New weird rumor- N.O. Jews got out sooner than most.

[FriarTed]

A friend in the NW told me that a businesslady told her that a Jewish man in the New Orleans area had a revelation of how bad Katrina would be, and alerted his fellows to evacuate before it hit the fan. My friend turned it around on the lady & wondered if they might have caused Katrina & got out before just like with the WTC on 9-11. (My friend is quite the joker.)

Now on a Christian discussion board, I saw some talk about N. O. Jewish folk evacuating very early. I figured I'd do a google to refute things & came up with this-

http://www.jewishrochester.org/conte...ticleID=161550

Not exactly confirmation, but a bit odd.

[Stephe96]

Funny!

[clairobscur]

Originally Posted by FriarTed

http://www.jewishrochester.org/conte...ticleID=161550

I don't see anything in this cite confirming this rumor, nor anything odd... Could you elaborate about what seem weird to you?

[Rufus Pfukke]

The news story in the link only talks about Jews because...it's a Jewish website. I don't understand how that would confirm such a stupid theory.

[Kimstu]

Only thing I can think of is that some observant Jews who were planning to evacuate might have left on or before Friday the 26th in order to avoid moving on the Sabbath (Saturday). Would that have constituted "leaving early"? Are there a significant number of New Orleans Jews who are "shomre Shabbes" enough to change their schedules in that way?

Absent any such effect, I'd figure such rumors to originate in nothing more than the usual "the Jews are to blame/profiting/unfairly benefiting" background noise that certain ignorant people generate whenever something bad happens.

(After all, even if Jews or any other group did evacuate early, wouldn't that be a good thing? Less crowding for everybody else during the more critical evacuation period.)

[astro]

This proves

1: Jews aren't idiots and
2: (usually) have enough money to make arrangements to get out of town

Oddly I'd didn't notice many Episcopalians in harms way either... coincidence? I think not! They've got money, weather radios and cars too.

[GorillaMan]

No doubt it's the usual crap. However, it would be possible to misuse statistics to 'prove' something - I'd presume that few of the overwhelmingly-black crowd in the Superdome were Jewish.

[alphaboi867]

Originally Posted by Kimstu

Only thing I can think of is that some observant Jews who were planning to evacuate might have left on or before Friday the 26th in order to avoid moving on the Sabbath (Saturday). Would that have constituted "leaving early"? Are there a significant number of New Orleans Jews who are "shomre Shabbes" enough to change their schedules in that way?
...

AFAIK travel as part of an evacution from a hurricane is a perfectly acceptly reason to violate Sabbath restrictions. Wouldn't most Jews in NO be in the upper and middle classes and have better access to transportation?

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by alphaboi867

AFAIK travel as part of an evacution from a hurricane is a perfectly acceptly reason to violate Sabbath restrictions. Wouldn't most Jews in NO be in the upper and middle classes and have better access to transportation?

That sounds like a better guess to me. What a weird rumor. There may be some truth to it, but I feel like it may have grown out of the Sept. 11 urban legend all the same.

[Kimstu]

Originally Posted by alphaboi

AFAIK travel as part of an evacution from a hurricane is a perfectly acceptly reason to violate Sabbath restrictions.

Yeah, I know, but I thought some observant Jews might figure that if they had the choice, they'd rather get out of town early and keep the Sabbath as they prefer.

And I tend to agree that most evacuating Jews probably just had a socioeconomic class advantage over poorer residents. And anything more sinister-sounding in rumors of Jews "getting out sooner" is most likely just born of low-level antisemitism.

[tomndebb]

One of the threads on this board actually had an assertion that one particular community of N.O. Jews chose to stay. I have found nothing on Google News and do not know what prompted that remark.

[swampbear]

Originally Posted by astro

This proves

1: Jews aren't idiots and
2: (usually) have enough money to make arrangements to get out of town

Oddly I'd didn't notice many Episcopalians in harms way either... coincidence? I think not! They've got money, weather radios and cars too.

Sure, smear the Episcopalians. Of course they got out early. After all, if they hadn't, all the good places for Sunday brunch in other places might have already had reservations. Do you want to face an angry Episcopalian who has no where to go for Sunday brunch? I thought so!

