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This organization hired asylum seekers to pack Passover goods for Jews in need
(New York Jewish Week) — At a warehouse in Borough Park, thousands of apples were waiting to be taken off two 18-wheelers, as dozens of volunteers were hard at work putting groceries into bags.
The scene was one part of a massive $1.5 million operation undertaken every year by Masbia, an Orthodox organization that helps provide kosher food for low-income people, to distribute food for Passover to 10,000 families.
But this week, the Passover initiative differed from those of previous years. That’s because most of the people in the warehouse were migrants, the majority of whom were bused to New York from Texas during the past year. Because they are undocumented, they lack work permits, and for many of them, working in Masbia’s warehouse is their first job in the city.
Masbia was one of many organizations to welcome migrants who came from Texas when they arrived at the Port Authority last year, providing them with new shoes to replace pairs that may have broken down during long treks through jungles and other dangerous areas. The group’s executive director, Alex Rappaport, sees employing a group of migrants as another way to help them find their footing in the city.
“Sometimes, you need to turn over every stone to find a way to help people,” Rappaport told the New York Jewish Week.
Passover is the busiest time for Masbia, with hundreds of pallets of food coming in daily to the organization’s three warehouses in Brooklyn and Queens. At Masbia’s Borough Park location, boxes of potatoes and onions lined the sidewalk and stretched down the block. Inside the garage were piles of other Passover goods, stacked two stories high. Volunteers were busy picking produce off the shelves and putting it into bags for delivery drivers who were waiting near the entrance. The operation starts in December, and food distribution begins two weeks before Passover, which starts next Wednesday night.
“These people should have been given work permits,” Rappaport said. “They’re here, ready, willing and able to do beautiful work.”
Masbia CEO Alex Rappaport in front of a truck full of apples in Borough Park, Brooklyn on March 29, 2023. (Jacob Henry)
Rappaport combined the work with a touch of advocacy: Some of the volunteers working alongside the migrants were Jewish high school students, and Rappaport overheard one of them say that “illegal immigrants” were working there. He gathered high schoolers together and began to hold court.
“These people who are working are asylum seekers,” Rappaport told the teens. “They are fully designated as an asylum seeker, meaning to say, they are fully legal, because they have a day in court.”
Rappaport went on to discuss how if a person jaywalks, they are technically breaking the law, but are not referred to as “an illegal.”
“There’s never a person that turns into ‘an illegal,’” Rappaport said. “The term is just a very bad term. A person might not have documents, but these are people coming from the border who are looking for a new future. It’s an opportunity. They asked for asylum.”
The opportunity Masbia is providing comes via a partnership with La Colmena, a nonprofit that helps find jobs for day laborers, domestic workers and low-wage immigrant workers in from Staten Island.
Kimberly Vega, the workforce manager of La Colmena, told the New York Jewish Week that the group saw “an influx of asylum seekers” that began in August and is still ongoing. Vega has a list of 190 workers looking for jobs. Masbia provided work for 15.
“We’re facing this crisis at the moment,” Vega said. “We have the amount of workers, but we don’t have the jobs. They face all these challenges because they don’t have a permit or any documentation, so we’re very thankful for this opportunity that came up through Masbia.”
Vega added that many of the workers are staying in homeless shelters provided by the city in Staten Island. Many of the workers drop their kids off at school in the morning, then come to Brooklyn to work throughout the day. “They got shipped on a bus, arrived here and were transported to a shelter,” Vega said.
According to NPR, it’s estimated that up to 50,000 migrants were moved to New York over the past year by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, called Abbott’s actions “inhumane.”
In a New York Post op-ed published last August, Abbott wrote that Adams was hypocritical for calling New York a sanctuary city, then complained about the new arrivals.
On Twitter, Adams’ press secretary Fabian Levy wrote that the mayor is “welcoming asylum seekers with open arms.”
Vega said the migrants working at the Masbia warehouse were being paid based on a law that has been used to help undocumented workers earn income. According to the State Department of Labor, nonprofits may give volunteers stipends or reimbursements. Therefore, Vega said, even though a migrant worker is only a volunteer, they can still be paid by a nonprofit organization. Masbia and La Colmena would not disclose how much the workers were being paid.
Asylum seekers working at a Masbia warehouse in Brooklyn on March 29, 2023. (Jacob Henry)
Gledys, 30, a migrant working at the warehouse, told the New York Jewish Week that she came to New York from Venezuela after being bussed here from Texas last October.
Gledys, who did not give her full name for fear of her family being harmed, said through a translator that when she was living in Venezuela, “There’s a certain political view that everyone has to have.”
“If you even think differently, you can’t even speak amongst your community, because then they will turn on you,” Gledys said. “My husband was a police officer there, and because of that reason, we had to leave.”
When she arrived in New York, Gledys said she was “hit with the reality that it’s hard to find a job because you need certain permits.”
“I’m working really hard [at Masbia] and hoping this will open my doors,” Gledys said. “They’ll be able to see that I’m a hard worker and [I will] gain experience for more opportunities to open up.”
