I know it constantly afflicts me, no matter how much I pray to HaShem.
I just think that these sponsoring rabbis and congregations should be forced to house these Muslims in their own homes for life. Let them experience the strength of Islam good and hard.
I’m shocked to find that there is nothing in the following article that mentions Israel. Apparently the Jewish state has no obligation to bring in people who are likely to hate it. Only gentile states must swallow such poison according to the rabbis. Nor do the rabbis trouble themselves to make an argument on how the importation of Syrian refugees will help their new countries. Such rabbis don’t give a damn about the well-being of the naive gentile countries that give them a home.
Chaim Amalek: “They should focus on welcoming Palestinians into Israel.”
The rabbis don’t try to make a moral case for Open Borders For Israel, only the goyim must be unable to defend themselves.
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz (second from left), his wife Shoshana and two children host a newly arrived Syrian refugee family to Phoenix for Thanksgiving, November 26, 2015.
US rabbis envy Canadian counterparts’ chance to welcome refugees
While Canadian clergy help sponsor newly arriving Syrians, frustrated American rabbis focus on advocacy and education
As the first planeloads of an expected 25,000 Syrian refugees landed in Montreal and Toronto earlier this month, Jewish Canadians were there to welcome them.
With roughly one-third of the country’s larger Jewish congregations sponsoring one or more Syrian refugee families, Jewish Canadians are clearly active in bringing Syrian refugees from camps in Jordan and Lebanon into Canada. Several additional Jewish community organizations — and even a Jewish school — have also submitted private sponsorship applications to the government.
While Canada’s rabbis busily work with congregants to prepare for the arrival of “their” Syrian families, counterparts south of the border in the US describe a mounting frustration as anti-Muslim rhetoric heats up and Congress and state governors move to block the entrance of Syrian refugees.
As it becomes increasingly unclear if a White House proposal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the US in 2016 will come to fruition, US congregations wonder how they, like the Canadian Jews, may act on the Torah injunction to welcome and care for the stranger.
Only 2,234 refugees from among the more than four million people displaced by the Syrian civil war have been admitted to the US since 2011, according to figures published in late November by the State Department. Three-quarters of them were accepted in the past year.
More than 1,250 American rabbis signed a December 2 letter delivered by HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) to all members of Congress supporting refugee resettlement and opposing measures to halt resettlement or prohibit or restrict funding for any groups of refugees. The rabbis recalled the plight of European Jews fleeing the Nazis who were denied visas and turned away from US borders and reminded their elected officials that in a world plagued by terror, the Syrian refugees themselves are victims of terror.
“In 1939, our country could not tell the difference between an actual enemy and the victims of an enemy. In 2015, let us not make the same mistake,” the letter urged.
The Canadian government plans to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February 2016, with 10,000 arriving before the end of this year. The resettlement plan could double to 50,000 by the end of next year, according to Canada’s minister of immigration and citizenship John McCallum.
Forty percent of the new arrivals will arrive as privately sponsored refugees (PSRs), which means that a religious congregation, community organization or group of private citizens has committed and raised sufficient funds to provide them with care, lodging settlement assistance and support for at least one year.
The security fears and anti-Muslim sentiment that have dominated public discourse in the US have not generally come into play in Canada, including among Canadian Jews.
According to Toronto’s Jewish Immigrant Aid Services (JIAS) executive director Janis Roth, potential Jewish sponsors ask about security and health check protocols, but are for the most part satisfied when they learn that the checks are robust and carried out by Canadian authorities prior to the refugees’ arrival in Canada.
“None of the groups applying to be sponsors through us withdrew after Paris. In fact, more signed on,” said Roth, referring to the November 13 coordinated attacks on the French capital by Islamist terrorists that killed 130.
As a pre-approved Sponsorship Agreement Holder (SAH), JIAS acts on behalf of some 35 Jewish groups seeking to privately sponsor Syrian refugee families. JIAS is the only SAH affiliated with the Jewish community, and primarily works with Jewish groups in Toronto and Ottawa. Roth noted that it is mostly groups of synagogue members that are submitting sponsorship applications, rather than official congregations.
However, some Jewish groups and congregations opt to work with another SAH. For example, Temple Sholom, a large Reform congregation in Vancouver, has submitted its sponsorship application though the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia.
“We have raised almost $80,000 to sponsor two families. Our paperwork is in. We are just waiting impatiently. Winter is here and these families are in peril,” said Temple Sholom senior rabbi Dan Moskovitz.
While Canadian rabbis are taking practical steps to help refugee families, American rabbis, because of limitations imposed by American policy, are focusing their efforts on advocacy and education.
Orthodox activist rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz joined a coalition of faith leaders in Arizona calling for a change to US refugee policy. Not only has he spoken at rallies and lobbied lawmakers, but he also invited a newly arrived Syrian refugee family into his home for Thanksgiving.
