At this time around the Jewish high holy days, we have
Since starting its Refugee Support Project this spring, the temple has collected and donated two truckloads of school and household kits to Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts, a Springfield-based organization that helps resettle more than 230 refugees each year through its New American Program.
Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener said the idea for the project came about last year when some temple members started thinking about how the community could help refugees from Syria and other flash points around the globe. Their heartfelt concern for strangers fleeing the barbarity of war in the Middle East is inspiring.
“I had such an impulse to help people that needed to escape Syria, and I totally felt helpless,” the rabbi said. “The humanitarian need is so overwhelming.”
New England has taken in nearly 650 Syrian refugees from the U.S. goal of 10,000 set by Democratic President Barack Obama, with the vast majority finding homes in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Massachusetts has taken in 145 refugees despite initial hesitation expressed by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker.
The refugees have clustered around a handful of cities. In Massachusetts more than a third of the refugees, 59, have settled in the Springfield/West Springfield area, followed by Worcester, 41, and Lowell, 26.
The Temple Israel’s effort to extend its help the effort in Springfield has grown to include help and contributions from like-minded folks from several other local religious organizations, including the Interfaith Council of Franklin County, Trinity Church in Shelburne Falls, Charlemont Federated Church, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ashfield and Ashfield Congregational Church.
Virginia Gabert, who helped spearhead the Charlemont Federated Church’s involvement, made an interesting observation about the help — “Coming from a federated church into Jewish Family Services to help Syrian refugees that may have whatever religious background they may have — I think it helps to reinforce the acceptance of people regardless of what they believe in and what their background is.”
This is the lesson we should learn and a message we should spread, especially at the time of Rosh Hashanah, which is just ending, and next week’s Yom Kippur, a time seen as an opportunity for repentance, to mend one’s ways.
We wish it’s a message that we could instill in more people, especially some on the national political scene who seem to oscillate between wanting to carpet bomb places like Syria and abandoning our place on the world stage, by building walls and barriers to immigrants who flee their homelands seeking refugee here — like so many others from all parts of the world before them.