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Jewish community groups host Afghan, Ukrainian evacuees for Thanksgiving meals
(JTA) — Four and a half feet of snow had just fallen on East Aurora, New York, but Kim Kaiser and her fellow volunteers through Jewish Family Services of Western New York weren’t willing to compromise on their Thanksgiving plans.
Those plans involved joining a community Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday night, two days before the holiday, at the Ukrainian American Civic Center in nearby Buffalo, along with the Ukrainian family of six that the volunteers had been supporting since their arrival to the United States at the end of the summer.
The event, which was sponsored by the Buffalo branch of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, was open to all new Ukrainian arrivals, their sponsors and their supporters. A buffet of traditional Thanksgiving foods was on offer, along with musical accompaniment by a Ukrainian singer and pianist.
For Kaiser, the evening was a can’t-miss milestone in her journey supporting recent immigrants who have come to the United States under duress. Last year, she began volunteering through Jewish Family Services to set up housing for Afghan, Congolese and Burmese refugees new to Buffalo, which has a very large refugee population.
“And then I heard of a family in our town that was going to be sponsoring a family from Ukraine,” Kaiser told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “My husband and I knew that we needed, that we wanted to do this.”
In joining the efforts to support refugees, Kaiser participated in an age-old Jewish tradition. The importance of welcoming strangers is so deeply rooted in Jewish tradition and experience that immigration issues have long enjoyed a bipartisan consensus in American Jewish communities even amid deep polarization on other topics. Many cities have social services agencies that began to support Jewish immigrants and now work with new arrivals of all backgrounds, often conscripting Jewish volunteers as the backbone of their work.
Over the last year, those networks have kicked into high gear as not just one but two significant waves of people unable to remain safely in their homes made their way to American shores: first Afghans last year after the U.S. military withdrawal from their country and then Ukrainians this year amid the war instigated by Russia there.
Now, as millions of Americans prepare for their Thanksgiving meals, Jewish volunteers are introducing Ukrainian and Afghan evacuees to Thanksgiving for the first time. Some are even setting aside their own reservations about the holiday to do so. (Thanksgiving’s cheery origin myth is seen by many as whitewashing the genocide of Native Americans that followed the arrival of Europeans in North America.)
In California, Gail Dratch and her husband Elliot have been volunteering through the Orange County Jewish Coalition for Refugees. They will celebrate the holiday on Thursday by inviting a family from Afghanistan into their home, where they’ll serve a halal turkey — in keeping with their Muslim guests’ religious requirements.
“For us, Thanksgiving has become just such a part of what we do,” Dratch told JTA. “And I know my family at least, we don’t think about the beginnings of Thanksgiving, which are really troubling. My daughters especially are very troubled by the original story. But clearly, this family is so thankful for having this opportunity to be in the United States.”
Both Kaiser and Dratch got support for their volunteer circles from their local Jewish federations, in Buffalo and Orange County. They were two of 15 local federations to get support from Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella group, to resettle nearly 2,000 Afghans through refugee welcome circles, according to Darcy Hirch, a spokesperson.
Gail and Elliot Dratch stand with their partners from the volunteer circle and their evacuee family from Afghanistan, whose faces have been blurred for their safety. (Courtesy of Jewish Federations of North America.)
The Dratches have done far more than cook a special dinner. The Afghan family they are working with arrived on a Special Immigrant Visa, so the father was able to obtain a driver’s license quickly and found work almost immediately. But the mother had to learn to drive from scratch.
“She cried the first time I took her to a big parking lot just to drive around Angel Stadium,” Dratch said, referring to the stadium in Anaheim where the Los Angeles Angels play. “And when she got behind the wheel, she cried because she said it’s been a dream of hers to drive but she never thought she’d be able to, living in Afghanistan.”
The couple’s son, who is in preschool, is learning English very quickly, Dratch said.
“They’re just charming, lovely people,” she said. “It was their dream to come to the United States and raise their son here because they knew he would have far more opportunities here than in Afghanistan. And so we are thankful that this family has come into our lives because they’ve been such a gift to us.”
