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This article is based on extensive interviews and on-site reporting for the latest installment in our Holy Ground series featuring stories of Jewish resilience and reinvention across America.
NEW ORLEANS — By the time a trumpet player rose from the pews, candy was already flying through the sanctuary.
Children scrambled across the bimah beneath Touro Synagogue’s green-and-gold dome while the crowd clapped to the music and a 13-year-old boy in orange Nike sneakers stood beside his mom before two open Torah scrolls — one for the bar mitzvah boy, the other for his mother, who was 47, a recent convert celebrating her adult bat mitzvah.
By the end of services, congregants carrying guitars, flutes, and tambourines had transformed the sanctuary into something resembling a Mardi Gras second line.
In most American synagogues, this would have felt unusual. At Touro, located along the famous parade route, it felt nearly routine.
Across the country, congregations are shrinking, aging and consolidating. Denominational loyalty is weakening. Younger Jews are less likely to join synagogues at all. But here in New Orleans, Jewish communal life has experienced an unlikely revival.
New Orleans still carries Katrina in its census numbers. The city still has roughly 25% fewer residents than before the storm. Its Black population, while still the majority, has dropped most significantly. Jewish New Orleans, overwhelmingly white, tells a different story. Community leaders say the Jewish population has rebounded to — and perhaps surpassed — pre-Katrina levels.
The revival was driven partly by generational turnover. After the 2005 hurricane, many older New Orleans Jews decided not to return, choosing instead to spend retirement near children an …