[astro]

Originally Posted by swampbear

Sure, smear the Episcopalians. Of course they got out early. After all, if they hadn't, all the good places for Sunday brunch in other places might have already had reservations. Do you want to face an angry Episcopalian who has no where to go for Sunday brunch? I thought so!

I can barely type I'm laughing so hard .

[Revtim]

This is simply a joke from the old 9/11 Jewish conspiracy rumors, I'm sure.

[GorillaMan]

Actually, if there was some Israeli-orchestrated evacuation, they did a pretty bad job

[elmwood]

The Unitarians are probably still debating their evacuation plans. They'll probably leave when the coffee runs out.

[Dr. Rieux]

Originally Posted by elmwood

The Unitarians are probably still debating their evacuation plans. They'll probably leave when the coffee runs out.

But first, they'll hold a potluck vegetarian brunch.

[FriarTed]

I didn't mean there was anything confirming the vision story or my friend's joke about Jewish conspiracy theory, but just that a good amount of the NO Jewish community got out quite soon. Incidentally, the Christian site I read the discussion on & the lady talking to my friend were not promoting this as a conspiracy theory but as a sign that the Jews were particularly blessed. (For all the complaints about C'tian Zionism not caring about them except as pawns in the End Times drama, there does exist among many Fundist C'tians a near-superstitious awe & favor towards them.)

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by FriarTed

(For all the complaints about C'tian Zionism not caring about them except as pawns in the End Times drama, there does exist among many Fundist C'tians a near-superstitious awe & favor towards them.)

The OT, or tradition, or both, does say that they are the chosen people.

[WhyNot]

The pagans are probably still there arguing over which way is East and who's got the corkscrew for the ceremonial mead...

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by WhyNot

The pagans are probably still there arguing over which way is East and who's got the corkscrew for the ceremonial mead...

The agnostics are probably arguing about whether or not there really is a flood, and if it's possible to know one way or the other...

[Noone Special]

It wasn't us this time! Everybody knows hurricanes are caused by butterflies in China flapping their wings... and there are hardly any Jews in China -- blame the Chinese for egging all those butterflies into flapping!

As a bonus, please note that there is a gorwing Muslim population in China. More muslims -> More butterflies flapping -> worse hurricanes... coincidence? I don't think so!

Dani

(disclaimer for the Black-Humor impaired: This is Black Humor. Deal with it)

[DanBlather]

The Baptists are rejoicing that so many people were baptised at once. The Catholic priests are setting up homes for young boys. The Mormons are distributing food from their pantries.

[NurseCarmen]

There was this guy named Moses, and they walked out of N.O.

[NurseCarmen]

In all seriousness, in my experience up here in Saint Paul, there is more of a sense of a jewish "Community". My son goes to the JCC (Jewish Community Center) for daycare, and there are old jewish ladies in my neighborhood that know who I am because he goes there. I suspect that the same is true in NO, and because of that they knew who was without transport and who needed help.

So I could believe that rumor.

[Huerta88]

I don't see this one making sense or having any staying power even as a rumor.

The WTC thing could convince a small number of people because the stakes were so high and the outcome so unexpected: Stay at home, all's cool, but go to work like 90% of your fellow building tenants, you're facing a completely unexpected calamity that puts you at sudden and significant threat of death. If anyone had had insider knowledge of this human-caused deathtrap, it'd have been extremely valuable.

Katrina:

(1) Was not human caused (even most fringe types would agree);
(2) Because not the result of any demonstrable secret plotting, provides little opportunity to plausibly theorize that some "insider" was privy to an preferentially used information about the plot (unlike the 9/11 story, where we know for sure there were at least 19 secret plotters, so the additional hypothesis that the Mossad or whatever got wind of that plot is within the realm of spy novel implausibility). As far as we know, everyone had equal access to NOAA and the Weather Channel, and made their own call.
(3) Most importantly, I think, was not a catastrophe in which "secret advance notice" was some sort of life-and-death advantage. Everyone knew things could get ugly in a direct hit.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html

The government told everyone to evacuate. They had 36 hours to do so. And almost everyone who wanted to did. Not too many photos came out of the last Hebrew-laden helicopters departing a desperate N.O. while Gentiles clutched at the landing struts. So, I don't get it. Even if some Jewish guy got his theoretical secret tip-off, it didn't give him much meaningful advantage (except maybe getting a nicer room by arriving at the Memphis Motel 6 earlier?) over the Aryans 'left behind,' because not many were. The small number of people who didn't evacuate when repeatedly told to do were the sick and decrepit and utterly poor (and, let's face it, the stupid and venal), who probably had and have far worse immediate problems than a (remarkably pointless) Zionist conspiracy.

