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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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I was in a high school production of ‘Anne Frank’ — today in Minnesota, I feel her fear more than ever
I want to tell you what it is like in Minnesota right now.
I grew up in a small town in southeast Minnesota, right on the Mississippi. I graduated with 98 other classmates, most of whom I’d known since kindergarten. This was a predominantly white high school in a very white community of Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists and Episcopalians. I remember only one Jewish family with kids at my school, but none of those kids were in my grade and we didn’t participate in any of the same activities. I was raised Lutheran and didn’t really have an awareness or understanding of Judaism beyond “it’s another type of religion, kinda like being a Catholic.”
I was involved in the arts from a young age and grew up watching plays at the local high school, waiting for the day I’d finally be able to perform there myself. Every year the school did one big play in the fall and, in 2005, my freshman year, it was The Diary of Anne Frank. I auditioned and was cast as Peter van Daan.
As diligent young actors will, my castmates and I dove into research and watched Schindler’s List as part of our dramaturgy. I’d read some historical fiction set in the time period around World War II and had learned about the Holocaust in school, but other than The Sound of Music, this was the first time it was more than words on a page.
We brought our newfound sense of understanding to rehearsal, but the play was still set in the 1940s. Yes, it was a story of real people, but it took place in the past and we were all Gentiles so there was still a sense that we were just pretending to understand. Even though it was realism, this was always a story, and there was always some distancing from it (In college, I would learn that this was a hint of what Bertolt Brecht called Verfremdungseffekt). After curtain call, we took our high school theater make-up off and went to Perkins for a cast party, leaving Anne’s story on the stage.
In 2009, I moved to Minneapolis, and in 2017, I moved to the Central Neighborhood. For the next four years, I lived four blocks from where Derek Chauvin would murder George Floyd in 2020. In 2021, I moved just across the interstate to the next neighborhood over and, since then, have lived eight blocks from where, on Jan. 7, 2026, Jonathan Ross shot Renee Nicole Good in the face and killed her.
The influx of federal agents to Minnesota began before the murder of Renee, but the surge that has followed and the devastation, chaos and destruction are unlike anything I ever thought I would witness in my lifetime.
In May 2020, a curfew was placed on the city after George Floyd was murdered and the city dared to demand justice. On the second or third sleepless night of the uprising, I watched several of my neighbors walk to the corner of the block to check out a loud noise. Within 30 seconds they were surrounded by officers from the police department and the National Guard. They began to flee back to their homes as the officers tried to grab and arrest them for breaking curfew. My roommates and I saw what was happening and stepped out on our front steps, screaming that those were our neighbors, that they lived there, and to just let them go inside.
For the mere act of standing on our front steps and advocating for our neighbors, officers pointed their guns at our faces and ordered us back in the house. They did end up letting the neighbors go, but made sure to roll what felt like an entire battalion of officers and tanks down my quiet residential side street afterwards. I’ve been mugged before, but that was the most unsafe I had ever personally felt in this city.
Since Jan. 7 of this year, I have felt even less safe. The scale of the reign of terror currently being enacted upon the Twin Cities and all across the state is truly unfathomable. A general sense of fear pervades the air. We all know that each of us is at a different level of risk, but we all feel like possible targets of the regime, whether because of the color of our skin or because we dared to say that what is happening here is wrong.
Schools were closed after federal agents descended on Roosevelt High during pick-up. Elected officials, including the president of the Minneapolis City Council, have been assaulted while advocating for their constituents and simply observing and documenting the activity of federal agents. Many of these agents do not wear official uniforms. They cover their faces. They drive around our neighborhoods recklessly. Families are in hiding and fear answering the door. Workers are staying home and struggling to pay rent or buy groceries because they are afraid to leave their homes.
Federal agents are abducting our neighbors. They are going through red lights and ramming people’s cars. They are taking people from bus stops, hospitals, workplaces, schools, daycares, and even from their homes. They lie to our faces and they seem to take pleasure in it. They are demanding to see identification on the street, based on nothing other than skin color. They are kicking down doors, entering homes without judicial warrants, and kidnapping residents. They are tear-gassing our business corridors. Beloved local small businesses are closing or have reduced hours because they don’t have enough staff to stay open — because the staff has been abducted by the feds and whisked away to another state before their families and attorneys could find them, or they are afraid to leave their homes because this might happen to them. Unsurprisingly, Minnesota’s corporate leadership remains silent while masked goons abduct their employees who are on the clock.
