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The Charlotte Jewish News - November 2018 - Page 14 JCRVs Refugee Dinner When the Stranger Becomes Your Neighbor, Fellow Citizen, Friend The Jewish Community Refugee Initiative (JCRI) held its Welcoming the Stranger to the Table kick off diimer for National Refugee Shabbat 2018 on October 7 at Temple Israel. The diimer, made possible by an Impact and Innova tion grant of the Jewish Federation of Greater Char lotte, was sold out with nearly 140 people in atten dance. Temple Israel’s sukkah had been disassembled the Peter Hindel, member of Temple Beth El, and Syrian refugee Basher Mansour and his mother Ezhour Al Sokkari morning of October 7. Yet that evening. Rabbi Murray Ezring, standing in front of a packed Leon and Sandra Levine Social Hall, used his invocation to ex plain to the audience of refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, seated be side members of the Jewish community, that Sukkot is a joyous hol iday where, under tem porary fragile dwell ings, we remember that we are the children and descendants of refu gees, and that makes us love each other and all people and be aware of our sacred obligations towards the stranger. Before the serv ing of a Middle-Eastern dinner, Amy Lefkof, Co-Chair of JCRI, introduced two refugee couples: a Jewish couple from the former Soviet Union who were resettled in the United States in 1991 by HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), and a young Kurdish couple from Northern Iraq, resettled in 2014 in Charlotte by HIAS’s local af filiate Carolina Refugee Resettle ment Agency. The audience was told HIAS asks us to join them in helping today’s refugees, not be cause the refugees are Jewish, but because we are. To help those ref ugees in attendance, JCRI mem ber David Cohen explained how net proceeds from the evening would help these refugees pay down their relocation expenses. Keynote speaker, Merrill Zack, how consistent low ceiling numbers erode the U.S. infrastracture for refugee resettlement. Rabbi Judy Schindler, Director of the Stan Green- spon Center for Peace and Social Justice, whose fam ily was assisted by HIAS when they arrived at Ellis Island in 1938, appealed to the Jewish communi ty’s collective conscience by recalling how Jews on board the St. Louis, filled with Holocaust refugees, turned away, and 254 of were those passengers were murdered on their return to Europe. She warned: “Xenophobia is danger ous and will impact not only our foreign neighbors, but all of us.” Citing the book she co-au- thored with Judy Seldin-Cohen, Recharging Judaism, Rabbi Schindler laid out a ladder of civic engagement for helping refugees, encouraging members Fruitful Friend Zanib Rashid, a Kurdish refugee from Iraq, with Amy Lefkof, co-chair of JCRI. HIAS Senior Director of Com munity Engagement, explained how current United States immi gration and refugee policies are causing pain to refugees overseas and asylees at our southern bor der. Despite the fact that current refugee numbers surpass even those of post WWll, Zack an nounced that for fiscal year 2019, President Tramp set the refugee admissions god at an all-time low of 30,000 refugees. She noted that this number is just a ceiling; the goal in FY 2018 was 45,000, but less than half that number was admitted. Zack explained Jewish Community Refugee Initiative program for Welcoming the Stranger to the Table dinner. of the audience to step up some where on the ladder: volunteering with local refugee organizations, educating themselves by reading articles on immigration policy, donating to help with resettle ment costs, advocating by call ing elected officials or a letter to the editor, organizing by work ing with agencies trying to raise the refugee admissions ceiling, and joining a national movement working towards immigration re form. Theresa Matheny, from Ref ugee Support Services (RSS), explained RSS’s Fruitful Friend program which pairs local refu gees with American families. At almost every table that evening, a Jewish Fruitful Friend family sat next to their refugee family. Peter Hindel, a member of Temple Beth El, and Basher Mansour, a Syri an refugee whose torture left him wheelchair-bound, were one pair who came to the stage. Mansour explained his arduous journey from Syria to a Jordanian refugee camp to the U.S. He said he loves Peter and Linda Hindel like fami ly and credited Peter with getting him needed physical therapy. Marsha Hirsh, Director of Carolina Refugee Resettlement Agency (CRRA), HIAS’s local affiliate, spoke how