[Huerta88]

Er, for the hyperlink to make a little (no, a lot) more sense, substitute:

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3kt.htm

[Beware of Doug]

This is ironic to me. The one person I actually know who's been holing up in NO is Jewish. He's a musician and instrument dealer who's apparently a bit of a survivalist – he'd stocked food, water and such and claimed to be packing heat to guard his shop...

[Nametag]

Originally Posted by Noone Special

It wasn't us this time! Everybody knows hurricanes are caused by butterflies in China flapping their wings... and there are hardly any Jews in China -- blame the Chinese for egging all those butterflies into flapping!

As a bonus, please note that there is a gorwing Muslim population in China. More muslims -> More butterflies flapping -> worse hurricanes... coincidence? I don't think so!

Pfft. Nice straw man y'got there. Everyone knows that hurricanes are caused by butterflies in BRAZIL. Which, as everyone knows, has a thriving Jewish population.

[Miller]

Originally Posted by Huerta88

(1) [Hurricane Katrina] was not human caused (even most fringe types would agree)

Of course it wasn't. Everyone knows Dick Cheney isn't human!

Originally Posted by FriarTed

(For all the complaints about C'tian Zionism not caring about them except as pawns in the End Times drama, there does exist among many Fundist C'tians a near-superstitious awe & favor towards them.)

The first thing I thought of when I read the OP was the twelve plagues of Egypt. (It was twelve, right? I can never remember if it was twelve plagues and seven dwarves, or seven plagues and twelve dwarves. I can never keep my plagues and dwarves straight.) I'm wondering if this rumor got started as one of those "Katrina was God's Righteous Judgement on the Wicked" stories going around, with "The Jews got out early" tacked on as proof that God tipped a wink about the coming catastrophe to his chosen people.

The other thing I'm thinking is that, of all the religious groups out there, the Jews are probably the least likely to stay put and expect God to keep them safe. From previous experience, I expect they'd know better by now.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by Miller

The first thing I thought of when I read the OP was the twelve plagues of Egypt. (It was twelve, right? I can never remember if it was twelve plagues and seven dwarves, or seven plagues and twelve dwarves. I can never keep my plagues and dwarves straight.)

I'm pretty sure it was ten plagues.

[jshore]

Originally Posted by Marley23

I'm pretty sure it was ten plagues.

For you, we have a special deal...2 extra for the same price! What's not to like?!?!

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by jshore

For you, we have a special deal...2 extra for the same price! What's not to like?!?!

What great timing! I know exactly who I'd like to hit with two plagues right about now.

[Alessan]

Originally Posted by Nametag

Pfft. Nice straw man y'got there. Everyone knows that hurricanes are caused by butterflies in BRAZIL. Which, as everyone knows, has a thriving Jewish population.

As well as escaped Nazi war criminals.





The plot thickens.

[Helen's Eidolon]

You try staying in the path of an oncoming hurricane when your Jewish mother has your phone number.

[OliverTwistofLime]

Originally Posted by tomndebb

One of the threads on this board actually had an assertion that one particular community of N.O. Jews chose to stay. I have found nothing on Google News and do not know what prompted that remark.

Dear Friends,

Like all of you, I have watched on television the devastation Hurricane Katrina has caused in New Orleans and the communities along the Gulf Coast. Although the full scope of its impact is only now being assessed, in addition to significant loss of life, literally everyone in the region has been somehow affected.

United Jewish Communities, our umbrella organization, has been active in working closely with the Jewish Federation in New Orleans, which has set up temporary headquarters at the Houston Federation. Miraculously, they are already offering immediate relief services to those along the Gulf Coast, as well as planning for the long-term rehabilitation of these communities.

