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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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Feminist vs. Jewish: These women say NYC’s mayoral election is forcing a painful choice
(New York Jewish Week) — Tracey Wells didn’t necessarily want to see Andrew Cuomo resign in disgrace as New York’s governor in 2021.
“But I firmly believe that you believe women,” Wells, the owner of a recruitment firm, said, noting at the time, New York’s attorney general had substantiated sexual harassment claims from 11 women. That number that would later rise to 13 following a federal Department of Justice investigation.
Nonetheless, Wells, who is Jewish, surprised herself by deciding to vote for Cuomo to become mayor of New York City. She made the decision in part because she sharply disagrees with Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani’s critical views on Israel.
“He’s not my favorite, but he’s better than the alternative options,” Wells said about Cuomo, rationalizing that the allegations against him could have been more egregious. “He’s obviously been in trouble before. I’m a woman, a feminist, and I do think that the things that he got in trouble for, 10 or 15 years ago, would have never been an issue.”
Wells’ thinking reflects the complicated calculus facing many Jewish women in New York City this week. Mamdani, the frontrunner, has divided Jewish voters with his vociferous criticism of Israel, and many of those who are spurning him over that see Cuomo, who is polling a distant second, as the best chance to keep him out of Gracie Mansion. But Cuomo has his own baggage: a track record of sexual harassment allegations — which he denies — that derailed his last stint in public office, and remains a turnoff for many voters.
“As somebody who identifies as a feminist, I really wish there was a better option,” said a Lower Manhattan 28-year-old woman who works in influencer marketing. She declined to share her name, citing concerns about publicizing her voting record.
“Every other election that I voted in, I’ve been very sure in my decision, and I’ve been excited to cast my vote and use my voice,” the woman said. “In this election, it feels like I’m voting more against something than for something that I’m excited about.”
Usually, she casts a ballot on the first day of early voting. But this year, she waffled until Wednesday, when she voted for Cuomo — not to support him, but to count against Mamdani.
“As the candidate who won the Democratic primary, I normally would just go for it,” she said. “But I think just because so much of his platform has been around that [anti-Zionism], I struggle, I fear, that that would energize that super anti-Israel base more. And anti-Zionism often bleeds into antisemitism.”
A fevered push among many Jewish leaders to get out the vote against Mamdani has largely sidestepped Cuomo’s history with women. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, in a Shabbat sermon urging New Yorkers to back Cuomo, said only that Cuomo, “like any politician, comes with both personal and professional baggage.”
A letter quoting Cosgrove’s sermon has now been signed by more than 1,150 rabbis across the country, including hundreds of women.
Tracy Kaplowitz, a rabbi at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side, was among them. Asked about how Jewish women should weigh the allegations against Cuomo as they vote, Kaplan said, “Judaism believes in the dignity of every human being. People need to make their decisions honoring the dignity of every human being. We are not endorsing any candidate. We’re not encouraging people to vote in a particular way that’s not our role or our place, and we recognize people will come to different conclusions.”
The writer Emily Tamkin lives in Washington, D.C., and cannot vote in the election. Still, as she wrote in The Forward, the pro-Cuomo push among prominent Jews feels unnerving.
“The failure of so many Jewish leaders to meaningfully engage with what Cuomo’s election might mean for women has deeply alarmed me,” Tamkin wrote.
“The idea that I, or any woman, has to pretend that the normalization of sexual harassment in politics is somehow irrelevant to our day-to-day safety — because our commitment to Jewish peoplehood comes first — seems to me to be an extremely limited understanding of Jewish safety,” she continued.
Some rabbis have in fact called attention to Cuomo’s history as a reason to find the election challenging for Jewish voters. “When we are considering whom to elect as leaders, a candidate who has been morally compromised should not easily collect our votes,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Reform movement, wrote in an essay. “As I have questioned what Mamdani might do based on his statements, so too I question what Andrew Cuomo might do in light of past findings of his pattern of harassment.”