refugees be come contributors to our commu nity. Since 1996, Charlotte has welcomed over 10,000 refugees through the assistance of CRRA and Catholic Charities. Hirsch point ed out how refugee resettlement is a pub lic-private partnership that requires hours of volunteerism and local donations of clothes and household items. The end result: “That stranger becomes your neighbor and eventual ly your fellow citizen” and “they also become your friend.” The evening concluded with Temple Beth El’s Rabbi Asher Knight explaining why the Torah portion Lech L’cha “Go, move from here” was chosen for Na tional Refugee Shabbat. Not only did Abraham and Sarah “set out on a journey that took them from the land that they had known to an unfamiliar land and a new fu ture,” but one midrash explains If you were unable to attend the refugee dinner, but would like more information about refugee issues, or would like to volunteer or make a donation to one of the organizations that were represented at the dinner, here is the contact info: Stan Greenspon Center for Peach and Social Justice: www.stangreenspon- center.org Refugee Support Services: WWW. refu g ees u p po rtse r- vices.org Carolina Refugee Resettlement Agency: www.carolinarefugee.org HIAS: www.hias.org/ getinvolved Jewish Community Refugee Initiative: www.charlottejcri.org; aflefkof@carolina.rr.com that the reason Abraham left his father’s home was because “he was dissatisfied with the world he saw around him.” Employing Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s phrase “sacred discontenf’ to describe the impetns for Abraham’s jonr- ney “a protest that the world is not as it onght to be,” Rabbi Knight nrged the andience to “Go, move from here; being complacent is not an option.” Together, former refugees and members of the Jewish commnni- ty left, perhaps walking, as Rab bi Knight nrged, “towards the world as it should be, a world of wholeness and holiness, a world of promise and possibility.”*^* Photos courtesy of Lawonna Daves. Moishe House: WE ARE 2018! By Rachel Southmayd, Moishe House Communications Manager There are a lot of people ont there who like to talk abont what millennials don’t do. We don’t participate in organized Jewish life, we don’t take on leadership roles in onr commnnities, we don’t give philanthropically of onr time or onr money. All dne respect to those people, bnt they’ve clearly never heard of Moishe Honse, especially not Moishe Honse’s aimnal WE ARE campaign. More than 300 days of the year, Moishe Honse residents and Moishe Honse Withont Walls (MHWOW) hosts work to cre ate the most interesting and en gaging Jewish programming for their peers. Meanwhile, a team of Moishe Honse staff and lay lead ers work to identify and maintain relationships with federations, fonndations, and individnal do nors who believe in the yonng adnlts all over the world who are creating their own Jewish com mnnities. Bnt for six weeks of the year we flip that script. We ask Moishe Honse residents, commnnity members, and MHWOW hosts to think of all of the time and money that Moishe Honse has invested in them over the conrse of the year and make a meaningful gift to the organization. We ask them to snpport their own honses and MHWOW and show that they believe in the mission and vision of Moishe Honse - Jewish yonng adnlts taking charge and leading the way in developing incredible, rich, nniqne commnnities - jnst as mnch as any other donor. WE ARE matters not becanse of the dollars raised, althongh we have a goal of $110,000 in 2018, bnt becanse of the nnmber of peo ple who come together to make it happen. We had more than 1,900 donations last year, from far-flnng places all over the world. The vast majority of them are 20-some things, or their friends and fami ly members. The people who ran and attend Moishe Honse pro grams are the same people who are donating. We believe in these people and every year dnring WE ARE, they show that they believe in ns. And we conldn’t be more grateful. The 2018 WE ARE cam paign lannched on October 3. Be part of Moishe Honse’s largest single fundraising campaign yet by visiting www.moishehonse. org/weare.*5* WEn ^ ADC When hurricane Florence hit the coast of North Carolina, many people were left without resources. In order to get kosher food to the Jewish community, Bentzion Groner enlisted the help of a heli copter pilot he knew and hadfood delivered to the Chabad. Here he is seen packing some of the boxes before the flight took off. Photo courtesy Rabbi Yossi Groner.
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