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This Jewish non-profit in Brooklyn helps refugees furnish their new homes
(New York Jewish Week) – When S., a Pakistani refugee, finally moved to a stable living situation in New York City, there was still one thing missing: furniture.
S. had left Pakistan for New York hoping to provide a better, healthier life for her younger brother R., who has Down syndrome. After a year of moving around the city, applying for asylum and trying to get on her feet, S. — who asked that her name not be used while the rest of her family waits for their asylum cases to be approved — found a room in a semi-basement apartment in Jamaica, Queens in March 2022.
But even though they had a roof over their heads, S., 44, and R. hardly had any household items to their names. Instead of beds, for example, they slept on a shared rug on the floor.
Enter Ruth’s Refuge. The Brooklyn-based Jewish non-profit aims to provide New York’s refugee community with items needed to help jumpstart their new lives and fill their homes. The organization helped S. and R. secure many household essentials both large and small, from mugs to furniture.
“It’s one thing if you’re going to drop something on a doorstep; it’s another to bring every single thing into my house and help me set it up,” S. told the New York Jewish Week about the assistance she got from Ruth’s Refuge. “We cannot do much because it’s only me and R. But they did everything — every single thing. To be very honest, I’m really blessed.”
Ruth’s Refuge emerged from a task force at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope that started in 2016 as a response to an influx of refugees fleeing Syria. Since then, they’ve expanded to a team of 120 volunteers and three full-time staff dedicated to meeting the needs of the thousands of refugees arriving in New York — first from Syria, then from Afghanistan, South and Central America and Ukraine. Last year, Ruth’s Refuge furnished over 100 households, providing more than $150,000 worth of furnishings and home goods, mostly accumulated from individual donations.
“I grew up embedded in the Jewish community and very much raised with the concept of ‘never again,’” said Leah Cover, the organization’s founder and executive director. “I always viewed that in a very universal way, that ‘never again’ meant for anybody, not just the Jewish people.”
“The idea that you would have this kind of thing repeating itself when we built the refugee system in response to the Holocaust, primarily, and then to have it just completely break down when it was most needed again was just really horrifying to watch,” she added.
Ruth’s Refuge joins a cadre of other Jewish-aligned organizations that endeavor to create softer landings for refugees in New York. Among them are Masbia, which has been meeting arriving migrants at Port Authority Bus Terminal with shoes, clothing and food, and New Neighbors Partnership, which matches incoming refugee families with small children with a New York-based family to receive clothing, toys and advice. HIAS, one of the largest refugee resettlement agencies in the country, was founded in New York City in 1902 to aid incoming Jewish refugees fleeing persecution and pogroms in Eastern Europe.
Cover said watching the worldwide response to the Syrian refugee crisis animated her to start the refugee task force at the Reform synagogue and eventually found Ruth’s Refuge — named for the biblical figure Ruth, who was welcomed as a stranger and integrated into the community. “One of the very heartening things in starting the refugee task force was just seeing how much the Jewish community wanted to be involved in a response to this and making sure that we lived our values,” she said.
At first, Cover and other volunteers fielded a lot of “ad hoc requests,” she said. Over time, resettlement agencies began to rely upon her team more and more, especially to help with apartment setups — including managing donations of homegoods, renting U-Hauls to transport them and assisting with building furniture.
Ruth’s Refuge became its own independent 501(c)(3) organization in the spring of 2019. These days, they work with a number of resettlement agencies, primarily HIAS, Catholic Charities, International Rescue Committee and Queer Detainee Empowerment Project.
Once asylum seekers have secured permanent housing, Ruth’s Refuge will assign each family a volunteer who acts as a personal shopper. Generally there is no limit to the amount of furniture a family can pick out — as long as it fits in their home, although for certain items like dish sets and TVs, Ruth’s Refuge can usually only provide one per family, Cover said.
The items, housed in storage units in Gowanus, are then packed up and delivered all over the city by teams of volunteers.
Kathy Fenelly, a retired professor of public policy and immigration policy, is one such volunteer. “I’ve worked on advising immigrants on immigration policy for a number of years,” she said. “But this is the first [organization] I’ve ever seen that has such a focused and specific mission to work with immigrants and refugees in order to be sure that they have the basics that they need in their apartments.”
Fenelly has been a part of the organization since it was founded at CBE, and said its mission strongly reflects the Jewish value of welcoming the stranger. “Everyday, I get to say, ‘Welcome to New York. I’m really happy that you’re here,’” she said.
As for S., Ruth’s Refuge helped her and R. secure a hair dryer, soap, towels and a table. Their modest room wasn’t big enough for two beds, so a bunk bed was ordered on Amazon and volunteers helped build the furniture when it arrived.