None of this is just. None of this is right. And certainly none of this is good or moral.
I no longer feel distanced from Anne Frank’s reality. I know that there have always been horrors in this world, but there is new urgency and fear when this happens in your community. In her diary, Anne wrote that in spite of everything, she still believed that people are really good at heart. I am working to hold onto that hope as well. I do believe that people are good, that it is better to care for our neighbors, and in the words of the late Senator Wellstone, we all do better when we all do better.
Minneapolis believes in this too. The community is taking care of each other. Like Miep Gies, we are donating to food banks and delivering food to those who aren’t able to leave their homes. Notaries roam to witness signatures on paperwork. People are raising money to cover rent for those unable to work. Parents and community members are patrolling daycares and schools during drop-off and pick-up to make sure their kids, teachers and staff are safe. The incredible teachers are offering distance learning options for students who don’t feel safe attending in person. We are whistling and banging drums and letting these agents know that when this is all over, justice will find every one of the miserable souls that ripped apart families and attempted to destroy our community with hate, fear and oppression.
I want to tell you all this because I want you to be prepared if they come to your neighborhoods.
I want to tell you this because we need you to be loud and clear with us that what is happening right now is not ok.
I want to tell you this because there are more of us than there are of them, and the way that Minnesotans of all backgrounds have come pouring out into the streets in the cold, showing up for their neighbors, is the way that we will win. We take care of us.
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Blacks and Jews were allies once, can they be again?
The Rekindle graduates laugh, clap their hands, and twirl to “Hava Nagila.” They are Black and white, Jewish, Christian, and agnostic.
It’s the sort of scene that Matt Fieldman, a white Jew, and Charmaine Rice, a Black Christian, envisioned when they launched Rekindle in Cleveland in 2021. The organization, now with 20 chapters nationally and six more in development, aims to revitalize Black-Jewish relations in the U.S. and help rebuild the groups’ historic connections.
Other initiatives share similar goals. Exodus Leadership Forum from CNN commentator Van Jones brings together Black, Jewish, and Black-Jewish leaders over dinner in multiple cities for “nights of deep conversation” and “a space to share history, confront hard truths and imagine a shared future,” according to a promotional video. The organization anticipates holding more than 300 dinners this year in partnership with community groups, Jones told the Forward.
Hillel International, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, and UNCF (formerly the United Negro College Fund) are hosting Unity Dinners with speakers and dialogue for students on college campuses in 14 cities. Additional efforts include local groups for teens or adults, such as Challah and Soul in Los Angeles and the Charlotte Black/Jewish Alliance in North Carolina.
For some, nothing less than democracy is at stake. “I think the most powerful alliance for good in the history of Western civilization is Blacks and Jews together,” said Jones, who is Black.
Advocates point to rising rates of antisemitism and more than 3,000 hate crimes committed against African Americans in 2024. Blacks and Jews were effective allies for social change during the civil rights era and can be again, the thinking goes, even amid such painful obstacles as the turmoil in Gaza.
“There were relationships that were hurt as a result of the war, but we still have to continue to work as hard as we can to heal them,” said Rabbi Judy Schindler, executive director of Spill the Honey, which creates films, educational curricula for students, and workshops to help “the Black-Jewish alliance today” fight antisemitism and racism. “There’s just too much work to do right here,” said Schindler, who is white.
How bridges are being rebuilt
Movement leaders point to the need for education as a foundation for reconnection and action today. Jews were among the NAACP’s founders in 1909. Soon after, Julius Rosenwald joined Booker T. Washington to build thousands of schools for Black students. During World War II, Black soldiers fought Nazism, while Black colleges and universities offered faculty positions to Jewish academics fleeing Europe. In the civil rights era, “the room where it happened” was in the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, where leaders drafted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Black and Jewish people have an historic alliance, said Shonda Isom Walkovitz, the Black Jewish co-founder of Challah and Soul. “It’s in both our DNAs what we have experienced, not only across Europe but in the United States. It was no ‘Blacks, no Jews, no dogs,’” she said.