Dratch’s experience working with displaced people began in 2016 when she went to Greece to work with Syrian refugees.
“I think in the future people are going to look back and say, ‘Why wasn’t more done?’” she said. “And I don’t want to look back and think, ‘Why didn’t I do something?’”
In Buffalo, Kaiser’s volunteer circle takes turns running errands and sharing the duties of a host family for the parents and with four children with whom they have been working since September. Though the family has only been in the United States for a few months, Kaiser said she has noticed a big difference in the children, who she says were initially downcast and shy but are now “smiles all around.”
At the meal on Tuesday, which was set up for 200 people, Kaiser says she saw evacuees mingling with each other, delighting in speaking Ukrainian without relying on Google translate to communicate with each other, and exchanging addresses and telephone numbers with where they can be reached in the Buffalo area. The kids went back to the buffet table multiple times for dessert.
Said Kaiser, “You can tell that every time you do something for them that they are thankful that there’s somebody there to help them and that they can start feeling, finally, a little bit at ease.”
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The post Jewish community groups host Afghan, Ukrainian evacuees for Thanksgiving meals appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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A radical idea to bridge Chicago’s Black and Jewish communities
I have strong Southern roots. Both sets of my grandparents, with the exception of my Philadelphia-born maternal grandmother, were descendants of enslaved people who later became sharecroppers. I visited the South often as a child, and being different in a place like that could be difficult. There was no Black Jewish community there at the time. I was usually its sole representative.
Or so I thought.
I was a teenager when I first learned about Julius Rosenwald‘s philanthropic efforts that helped build thousands of schools for Black children throughout the rural South, including many of the places I grew up visiting. After that, I began looking for Rosenwald schools whenever I traveled. I was always happy to find them. They were old and mostly dilapidated, but somehow still seemed to quietly defy time and the elements.
This was the first time I remember understanding how Black people and Jews could do meaningful work together. Those faded clapboard buildings, once whitewashed and full of possibility, had housed the education system that helped generations of Black children and laid part of the groundwork for the civil rights movement that would follow.
I was born in the late 1970s. I have no memory of the storied alliance between Blacks and Jews during the civil rights era. By the time I came along, much of that coalition had faded, and people were already asking how those bridges might be rebuilt.
I never experienced the Black-Jewish relationship that the teachers and staff at my Jewish day school recalled so fondly. But whenever I traveled through the South, I saw those schools. They stood as proof that the two communities I come from had once worked together to accomplish something extraordinary. They filled me with hope and pride, and with the certainty that if it happened once, it could happen again.
That is why, at a time when antisemitism and racism are once again on the rise, I find myself returning to the example set by earlier generations of Jewish philanthropists and community leaders. They understood that investing in Black communities was not simply an act of charity. It was an act of solidarity. They recognized that prejudice thrives when people remain strangers to one another, and that real change requires shared investment in a common future.
Today, we find ourselves confronting many of the same challenges. Distrust is growing. Division is growing. Fear is growing.
Which is why I want to build a Jewish Community Center on the south side of Chicago.
Not in a neighborhood where many Jews already live, but in a neighborhood where they can come to build new relationships, and new solidarity. A neighborhood where children from the two communities I hold in my heart can grow up seeing one another as neighbors instead of strangers.
The groundwork for this kind of bold community building is already in place. More than a decade ago, I started Mothers and Men Against Senseless Killing on the south side, as a response to violence, hopelessness and despair. From the beginning, that work was shaped by Jewish values, and Jews from across the Chicagoland area have stood alongside me in that work.
What began as an effort to keep children safe, based on the corner of 75th Street and Stewart Avenue, has evolved into an open air community center where children receive hot meals after school, where they can play safely throughout the summer, and where parents can find diapers, formula and other necessities for their families.
Our corner has also become a place where we can have open and sometimes difficult conversations about race, and life in America. Those conversations are often also about Judaism. We host Yom Kippur services, Passover seders, and an annual Christmahanukkwanzukah toy giveaway.
This corner has become an oasis that welcomes both Black people and Jews, and of course Black Jews, and invites them to spend time together.
