Yossi Nemes

Rabbi Nemes was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, where he attended yeshiva high school.  After high school, Nemes studied in yeshivas in Johannesburg and then in Brooklyn, where he was ordained.  Rabbi Names moved to New Orleans in 1990 to start a Metairie Chabad Center after completing advanced studies and marrying his wife Chanie, with whom he has six daughters and a son.  Rabbi Nemes is very well respected and admired in the larger Jewish community.

Scope and Content Note

Rabbi Yossi Nemes, the Brooklyn-born director of the Chabad Center in Metairie, New Orleans, relates his experiences of staying in New Orleans through Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, hiding on the second floor of his two-story brick house with twelve friends and relatives after the ground floor became flooded.  They were able to escape only after the water was pumped out and then drove to Memphis, where they were supported by the Jewish community.  Despite these losses and trials, he shows incredible optimism and generosity, speaks lovingly of his wife and characterizes the New Orleans Jewish community affectionately.  Highlights of the interview include a story about his impromptu kosher barbeque on the highway while hundreds of people waited in traffic to buy gas, how he rescued his elderly neighbors and his thoughts on Hasidic teachings and faith.

 

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How to cite this page

Oral History of Yossi Nemes. Interviewed by Rosalind Hinton. 13 July 2007. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on December 2, 2024) <https://jwa.org/oralhistories/nemes-yossi>.

Oral History of Yossi Nemes by the Jewish Women's Archive is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://jwa.org/contact/OralHistory.