“Jews can be part of the solution to this problem. The Jewish community should play a leadership role in this,” he asserted.
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz (second from left), his wife Shoshana and two children host a newly arrived Syrian refugee family to Phoenix for Thanksgiving, November 26, 2015. (Courtesy)
Rabbi Sharon Brous, lead of the innovative IKAR Jewish community in Los Angeles, is outspoken in her support for Syrian refugees and fighting discrimination against Muslims. On December 17 she spoke at a large, public interfaith gathering in front of LA’s city hall.
“I stand here before you today as an American and as a Jew, because for us — for all of us — this is personal. In 1939, when my people were fleeing Europe and trying to come to the United States, 60% of the people in this country said they didn’t want even the Jewish children to come across our borders,” she said.
“When 36 times in our Torah, the Hebrew Bible, we are told to love the stranger, to treat the stranger with dignity, it’s because we ourselves were strangers… There are dark clouds that are rolling over the beginning of this 21st century. The collective human heart is aching today in grief, and in pain and in fear. But fear makes for very bad politics. Fear fans the flames of hatred, which leads to more violence, which leads to more fear,” she continued.
Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove has also used his prominent pulpit as senior rabbi at Park Avenue Synagogue in New York to push for letting in more Syrian refugees. His November 21 sermon can be understood as a call to action.
“What I don’t question, what I feel secure in saying and sharing with you today is what the stance of American Jewry must be regarding the Syrian refugees…The Jewish community must be on the side of the refugees because it is our moral, legal, and historical mitzvah to fulfill,” the Conservative rabbi said.
“Jews should be a forceful voice for the refugees because to do so is a sanctification of God’s name, to do so shames those enemies of Israel who sit idly by as their Arab brethren suffer, and because to do so might just prompt the world to work together to address the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time. Perhaps most simply, we should do so because we should always strive to be on the right side of history,” Cosgrove said.
“Are there reasons not to accept refugees? Undoubtedly there are. But as Jews, as American Jews, there is nothing wrong, in fact there is everything right with taking a principled stand – popular or not – and then taking action together as a community,” he said.
Park Avenue Synagogue’s director of congregational education, Rabbi Charles Savenor, takes a hands-on approach with congregants of all ages. He is proud that a group of 80 of the Conservative congregation’s members and staff on a trip to Germany this fall were the first North American synagogue group to volunteer there at a shelter for Syrian refugees. Most of the congregants also brought clothes for the refugees from New York.
Rabbi Yoni Kaiser-Blueth, Hillel executive director at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, sees his role as creating space for the university’s politically aware students to discuss the refugee crisis. He looks forward to following the students’ lead on the issue when the campus fills up again after winter break.
Kaiser-Blueth believes it is not Hillel’s place to prescribe what students should do, but rather to facilitate discussions and help students keep their eyes on what is possible to do — despite whatever obstacles US refugee policy may present.
“Religious leaders have the opportunity to shape the conversation,” he said about what rabbis and others can do on the national level.
In his medium-size Conservative synagogue, Congregation Torat El in Oakhurst, New Jersey, Rabbi Aaron Schonbrun also puts a Jewish lens on contemporary issues for his congregants.
Most of his interactions with congregants on the refugee crisis take place in classes and conversations at the synagogue.
“Security checks don’t preclude welcoming people fleeing war and persecution. It’s a scary world, but we can’t capitulate to fear and throw our Jewish values to the wind,” Schonbrun said about his message to congregants.
A few thoughts:
* “US congregations wonder how they, like the Canadian Jews, may act on the Torah injunction to welcome and care for the stranger.”
There’s nothing in Torah about how Jews have to lobby gentile countries to take in strangers unlikely to fit in with the natives. If Jewish leaders feel this is such a strong moral obligation, why don’t they begin with the Jewish state? After that, why don’t they next focus their efforts on bringing Muslim refugees into their own homes so they can experience the vibrancy of Islam good and hard.
* According to Rabbi Sharon Brous: “When 36 times in our Torah, the Hebrew Bible, we are told to love the stranger, to treat the stranger with dignity, it’s because we ourselves were strangers… There are dark clouds that are rolling over the beginning of this 21st century. The collective human heart is aching today in grief, and in pain and in fear. But fear makes for very bad politics. Fear fans the flames of hatred, which leads to more violence, which leads to more fear.”
Let her welcome Muslims into her own home and let them live with her family and enhance her life.
* Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove says: “The Jewish community must be on the side of the refugees because it is our moral, legal, and historical mitzvah to fulfill.”
Let him fulfill this mitzva in his own home and report back to us in a few years about how it went.
* Stephen Steinlight comments: “What does one make of this contemptibly comical race between two groups of suicidal rabbis for vainglory when the real losers will be the Jewish people? The road to hell has ever been paved with the idiot exploits of self-righteous, hopeless naifs. It’s long past time for commonsensical Jews to wrest leadership from these fools.”