Still, historical understanding is just a start, those involved in this work agree. Renewing the alliance requires opportunities for moderated, honest conversations to see where the groups’ current values, experiences and priorities intersect locally and nationally.
People need to build relationships and trust, said Fieldman, before allyship can happen. The five-session Rekindle curriculum, with an optional sixth session on Israel, is designed to deepen knowledge of each community while providing a place for questions and dialogue. Among the topics: Who benefits from the Black and Jewish communities not getting along?
“People are hungry for a space to have meaningful conversations,” Fieldman said. “They want to get off social media, and they want to have a space where they can’t be canceled or have negative ramifications of asking a question or talking honestly about their opinions.”
Jones has seen the same need at the Exodus dinners, where people enter cautiously but once “you break the seal and let people speak about their own personal experiences, not politics, not geopolitical events, but our own experiences as Jewish people, as Black people, as people who might be both Black and Jewish, the heart opens up,” he said.
Meaningful experiences are key. Rekindle participants can join each other for Shabbat dinners, church services, arts and cultural events, and holiday celebrations, including Juneteenth. Friendships have led to joint projects, such as joining a community clean-up hosted by local churches.
In Los Angeles, Challah and Soul hosted a Soulful Seder last year which attracted 150 guests. Organizers and audience members wrote a Haggadah at the Seder together that incorporated the Black American story of enslavement. This year, they will add part of the Latino experience into the same Haggadah.
The Charlotte Black/Jewish Alliance honored the 60th anniversary of the Edmund Pettus Bridge crossing in Selma, Alabama by recreating the journey from Atlanta to Selma. The group visited museums on Black history, along with synagogues and Black churches that supported protestors.
“The questions and discussions that happened on the bus – it was eye-opening,” said Ty Green, a Black Christian leader of the group. “We unfolded and opened up about our feelings about what we saw.”
Experiences like these can allow each group to see that the other is not a monolith. “Some of the bias and stereotypes of both communities exist because they’ve really never talked to anyone who was from the other community,” said Harriette Watford Lowenthal, a Black Jewish woman who has led Rekindle cohorts and trained with Exodus Leadership Forum.
She believes the voices of Jews of color are essential to this work. “In my experience, the Black community isn’t very well educated about Jews of color,” she said. Knowing there are Jews from a variety of backgrounds can boost African Americans’ connection with the Jewish community. Those perspectives may be especially important among younger people. One 2024 study found that 18-year-old registered voters are five times more likely to have an unfavorable opinion of Jewish people than 65-year-olds.
Attempts to “bring the band back together,” as Jacques Berlinerblau puts it, have their skeptics. Berlinerblau, professor in the Center for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University, wishes these organizations well but doesn’t believe the juggernaut from 60 years ago can be revived. “For the overwhelming majority of the Black community, the relationship has never been central or particularly important,” said Berlinerblau, co-author with Terrance L. Johnson of Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue.
“I think the most powerful alliance for good in the history of Western civilization is Blacks and Jews together.”
Van JonesCNN commentator and founder of Exodus Leadership Forum
Jones acknowledges that interest in reuniting is higher in the Jewish community than the Black community. “Black people have so many of our own problems that have been accelerated in the past couple of years and feel quite isolated,” he said, pointing to the collapse of job opportunities in the public sector, the end of DEI initiatives, and other challenges. “It’s something of a revelation to Black leaders sometimes that our help would be needed or appreciated in the Jewish community.”
Still, there are signs of momentum. In post-fellowship surveys, 93% of Rekindle graduates report they feel “empowered to address hatred of the other community that I see in my own community” and 80% have “advocated for the other community” six months after graduation.
Exodus Leadership Forum, Spill the Honey, and other leaders are planning to collaborate this spring on a combined national strategy for advancing the Black-Jewish partnership. Collaborations could include students from historically Black colleges and universities traveling to Tel Aviv to study its tech industry, or Black residents accompanying Jews at synagogue for support, Jones said.
