Julian Henri Preisler is an archivist and genealogist in the Eastern Panhandle region of West Virginia. He formerly ran a website about West Virginia Jewish history.

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.”

The Gulf Coast region includes many religious influences – among them, evangelical Protestantism and strong Catholicism, intertwined with a deeply Southern sense of family rootedness and place. Read a Sept. 18, 2005, story from The Boston Globe about the “distinctively Southern” nature of Katrina’s impact, and about how some people have responded in religious terms.

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.

Gershon Greenberg is a professor in philosophy and religion at American University in Washington, D.C., where he specializes in Jewish philosophy and thought, especially in America.

Sharon Flatto is an assistant professor in Judaic studies at Brooklyn College in New York, where she specializes in modern Jewish thought and the Kabbalah. She teaches courses in modern Jewish history and thought and in Hasidism.