There are almost 10,000 full-time Jewish residents in New Orleans, not to mention a large population of Jewish students attending colleges in the area. Approximate! ly half of the full time residents evacuated their homes in advance of the storm, but not everyone was able to leave. The vast majority of the homes of members of the Jewish community have been destroyed. As of today, 300 residents of the Jewish Home for the Aging need emergency evacuation. At least one synagogue in New Orleans, Shaar Hadash, is under water, and another is heavily damaged. The JCC and communal services building has been destroyed. The need for cash assistance, temporary housing, access to health care and personal counseling are enormous. Beyond New Orleans, the Jewish communities in Mobile, Biloxi and throughout the region also have similar needs.

As a Jewish community that has experienced our own share of natural disasters, we are all well aware of the importance of assistance from the broader American Jewish community. Today, I have in consultation with other senior lay leaders, instructed our President to disburse $100,000 from ! monies approved for allocation by the JFC Board. These funds were part of the contingency reserve, set aside for unexpected needs such as this disaster. The funds have been sent to the United Jewish Communities to be utilized in the most effective way possible as they begin to address the highest-priority needs.

We have also opened up a special relief fund so that members of the Los Angeles Jewish community can assist our fellow Jewish communities in the Gulf Coast. I am happy to report that we have already received some generous unsolicited donations.

To make an online donation please click here and specify "UJF-Hurricane Relief Fund" in the pull-down menu on the New Pledge and Payment screen. In addition, donations can also be made by calling 323-761-8200 or sending a check to The Jewish Federation, 6505 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90048, made payable to "The Jewish Federation" with the words "Hurricane Relief Fund" in the memo line. All contributions will be solely used for this purpose.

We hope you will share this information with your family friends and colleagues. I know that our Jewish community will respond to this disaster with compassion and generosity.

Thank you.

Harriet Hochman
Chair of the Board
The Jewish Federation

[Nametag]

Originally Posted by Alessan

As well as escaped Nazi war criminals.





The plot thickens.

The escaped Nazis are in Argentina, you...you.. olive loaf!

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by Nametag

The escaped Nazis are in Argentina, you...you.. olive loaf!

Not just Argentina, though.

[SuaSponte]

Originally Posted by LaurAnge

You try staying in the path of an oncoming hurricane when your Jewish mother has your phone number.

OK, I declare this the funniest post in a thread chock full of funny posts.

Sua

[Miller]

Originally Posted by Marley23

I'm pretty sure it was ten plagues.

That's all well and good, but what about the dwarves?

[Sampiro]

Originally Posted by Miller

That's all well and good, but what about the dwarves?

1. They prefer to be called LITTLE AMERICANS.

2. They all got out in the same little bitty car. You should have seen them all getting out of it- it was the cutest thing you ever saw!


Jehovah's Witnesses are unfortunately left behind, but for the first time the doors they're knocking on aren't getting slammed in their face.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by Miller

That's all well and good, but what about the dwarves?

They're in the fifth innning, and the score is Plagues 10, Dwarves 7.

[David Simmons]

Originally Posted by astro

This proves

1: Jews aren't idiots and
2: (usually) have enough money to make arrangements to get out of town

Why invent reasons for something that we don't know even happened?

[Rufus Xavier]

Originally Posted by Marley23

They're in the fifth innning, and the score is Plagues 10, Dwarves 7.

Now standing at the plate: Dopey. Dopey is 1 for 3 with a walk and a single.

Sleepy is in the on-deck circle. Actually, he's lying down in the on-deck circle.

Boils looks in to get the sign. Here's the windup and the pitch.

Dopey hits a sharp line drive to Cattle Disease. Cattle Disease makes a nice play and fires over to Killing of the First Born.

One away.

Now the coach of the Plagues is yelling at Sleepy to wake up and take his turn at bat.

What a game!

[middleman]

Originally Posted by FriarTed

A friend in the NW told me that a businesslady told her that a Jewish man in the New Orleans area had a revelation of how bad Katrina would be, and alerted his fellows to evacuate before it hit the fan.

Yes. The secret Jewish prophecy known as CNN!