March 4, 2011 - Trip Reflections by Josh Berlowitz - (The Unabridged Version)

After five years on the Gulf Coast trip, not much surprises me.  I've seen the slabs of foundations and rundown houses.  I've witnessed the happy and thankful faces of the people we touch.  So the thing that struck me this year was change.  When I first went on the Mitzvat Mississippi trip in 7th grade, I was one of the youngest of over fifty people from four religious organizations, around five of whom had gone down to the Gulf Coast before on a relief mission.

This year, less than half of our team of twenty-three was traveling for the first time.  However, more prevalent than the difference in our group makeup is the transformation down on the coast.  Unlike most, I've seen the coast change over time.  I remember when we first went to Camp Coast Care to get supplies year two when the camp was an enormous complex with hundreds of volunteers.  I remember how we had race each other into the camp for showers year three because there were none where we stayed.  And I recall going to Blizzard Beach across the street nearly every day that year and the year after, when some of us destroyed Camp Coast Care.

This year, that spot is home to an arts center.  A brand new building dedicated to the improvement of the community through the arts. Yet on that road filled with shiny new buildings, there are still the sheets of foundation without houses, the rundown buildings nobody has come to claim, and the overgrown lawns that no one has tended in years, all of which I've become accustomed to seeing.  A new experience for me this year was when the director of the Lower Ninth Ward Community Center told us his story about his dedication to his community and how many of his friends and neighbors have still not returned home.  This made me think of Rabbi Tarphon’s words when he said that "We cannot complete the work; neither are we free to desist from it.

Even though our group, the landscape, the community, and the times may have changed, there is still work to be done in repairing the Gulf Coast. We cannot and will not complete the work, yet it is still our duty to travel down year after year and make a dent in the workload. Eventually, the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast will be complete,  however without each of us doing our own part; it won’t be in the foreseeable future.