NEW ORLEANS – Satisfied that most of his congregants were safe, the rabbi began to worry about the Torahs.

Rabbi Yisroel Shiff of Congregation Beth Israel in New Orleans hoped that his Orthodox synagogue’s holy scrolls would come through Hurricane Katrina undamaged. But if not, he wanted them buried in the appropriate manner.

“We bury them with honor, as we would someone we care about – the Torah is the life’s blood of our community,” Rabbi Shiff said.

The rabbi, who evacuated to Tennessee before Katrina hit, knew that the temple near the shores of Lake Pontchartrain had been flooded. But, he said, “we believe in miracles. Maybe the water didn’t reach the scrolls.”

He called Rabbi Isaac Leider, who had spent five years in Israel with the search-and-rescue squad Zak’a, performing sacramental cleanup duties at bus bombings and other sites. Rabbi Leider – who also volunteered his services at the World Trade Center, the TWA Flight 800 crash site and other tragedies – now works with a Jewish ambulance service in New York City and New Jersey.

He had come to New Orleans to make sure that the bodies of any Jews who died as a result of Hurricane Katrina were treated according to religious law. But he also focused on the task of retrieving the congregation’s holy scrolls.

Rabbi Shiff said at least one of the Torahs had been there when he attended the synagogue as a child – he doesn’t know exactly how old the scrolls are.

“We had them appraised and were told our scrolls are much older than 100 years,” he said. “They must have come from Europe. The congregation is 101 years old, and they have been with them at least that long.”

Often, Torahs are the most valuable artifacts of a Jewish congregation. A new Torah scroll can cost $50,000. Older scrolls – and many are hundreds of years old – often are worth much more.

But their value is not based on the material.

“The Torah is the basis of the Jewish religion,” Rabbi Leider said. “Last week, we were saving lives, but once that was done, this became just as important.”

“The Torah is not stored in a computer file; we don’t copy them on copy machines,” said Rabbi Shlomo Gertzulin, vice president of Agudath Israel of America, an association of several hundred Orthodox congregations that sponsored Rabbi Leider’s recovery efforts. “They are only written by the most devout and knowledgeable scribes.”

And when they are damaged beyond repair – by fire or flood, for example – they must be buried according to Jewish tradition.

There were about 10,000 Jews in New Orleans. Many of their families had lived there since the 19th century, emigrating from Europe to open businesses in what was then a thriving port city.

Several other Jewish organizations, including a large Orthodox group based in New York, Chabad, also sent squads of rabbis and recovery specialists to retrieve the precious texts; funds are being raised for further efforts.

Congregation Beth Israel is on the northern edge of the city, a few blocks from Lake Pontchartrain; it sits between two canals.

Rabbi Leider and the rescue team climbed aboard a pair of rubber rafts with outboard motors and started toward the synagogue through flooded streets, barred in places by brambles and rusting cars. They drifted past stately homes, all flooded and empty, marked with red spray paint to indicate that they had been searched.

Wearing waist-high rubber waders and a yarmulke, Rabbi Leider followed the rescue squad into the synagogue and made his way to the sanctuary. The wooden door swung open, slowed by the water.

The rabbi waded to the front of the hall and opened the ark that held six Torah scrolls. He also found a white prayer shawl and the silver adornments for the scrolls.

“Out of six, only two are restorable,” Rabbi Leider said. “I’m glad that we did this, but I’m disappointed. It’s bad to see them in this condition.”