Rachel Gildiner, executive director of SRE Network, a group that helps Jewish organizations achieve gender equity and create inclusive workplaces, said the election is doubly challenging for many Jewish women.
“Today, many Jewish women are feeling pressure from all sides and wondering if their own safety and belonging are being fully seen and understood,” Gildiner said in a statement. “At SRE, we are focused on helping the organizations we work with support women who are experiencing the double threat of antisemitism and misogyny in this moment. To all the women struggling: we see you and you are not alone.”
Some Jewish women say they feel no need to reconcile themselves to supporting a candidate with a record of allegations against him — because they prefer Mamdani anyway.
“I’m really happy with Zohran,” said Jaime Berman, a 33-year-old attorney and one of two Democratic state committee members for the 76th Assembly district, representing the Upper East Side. “And also Cuomo is literally the most evil person in New York, and is a sexual harasser.”
But for many Jewish women, the decision is proving to be fraught to the election’s very last days. Alisha Outridge, a tech entrepreneur in her late 30s living in Manhattan, said she sees advantages and disadvantages to both leading candidates. For her, the allegations against Cuomo aren’t weighing heavily.
“I think it’s bad, but I wouldn’t make decisions based on who our mayor is on that,” she said, noting that she is leaning toward Mamdani. “Local policy is really what I think is most impactful.”
Blima Marcus, an Orthodox nurse in Brooklyn, wrote on Facebook that she had abandoned an earlier promise not to vote at all and would cast a ballot for Cuomo if she can make it to the polls.
“A sexual predator is a red line for me, but I must say that after watching Zohran Mamdani carefully and listening to what he does and does not say I don’t want him in office and I don’t want it on my conscience that I sat this election out,” she wrote.
For Wells in Williamsburg, her vote for Cuomo is coming with hope that the mistakes of the past are not soon repeated.
“Obviously, he made a few bad calls,” Wells said. “I would like him to not make any bad calls as the mayor of the city.”
The post Feminist vs. Jewish: These women say NYC’s mayoral election is forcing a painful choice appeared first on The Forward.
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Hundreds of thousands of haredi Jews protest in Jerusalem against Israeli military draft
(JTA) — Hundreds of thousands of haredi Orthodox Jewish men joined a mass protest in Jerusalem on Thursday to rail against the Israeli government’s efforts to enlist yeshiva students into the military.
The mass prayer demonstration, called the “Million Man March,” was organized by the leaders of Israel’s different ultra-Orthodox groups in response to a spate of arrests of yeshiva students who had dodged the Israeli draft.
“The debate over the law is still ongoing, and it belongs in the Knesset,” one organizer told Haaretz. “If that were the only issue, we wouldn’t hold a rally. But following the arrests of yeshiva students and the persecution against us, it was decided to protest nonetheless.”
The protest comes one year after the Israeli Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Israel must draft haredi Orthodox Jews into its army, a decision welcomed by many Israelis who believe the haredi sector was not bearing its share of the burden of the war in Gaza. The ruling renewed demonstrations from haredi groups who have long argued that they should be exempt for religious reasons.
Earlier this month, upwards of 10,000 haredi Orthodox Jewish men staged another protest in New York City to oppose the draft.
At the demonstration Thursday, two ultra-Orthodox soldiers, a police officer and several journalists were attacked by protesters, including Channel 12 News reporter Inbar Twizer who had objects thrown at her during her broadcast.
Throughout the day, hundreds of protesters were seen entering construction sites, scaling roofs and climbing cranes. One 15-year-old boy died after falling from the 20th floor of a high-rise construction site.
One group of protesters were also seen carrying a banner from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which read, “Bringing back the hostages, bringing back hope.” The group has previously pursued legal action against a yeshiva that appropriating symbols for the hostages to rally for the release of jailed yeshiva students.
After the protests’ organizers called for an end to the demonstration on Thursday evening, some protesters remained near the entrance of Jerusalem and clashed with Israeli border police, according to the Times of Israel.
