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.

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.

Michael Weil heads the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. The federation is working to revitalize the local Jewish community in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which cut the city’s Jewish population by one-third.

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.

Riv-Ellen Prell is a history professor and chair of the American studies program at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. She is an expert on women in Judaism and is the editor of Women Remaking American Judaism. She says Jews should be concerned with effectively understanding the meaning of change in Jewish life, including intermarriage, falling birth […]

Ellen Smith is a lecturer in Near Eastern and Judaic studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. She is also principal of Museumsmith, a firm that helps museums with exhibitions and historic site interpretations. She has helped mount numerous exhibits on Jewish culture throughout the country.