equips our Corps members and alumni to emerge as lifelong agents for social change, whose work for justice is rooted in and nourished by Jewish values.

Author Archive

Jordan Aiken, from Pasadena, CA, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where she majored in Mass Communications and minored in Global Poverty. Jordan spent a semester in Cape Town, South Africa, where she volunteered with Art Aids Art. She continued to work with the organization after returning to California, by establishing its first university chapter and coordinating fundraisers and workshops. Jordan will be working as the Employment Program Coordinator at the New Orleans Women's Shelter, a facility for women and children in the Upper 9th Ward of New Orleans that provides temporary emergency shelter and food. The shelter is a family-style transitional women and children’s home with a focus on helping women stabilize, obtain proper medical treatment and other locally available social services to move onto successful independent living.

Intersection of Identities

May 3rd, 2010 by Jordan Aiken | 0

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Nehirim West, an LGBT Jewish Culture and Spirituality retreat on a ranch outside of San Francisco, CA. As the weeks led up to it and I was getting excited to attend, I kept thinking about how the group would consist of people with very intense similar experiences. Many [...]

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Experiencing Simultaneity

Nov 19th, 2009 by Jordan Aiken | 0

Over the past few weeks I’ve felt excited, nervous, joyous, scared, passionate, confused, ambitious, courageous… sometimes all in the same day and sometimes all in the same hour! It’s such an incredible city with so much to explore and so much that prompts self-exploration. I am tested daily on how I react to different situations, [...]

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Appreciating the Neighborhood

Sep 22nd, 2009 by Jordan Aiken | 0

On my first exploration of this incredible city, I was immediately taken by the varying shapes, sizes, colors and textures of the homes. I fell in love with the vibrantly colored shotgun houses as we were introduced to the 9th Ward. To me, they represent beacons of passion and audacity, traits they seem [...]

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