She added that she was thankful that her children were able to begin attending public school only a few days after she arrived. The city also helped provide daycare for her.
“No other country has done that,” Gledys said. “It’s more than enough. I’m not suffering, and I’m grateful. I’m definitely very hopeful because now I can see a different future for my children, a different future for myself.”
Another worker named Moises, 39, who likewise did not provide his full name due to fear for his family’s safety, said he came to New York from Venezuela via Texas in January after entering immigration custody.
“During those days, we were still cuffed and I was separated from my family,” Moises said. His wife and children eventually made it to New York, and they were reunited.
He said that in Venezuela, inflation was so rampant that he was only making $7 to $10 a week.
“People are really struggling,” Moises said. “There are also a lot of political issues as well. If the community tries to step up and do a protest, you have the military stepping in and shooting directly at civilians. We’re really running away, because we were so scared.”
He said he was worried about how he was going to feed his family, but was also thankful for the help they received when they first arrived, including finding a place to stay in a shelter, and now the job at Masbia.
“I want to feel independent,” Moises said. “With a job like this, I can be more independent. I understand it’s a temporary job, but hopefully in the next couple of months, I can find something that is no longer temporary.”
Rappaport feels that there’s a connection between the migrants’ stories and the holiday they’re helping prepare for because the Jewish people were also strangers in Egypt. “The Bible says, ‘You should love the stranger, the newcomer,’” Rappaport said. “There is that idea of people making a long journey to a promised land. These people went through the jungle.”
He added, “It’s beautiful to connect the Jewish story of Exodus to this story of the challenge of the asylum seekers.
“People take their whole family and go for thousands of miles through very dangerous terrain,” Rapport said. “They must be running from something. It’s not utopia yet, but we’re celebrating some freedom. And they’re still in the middle of their story.”
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Survey: Jews in smaller communities feel less heard when raising concerns about antisemitism
(JTA) — Jews living in smaller communities are less likely than those in large communities to feel their concerns about antisemitism are taken seriously by law enforcement and would-be allies, a new survey from the Jewish Federations of North America has found.
Jews in smaller communities were “lacking a sense of allyship in the communities around them,” said Mimi Kravetz, the chief impact and growth officer for JFNA.
“Jews in small communities tell us that they feel deeply concerned that they’re looking for support, that their leadership is looking for network and resources, because it can feel like they’re on their own,” Kravetz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The JFNA survey, which was compiled from its March 2025 study of Jewish Life in North America, found that 22% of Jews live in small communities. Defined as Jewish communities with fewer than 5,000 Jews living within five miles of their zip code, small Jewish communities are also more likely to be found in the South or in rural or suburban areas.
Although the survey found no statistically significant difference in the antisemitism experienced by Jews in smaller and larger communities, it found that Jews in small communities are more likely to feel that antisemitism is invalidated or dismissed.
Among respondents, 58% of Jews in small communities reported feeling more likely to be invalidated, compared with 48% of Jews overall.
Jews in small communities were also less likely to express confidence in local law enforcement’s responses to antisemitism. Just 39% of Jews in small communities say local law enforcement takes antisemitism seriously, compared with 47% of Jews in larger communities.
Leaders of small Jewish communities also feel less physically safe in Jewish spaces than their big city counterparts: 60% of those small-community leaders said they feel safe, compared to 86% of community leaders overall.
While the survey found that 50% of Jews in smaller communities report being unengaged in Jewish life, compared to 36% of Jewish respondents overall, they were just as likely to say they wanted greater connection to Jewish life.
The survey suggested that geographic constraints and limited availability of Jewish life likely caused the disparity in engagement, even as Jews sought out Jewish connections in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
Kravetz said Jews in small communities were just as likely as Jews in big communities to crave those connections.
“What’s needed in small Jewish communities is more leadership infrastructure and support for Jewish life,” Kravetz said.
The survey was conducted before the January arson attack on Beth Israel Congregation, the only synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, which drew renewed attention to the security challenges facing smaller Jewish communities.
Michele Schipper, the CEO of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, a nonprofit that supports Jewish communities across the South and was housed inside Beth Israel Congregation prior to the arson attack, said security remains a challenge for some smaller congregations.
“For some of those smaller communities, they may not be able to have personnel on site every time they’re open,” Schipper said. “It may be an older building. Not everyone is able to get one of the secure community grants,” she said, referring to federal and state government grants to nonprofits seen as vulnerable to attack.
Earlier this month leaders from Jewish communities across the South convened at the ISJL’s annual conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Schipper said they discussed strategies for keeping smaller communities safe.
“One of the things we really did share is how important it is not to isolate ourselves in these communities, but to continually build relationships with the local community, with local law enforcement, so that when, God forbid, something happens, you’re not starting to reach out or wait for somebody to contact you,” Schipper said.
Looking ahead, Schipper said her message to Jews in small communities was to “continue to build relationships in your own local community, and just continue to participate in the Jewish community and stay strong and positive.”