I grew up watching my friends go to the JCC, even though my family could never afford it. It was important to me that my own children had that experience. At a JCC far from the neighborhood where we live, they deepened their Jewish identities, learned to get along with people different from themselves, got exercise, and made lifelong friends.
It’s time to bring that opportunity to the area where we live, and where MASK has already begun to serve some of the purposes that JCCs often fill — primarily that of giving children a safe place to learn and play.
It’s time to take things to the next level. We need a place where Black and Jewish families can gather with intention to build more communal services that help us all. Yes, we need bridges between our communities.But those bridges also need to lead somewhere. And I cannot think of a better destination than a place where Black and Jewish children can learn, grow, and build a future together.
The post A radical idea to bridge Chicago’s Black and Jewish communities appeared first on The Forward.
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Fight wildfires and other climate crises with this spiritual guide to catastrophe
As smoke from Canadian wildfires blankets much of the Northeast and Midwest in a hazy fog, some Jews are observing this Tisha B’av by mourning a different kind of destruction: that of a planet in crisis.
Tisha B’av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar that commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples, deals with themes of grief and resilience relevant to today’s climate crisis, said Rabbi Laura Bellows, director of spiritual activism and education at Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action.
In advance of Tisha Ba’av, Dayenu this week released a spiritual guide for the aftermath of extreme weather — including floods, storms, heatwaves and fires. It was a grim coincidence, Bellows said, that the guide’s publication coincided with a time when those prayers would be of particular use.
“The grief is real,” Bellows said. “Jewish tradition is really good at encouraging us not to ignore it, but actually to make space and time to be with that grief.”
The guide includes an adapted version of Mi Shebeirach, the prayer for healing, written by Rabbi Daniel Scher at Kehillat Israel in the Palisades. Scher wrote the prayer for his congregation after wildfires caused significant smoke damage to the synagogue’s building, leading it to close for several months. Roughly 250 synagogue members — and all three clergy — lost their homes.
“The fire has seared through our homes and hopes, yet we stand together in our pain, trusting that new life can blossom in our midst,” the prayer reads.
Other texts in the guidebook offer hope for rebuilding. Rabbi Zoe Klein of Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles adapted the daily prayer, “May it be your will that the Temple be speedily rebuilt in our own time,” into a plea for wildfire survivors: “May it be Thy will that homes be rebuilt in our own time.”
Another ritual offers a hand-washing ceremony for survivors of water-related natural disasters. Participants wash their hands and recite the Birkat HaGomel, a prayer traditionally said after surviving a life-threatening event.
It’s not the first year rabbis have linked the climate crisis to Tisha Ba’av. More than a decade ago, Rabbi Tamara Cohen, chief of program and strategy at the Jewish youth group Moving Traditions, co-wrote “Eikha for the Earth,” which adapts the Book of Lamentations traditionally read on Tisha Ba’av as a “lament for the Earth.”
“Checkerspot butterflies flee their homes; polar bears can find no rest. Because our greed has heated Earth,” the text reads.
The adapted text aims to “welcome in Jews who are not so connected to the idea of mourning for the ancient temple, which doesn’t necessarily move lots of people today,” Cohen told the Forward.
But the timing of this year’s Tisha B’av makes the text feel eerily relevant, she said, pointing to the line “forest fires reach down and spread like fury.”
Jakir Manela, CEO of the nonprofit Adamah, which leads immersive Jewish experiences grounded in nature, said he’s also feeling particular grief for the earth this Tisha B’av. Manela lives in Baltimore, where he and his kids have been unable to go outside due to the unhealthy air.
“This is destruction in front of our very eyes, and affecting the largest population centers on the planet,” Manela said. “If folks have trouble connecting with Tisha B’av and the grief and mourning that it calls us to do, maybe this year is the time when it will hit home.”
The post Fight wildfires and other climate crises with this spiritual guide to catastrophe appeared first on The Forward.
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Why am I the only one troubled by an Anne Frank House shot glass?
Readers, how many of you have ever looked at the Anne Frank House and thought: “Wow, I wish I had a miniature version I could drink alcohol from” ?
