Jack Kugelmass is an anthropology professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he is also director of its Jewish studies center. He specializes in American and European Jewry, Israel and Jews in New York.

Read an April 4, 2006, Beliefnet story from a Katrina survivor who writes that “the only thing that keeps me sane is knowing that God has a purpose for me.”

Jonathan Hess is director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Its faculty members are drawn from the humanities and social sciences.

Andrea Greenbaum is an associate professor of English at Barry University in Miami Shores, Fla. She is the editor of Jews of South Florida and is also an expert on Jewish graphic novels.

Gallup provides polling and analysis on dozens of pressing topics in the United States, many of which involve religion.

Rabbi Martin Beifield Jr. leads Congregation Beth Ahabah, a Reform synagogue in Richmond, Va. He is an expert in Jewish-Christian relations and the impact of the Holocaust.

David Ruderman is director of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also a professor of modern Jewish history. Contact 215-238-1290.

Jonathan Helfand was a professor of modern Jewish history at Brooklyn College in New York until his retirement in 2012. He specialized in French Jewry.

The Arab American Institute (AAI) is a nonprofit organization committed to the civic and political empowerment of Americans of Arab descent through campaigns and elections as well as policy formulation and research.