A group of volunteers from Ruth’s Refuge smile in front of a U-Haul van hired to bring furniture and household goods to a refugee family. (Courtesy Ruth’s Refuge)
S. had left Pakistan in February 2021 with R. with the intent to visit Chicago, where her father had relatives, and then New York, which she had visited before. She had planned to stay a few weeks; traveling with her brother, she assumed it would be a harrowing journey — in Pakistan, she said, her brother’s Down syndrome was often met with contempt, anger and confusion.
Here in the United States, however, S. was surprised by the degree of acceptance, warmth and respect shown to her brother. That’s why she came to believe immigration was necessary: As S. told the New York Jewish Week, she felt her and her brother’s lives were at stake, so she applied for asylum in April 2021.
S. learned their asylum applications were approved at the end of October 2022. Catholic Charities then helped S. and R. get IDs, Social Security numbers and health care, and also provided a few hundred dollars a month to help them get on her feet.
These days, S. works as a home health aide. “It’s becoming home,” she said. “It’s surprising because I was raised in Pakistan, but I never felt like this in my country.”
Left behind in Pakistan are her husband, two other brothers and her 21-year-old son. But her son’s asylum application was approved last month, she said, and she thinks her husband’s will be soon as well, so she’s optimistic they’ll be able to join her in New York later this year.
“I buy things [now] because I can save the money for it,” S. said. “But the first step was Catholic Charities and the second step was Ruth’s Refuge.”
“I’m very, very satisfied in the United States,” she added. “I’m very blessed.”
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The post This Jewish non-profit in Brooklyn helps refugees furnish their new homes appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New York lawmakers approve 50-foot buffer around houses of worship in challenge to Mamdani
New York legislators Tuesday approved a sweeping buffer zone measure as part of the state budget, in a measure that would establish criminal penalties for violations.
The legislation, proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul and negotiated with the Democratic-led majorities in the state legislature, establishes a 50-foot security buffer around houses or worship and educational centers in response to or anticipation of a planned protest outside its premises. The bill would make it a class B misdemeanor — a low-level criminal offense — when a protester “knowingly or intentionally engages in a course of conduct that places that individual in reasonable fear for their safety.”
The measure defines a place of religious worship broadly, covering not only sanctuaries but also community centers and schools being used for services, education and religious observance. And it gives police the authority to establish a security perimeter beyond 50 feet, within which demonstrations are not allowed, when anticipating large protests or clashes.
“New Yorkers will be safer because of it,” Hochul said in a statement after its passage by the State Assembly. The incumbent Democrat is running for reelection this year and is making a play for Jewish votes.
The bill goes further than Hochul’s original proposal earlier this year, which called for a 25-foot buffer zone around religious institutions statewide. “We’ve seen demonstrations targeting faith communities outside synagogues, mosques and churches,” Hochul told reporters last month. “This is not free expression, this is harassment, and it has no place in the state of New York.”
The statewide approach contrasts with the New York City law that Mayor Zohran Mamdani allowed to become law without his signature in April. That measure, advanced by the City Council, requires the NYPD to develop safety plans for protests near houses of worship and manage access during demonstrations.
Civil liberties advocates and progressive groups had raised concerns about broad restrictions on protest activity. Mamdani, a strident Israel critic who faces scrutiny from mainstream Jewish organizations over his response to antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests, vetoed a similar bill that applied to schools and educational institutions.
The City Council introduced a revised measure that does not apply to libraries, teaching hospitals, and colleges and universities.
Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein, who represents the Orthodox-populated Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn, said the state intervention became “critically urgent” following Mamdani’s veto of the school safety reporting bill. “If New York City fails to take the necessary steps to protect vulnerable New Yorkers, the State of New York must act,” said Eichenstein.
A City Hall spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the state law.
The push for buffer zones followed repeated disruptive protests since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza, focused on synagogues hosting real estate sales of property in Israel and in the West Bank. In recent months, protests outside the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills in Queens featured antisemitic slogans and chants that Zionist organizations view as antisemitic.
The mayor has not intervened to discourage demonstrations. Following a recent clash between protesters and supporters of Israel outside a synagogue in Brooklyn, the mayor emphasized his support of “the constitutional right to protest and counter-protest” peacefully, without intimidation or hatred.
Jewish organizations and Orthodox leaders had pushed for stronger protections, arguing that some protests outside synagogues crossed the line from political expression into intimidation and harassment.
The UJA Federation of New York thanked Hochul and the bill sponsors for demonstrating “strong leadership in their unwavering effort to help ensure safe access to critical community institutions and safeguard the right to worship free of harassment and intimidation.”
Opponents of restrictions are expected to seek legal challenges to statewide restrictions, based on concerns about infringement on free speech rights in public spaces. Hochul said last month she’d defend it in court.
Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, a progressive group aligned with Mamdani, called the state legislation “disgraceful” and “an astonishingly irresponsible course of action.” Sophie Ellman-Golan, a JFREJ spokesperson, said “it’s outrageous and dangerous” that Hochul and members of the legislature chose to criminalize protest “at a time when the federal government is actively persecuting activists and organizers” in the name of Jewish safety.