Probably very few of you. And yet a ceramic replica of the historic house filled with approximately 1.7ozs of Bols Dutch gin is available from KLM Dutch Airways as part of a gift series for business class passengers on international flights.
The airline first launched the Delft Blue miniature house line in 1952 as gifts for business class passengers on intercontinental flights. I first discovered them last month, when I was flying with my dad to Maputo, Mozambique, to cover the centenary celebration of a local synagogue. My dad and I initially thought these would make good Christmas gifts for my cousin’s kids until we heard the liquid sloshing inside. We ended up keeping these recreations — which included the house of aviator Anthony Fokker and one of the last wooden houses left in Amsterdam — for ourselves.
While researching these unique souvenirs, I quickly discovered that one of the historic recreations is the Anne Frank House, aka “KLM miniature number 47,” which the Dutch airline added to the collection in 1975. My initial reaction was shock: How could the airline take a place that represents such a tremendous tragedy and turn it into a shot glass?
I reached out to KLM and asked if they had ever received a complaint about the item. A representative wrote back to say that, from what he knew, there had only ever been one critical Instagram comment: that KLM tried to make money off of everything. Collectors shared the souvenir online, but nobody I could find on the internet expressed the surprise and revulsion I felt.
My request to chat on the phone for further comments on why KLM included the Anne Frank House in their collection didn’t garner the response I expected. The representative responded via email that the house is historic and if I wanted to know more about it, I could just Google it. The subtext of my question — that it feels like a strange and possibly inappropriate choice to turn a solemn landmark into a cutesy flask — didn’t seem obvious to him.
So why did it feel so obvious to me?
For so many, Anne Frank is the symbol of how horrendous the Holocaust was. The fact that she is an innocent child exposes the depraved nature of the Nazis. Most Americans are first introduced to the Holocaust through the story of her confinement in that house in Amsterdam.
Even though it is not where Frank died (that was Bergen-Belsen, at the age of 16), it feels like the place where her fate was sealed. It is not just a landmark included in a famous book; it was her prison and the last stop on the way to her death. Although some may associate it with Frank’s enduring spirit of hope, filling it with alcohol still feels obscene.
Frank’s image has been co-opted over and over again. Two years ago, a Norwegian artist used an image of Frank in a keffiyeh to bring attention to children being killed in Gaza. More recently, Frank has become a symbol for anti-ICE protesters of the dangers of letting law enforcement target people based on their ethnic background. Then there’s the viral satirical comedy musical Slam Frank, which reimagines Anne Frank as a queer Latinx girl with a Black mom and gay, neurodivergent dad in order to poke fun at woke culture.The KLM house feels like a less charged appropriation of Anne Frank’s legacy; it’s not pushing any sort of political agenda.
The ceramic house is also part of a larger kitsch culture that blurs the fine line between commemoration and trivialization. So many tragedies have been commodified in this way that there’s a term for it: “dark tourism.” There are plenty of 9/11 related objects out there — a Twin Towers Christmas tree ornament, stuffed search and rescue dogs — that feel like they border on exploitation.
But what makes the KLM Anne Frank house stand out is its contents. To use a house of such suffering as the container for gin feels minimizing. (It is worth mentioning that a New York winery did at one point produce a 9/11 commemorative wine, although some of the proceeds were donated to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.) Once the Anne Frank flask is emptied of its contents, it will just be a ceramic trinket that could help keep the memory of the landmark alive. Does the fact that it was originally made to carry alcohol negate that power?
I asked a similar question nearly one year ago in my very first Looking Forward column when I wrote about a recording of Nazi marching songs and speeches made by a Jewish producer. Since that piece was published, I haven’t found a satisfying answer to when memorialization becomes inappropriate, but I have become more comfortable acknowledging how complex this issue is.
This will be my last Looking Forward, as my last day as an employee of the Forward (at least for now, as I embark on a new pursuit) will be July 31. It feels fitting that my time with this newsletter will end similarly to the way in which it started: scratching my head about Holocaust kitsch. But having to grapple with such a topic in my writing is just another day at the Forward.
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