The post Hundreds of thousands of haredi Jews protest in Jerusalem against Israeli military draft appeared first on The Forward.
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Ellison’s Oracle poised to run TikTok, raising hopes for tougher rules against antisemitism
American Jewish leaders have blamed Tiktok for allowing antisemitism to spread among young people and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently accused China of using the platform to promote anti-Israel sentiment around the world — a charge China denies.
The allegations form a backdrop to the high-stakes negotiations over TikTok’s future in the United States that may be finally heading to a resolution. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Thursday that Beijing has green-lit a multi-billion dollar deal that would bring the social media platform’s operations in the United States under American control.
“In Kuala Lumpur, we finalized the TikTok agreement in terms of getting Chinese approval, and I would expect that would go forward in the coming weeks and months, and we’ll finally see a resolution to that,” Bessent told Fox Business following a meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The deal follows a law passed last year requiring China-based ByteDance to sell or face a ban of the app, which U.S. officials have called a national-security risk.
Details of the agreement have not been released, but the White House has previously said that a consortium of U.S. investors led by Oracle Corporation — whose co-founder, Larry Ellison, is a longtime supporter of Jewish causes and of Israel — would acquire a controlling stake in the app.
For the leader of one of the largest and most broadly representative Jewish groups in the country, these developments are hopeful.
“At the Jewish Federations of North America, we are optimistic about this moment,” JFNA CEO Eric Fingerhut said Tuesday while moderating a panel on the deal at the organization’s Washington headquarters. “Frankly, the part that makes us the most optimistic is the parties that seem to be associated with the deal on the American side, especially Oracle and Larry Ellison personally, who’s been such a strong supporter of our community.”
Also on the panel was social media expert Sarah O’Quinn, the U.S. director for public affairs at Center for Countering Digital Hate, who said she shared Fingerhut’s optimism that TikTok’s new owners would take steps to lessen the spread of antisemitism on the platform.
“This change in leadership — are they going to improve their policy?” O’Quinn asked rhetorically. “I think that’s probably true based on… the broad support coming from Ellison and Oracle on that [issue].”
Ellison, who was raised in a Reform Jewish household, briefly topped the list of richest people this year amid the surge in the value of tech stocks linked to the artificial intelligence boom. He has donated millions to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, among other Israel-related causes and is reportedly close to Netanyahu. He says his affinity for Israel comes from his appreciation for the country’s record of tech innovation and resilience.
Ellison’s views in the debate over whether online hate speech should be countered with content moderation and policies restricting user expression are unknown. He became a major investor in Twitter when Elon Musk took over the platform, changed its name to X and altered its rules in a way that has allowed Neo-Nazis and other antisemites to gain a wide reach.
During the panel, Fingerhut said that even while it became clear that antisemitism was a problem on TikTok, JFNA was the only Jewish group that lobbied for the bill that would force its sale.
He revealed internal concerns at the time that JFNA’s involvement could activate antisemitic tropes about Jewish power in politics.
“We asked ourselves that question when we were making the decision about whether to get involved,” he said. “Is this going to undermine the bill because it’ll become a target of … ‘here comes the Jewish community seeking to attack this company.”
He said JFNA ultimately decided to enter the fray because it was a severe case, and an opportunity to hold lawmakers to their commitment to fighting antisemitism.
Panelists offered varying levels of optimism about TikTok’s future but there was a consensus that the new owners should strive for cooperation and transparency with users and advocates over antisemitism and other forms of harm.
Daniel Kelley of the Center for Technology and Society at the Anti-Defamation League noted that the company has already become increasingly responsive, saying that his colleagues are now meeting with TikTok trust and safety staff on a monthly basis.
Quinn added that the best tool advocates have to influence social media companies in the absence of government regulation is public pressure.
“The most important thing as Americans and people who represent communities across the country is to make sure that you’re sharing stories about how social media has harmed you or your family,” she said.
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