The post New York lawmakers approve 50-foot buffer around houses of worship in challenge to Mamdani appeared first on The Forward.
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Woody Allen’s biggest fans were easy marks for a fake monologue about antisemitism
Those still wondering “what would Woody Allen say about today’s antisemitism” were treated to what looked like an answer last week in the form of a viral monologue bemoaning the price of coffee in a roast of Ivy-educated anti-Zionism.
The only issue: It seems to be entirely fake.
The post, according to X, where the post first gained traction, was initially posted in Spanish by a pro-Israel writer named Simy Benarroch and was originally the work of a previous Russian writer named Rami Yudovin.
As hoaxes go, this one seemed credible at first glance. It’s hard not to read it in Allen’s nasal voice. It has his cadence, his references to philosophers and the inclusion of an intrusive female relative that are his hallmarks, leading many who didn’t believe this to be genuine to conclude a prompt was fed through an AI mimic. (It’s not the first time something like this has happened.)
But there are tells for those looking. See the fourth paragraph, in which Allen encounters protesters outside a synagogue: “I was walking through Brooklyn thinking about death.”
From a ripe young age, Allen has perseverated on the end, but walking through Brooklyn? Now? That far from the Upper East Side? I’m skeptical.
This could all, of course, be a rhetorical flourish. The types of woke stereotypes the author plays with, i.e.: “someone with a scarf [presumably a keffiyah], who looks like he writes poems about his own beard, explains to you — with help from Heidegger and Nietzsche — why the existence of Jews is a form of aggression and a threat to humanity,” have a home in his native borough.
The thrust of this argument, that pro-Palestinian protesters use the language of the academy to justify the oldest hatred is hardly novel. They are in fact facile to the point of tracking with Allen’s own “witch hunt” comments about #MeToo (for which he said he should be the poster boy; he achieved this in a sense, but not in the way he meant.)
But if this is any type of Allen, it’s one of his characters, not the man himself.
“My grandmother, by the way, lived through actual Nazis,” the author writes, of hearing a protester indulging in Holocaust inversion. “She hid in a basement in Poland with a man who coughed so hard the Germans could have found them just from the bronchial racket.”
Allen’s grandparents were in the U.S. during World War II, but nice line.
John Podhoretz slammed this forgery, remarking how the real auteur has been “shamefully silent since October 7.”
This is an odd kind of indictment, aside from not being strictly true.
Who, exactly, would Allen reach in his activism for Jews? Should he shift to advocacy, he would likely find the exact same audience that shared the fake and found themselves nodding reverently along.
Perhaps this bodes well for Allen’s continued influence on the segment of the population still dying to hear his insights. Woody Allen may be 90, cancelled and taking a break from making movies, but Woody A.I.len can live forever.
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U.S. launches attacks on Iran as negotiations over a peace deal drag out
(JTA) — The United States announced it had launched defensive strikes on Monday in Southern Iran, targeting Iranian missile sites and boats it believed were placing mines.
The move threatens to derail an already fragile ceasefire between the United States, Iran and Israel aimed at giving the U.S. and Iran space to hammer out a deal to end the hostilities. It also comes as U.S. President Donald Trump told several Muslim allies participating in consultations over a deal that they should normalize relations with Israel in exchange for the U.S. inking the agreement.
U.S. Central Command Spokesperson Navy Capt. Tim Hawkin said in a statement issued Monday that strike targets “included missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to emplace mines.”
He added that U.S. forces “conducted self-defense strikes … to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces,” and that CENTCOM “continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire.”
The attacks were conducted in the port city of Bandar Abbas around the strait of Hormuz, according to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as cited by CNN.
The strikes came just 24 hours after President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had instructed his representatives to “not rush into a deal,” stressing that “time is on our side.” Trump emphasized in the message that Iran “cannot develop or procure a Nuclear Weapon,” a key aim of the American military effort but one the president had not referred to in comments over the weekend that a deal was close.
Trump noted in another post Sunday that the deal was not yet “fully negotiated,” but that if he makes a deal with Iran it “will be a good and proper one,” and that he does not “make bad deals.”
Trump’s comments came as several GOP voices have expressed concerns about a deal he said Saturday was “largely negotiated.” Trump’s posts Sunday came after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) posted on X that the reported terms of the agreement would be a “disastrous mistake.”
Trump also stated on Truth Social Monday that Muslim countries should “mandatorily” sign on to the Abraham Accords as part of any agreement to end the war between Iran and Israel.
He named Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, though he said it might be possible for a couple to be exempted.
Following the U.S. strikes on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in India Tuesday that the Strait of Hormuz has to be open, “one way or the other,” and that negotiations with Iran could “take a few days.”
Meanwhile, several media outlets reported that Iran announced Tuesday that it had executed Gholamreza Khani Shekerab for alleged espionage and intelligence cooperation with Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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