The work is crucial during the country’s 250th anniversary, according to Benjamin Franklin Chavis Jr., chairman of Spill the Honey and North Carolina youth coordinator for Martin Luther King Jr., in the early 1960s.
“This is a pivotal year in terms of what defines an American,” Chavis said. “Where are we going? What is the ethos? Can pluralism work, and can we be mutually supportive of one another as brothers and sisters?”
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Why is AIPAC targeting Trump’s ICE funding?
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, often a reliable ally of pro-Israel Republicans, is now echoing Democratic outrage over one of President Donald Trump’s most polarizing policies: immigration enforcement. It comes amid backlash sparked by the fatal shooting this month of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, began airing an attack ad over the weekend against former Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski, who is running in a Feb. 5 primary for the House seat vacated by New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill. The ad highlights his 2019 vote for a bipartisan border funding bill, which included an increase in funds for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. “We can’t trust Tom Malinowski” to stand up to President Donald Trump, the voiceover says in the 30-second video.
AIPAC has become increasingly controversial among mainstream Democrats for backing pro-Israel Republicans who questioned the 2020 election results. That opposition deepened during the Gaza war as Democratic voters became more polarized over U.S. policy on Israel. Congressional candidates, including some Jewish Democrats, have promised not to take contributions from AIPAC. The group has also drawn attacks from white nationalists and some leaders of the MAGA movement for their lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
The new ad is especially notable given that AIPAC has spent years cultivating ties to Trump-aligned Republicans, many of whom strongly support aggressive immigration enforcement. By attacking a Democrat over ICE funding while sidestepping Trump himself, the group is threading a narrow needle — aligning rhetorically with Democratic outrage while maintaining its broader bipartisan posture.
In the 2024 election cycle, the group spent $28 million in high-stakes Democratic primaries. That included more than $14 million, which contributed to the defeat of Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a strident critic of Israel. Malinowski, who served two terms in Congress from 2019 to 2023, holds a mainstream Democratic stance on Israel. During his first term, he traveled to Israel on a trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, AIPAC’s educational affiliate.
Israel has not been a key issue in the crowded special election in the northern New Jersey district, which includes a sizable Jewish electorate. The Jewish Democratic Council of America held a virtual candidate forum last week with eight candidates on issues important to Jewish voters.
A spokesperson for the United Democracy Project did not immediately respond to questions about why the group is targeting Malinowski, particularly on such a deeply contentious political issue. AIPAC spent at least $350,000 on the ad.
AIPAC ad is out https://t.co/f0cH6AIgja pic.twitter.com/udwL7nJgYf
— umichvoter (@umichvoter) January 17, 2026
Malinowski, 60, is a former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in President Barack Obama’s second term and previously served as a foreign policy speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. He first ran for Congress in 2018 in New Jersey’s 7th District, saying he was motivated by Trump’s election.
“I am myself an immigrant from Poland. My family was not Jewish, but experienced life under the Nazi occupation,” Malinowski said in an interview at the time. “That’s where my commitment to defending human rights comes from. That’s where my belief in the importance of protecting Israel comes from.” He is a close friend of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Malinowski was defeated in the 2022 election.
Malinowski is competing for the open seat against at least two leading contenders: Outgoing Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way and Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill.
AIPAC typically focuses on U.S.-Israel relations and national security issues. However, its political arm has focused on domestic issues in close contests.
In 2024, they attacked Reps. Jammal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri — two of the first House members to advocate for a ceasefire after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 — over their votes against signature Biden-era bills, like infrastructure and healthcare.
In a statement to the New Jersey Globe, Malinowski called the attack “laughably preposterous” and suggested it would boomerang against AIPAC. “I have many pro-Israel supporters in the district, including AIPAC members, who believe you can be passionately pro-Israel while being critical of Netanyahu,” Malinowski said. “To say that they’re appalled by this ad would be an understatement. In fact, I’m reading a collective sense that AIPAC has lost its mind.”
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