National Disaster Interfaith Services, based in New York City, is a faith-based network provides training for clergy, religious leaders and faith-based groups, to help them plan for responding to disasters, and helps with recovery when a disaster does occur. Contact through executive director Peter Gudaitis.

Rabbi Mendel Lifshitz and his wife, Esther, direct Chabad Jewish Center of Idaho in Boise. The center is part of Chabad Lubavitch, a New York community of Hasidim.

Rabbi Daniel Fink leads Congregation Ahavath Beth Israel, a Reform congregation in Boise, Idaho. He is an expert on Jewish environmentalism.

Rabbi Harold Loss leads the 12,000 members of Temple Israel, a Reform congregation in Bloomfield, Mich.

Read a June 26, 2006, story from WLOX television about how First Baptist Church of Pass Christian, Miss., is managing to hold Vacation Bible School this summer in a trailer with help from a Baptist church in Florida.

Read the transcript of an April 19, 2006, Online NewsHour show from PBS about how New Orleans’ pastors were preaching Easter sermons about resurrection and new life. The program also describes the financial difficulties of many parishes in the area, the pain it causes when a congregation closes, and how the decision of a parish to hold on and […]

Read a March 15, 2006, story from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America News Service about Katrina’s impact on Lutheran congregations along the Gulf Coast.

Rabbi Jonathan Schick is an adjunct philosophy and Jewish studies professor at the University of North Texas in Denton. He is an expert on Jewish education and has served as headmaster of two Jewish prep schools. He writes a monthly ethics column.

Lee Shai Weissbach is a history professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. He is an expert on small-town Jewish life in America, especially in the South, where surveys show traditional observance tends to be lower than in other areas.