The study, which was conducted online by JFNA from March 5-25, 2025, surveyed 5,798 total U.S. adults, of which 1,877 identified as Jewish. The margin of error for Jewish adults was ± 2.26%, and samples were weighted to be representative of the U.S. population and Jewish community.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Hitler appears in the baby photos section of a New Jersey middle school
(JTA) — Adolf Hitler cropped up in the student baby photos section of a New Jersey middle school yearbook, prompting condemnation from school officials and local Jewish leaders.
In a letter sent last Thursday to the school community, East Brook Middle School Principal Ryan Aupperlee said that the school in Paramus had launched an investigation into the incident in “coordination with law enforcement.”
“Adolf Hitler represents hatred, antisemitism, and the horrors of the Holocaust, including the murder of six million Jews,” Aupperlee wrote in the letter obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “An image of him has no place in a yearbook created for our students. It does not reflect who we are or what East Brook stands for, and we condemn its inclusion without reservation.”
Sean Adams, the superintendent of Paramus Public Schools, told JTA in an emailed statement that the yearbooks were taken back from the students “the same day they were distributed, before the students left school for the day.”
“We are working with the yearbook company to develop a solution that will allow us to redistribute the yearbooks after removing the offensive content while still allowing students to retain the handwritten, personalized messages their classmates and teachers had already written in their yearbooks,” Adams said.
Adams said that an investigation into the incident was “ongoing,” and that “any details related to students must remain confidential.”
The incident comes amid a spate of allegations of antisemitism in New Jersey schools in recent years. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into Teaneck Public Schools after parents alleged the system had fostered an antisemitic climate since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacres in Israel. The same year, teachers at Fort Lee High School presented a lesson that described Hamas as a “Palestinian political party and armed resistance movement.”
A high school yearbook in East Brunswick, New Jersey, also drew condemnation and was recalled in 2024 after a photo of the “Jewish Student Association” was replaced with one of a Muslim student group.
Jason Shames, the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, said that the incident was “shocking people to the core.”
“I’m not rushing to judgment, but again, if I know that it’s a minor, I want consequences. If I know that’s an adult, I want consequences,” Shames said, adding that the Jewish community “demands” to see accountability.
On Friday, Paramus Mayor Chris DiPiazza condemned the incident in a post on Facebook, writing that, “Any examples, like yesterday’s, does not reflect Paramus.”
Shames said that while he felt the school “handled it right,” he was still looking to other state leaders for a statement condemning the incident.
“There should be global condemnation,” Shames said. “If the school has already done it, and the mayor’s already done it, where’s the uproar?”
He said the incident reflected a broader normalization of antisemitism.
“It’s infuriating that it’s come to this. There’s a bigger statement about the illness in American society today, and the antisemitism, and the hate that’s involved in this,” Shames said. “Even if it winds up being two middle school kids who thought it was funny, we have a problem now with people thinking Hitler and Nazi jokes are funny.”
Rabbi Arthur Weiner, the leader of the Conservative Congregation Beth Tikvah in Paramus, said that he was first alerted to the yearbook by a congregant whose child attends the school.
On Monday, Weiner sent a letter to congregants saying that he was “angered by this blatant antisemitic incident,” and had been in contact with the school district and local elected leaders about their response.
“Events like these are of great concern to us both personally and as a community,” Weiner wrote. “Incidents involving Nazi imagery or references to Hitler are not merely offensive. They touch deep historical wounds and remind us why vigilance remains so important.”
Weiner said that the local Jewish community could “take heart in the reaction of the authorities to this particular event.”
“We have not always seen that clear and unambiguous response from school districts when similar incidents of antisemitism and bias have occurred,” Weiner told JTA. “I think we’ve been very, very proud of the response.”
Rabbi Shmuel Goldstein of the Modern Orthodox Congregation Beth Tefillah in Paramus said that while many parents at his congregation had expressed “frustration,” “hurt,” and “concern” over the incident, they also felt “supported by the local government.”
Goldstein said that he nonetheless did “not feel that there’s nearly enough proactive measures in the local school systems.”
“These incidents don’t happen in a vacuum,” Goldstein said. “They happen because someone is taught at home on social media or informally amongst peers at schools, that it is okay to hurt Jewish people, that has to be made clear, that that is unacceptable.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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The warmth of community, the heat of hostility: Yona Speidel’s Jewish journey
(JTA) — Hours after emerging from a ritual bath marking her conversion to Judaism, Yona Speidel was leaving a celebratory dinner with her rabbi when a man across the street yelled “f–ck Jews.”
For Speidel, it was an unexpected welcome into the Jewish community.
“My rabbi looked at me and he goes, ‘Welcome,’” Speidel recalled. “And I was like, ‘Oh, great, I’m home.”
The conversion ceremony in Los Angeles in March marked the conclusion of a decade-long exploration of Judaism for Speidel, the prominent transgender Emmy-nominated television writer and producer formerly known as Our Lady J.
“Over a period of 12 years of casually dating Judaism, I eventually got engaged when I realized that Judaism holds so much space for all of me, and then some,” Speidel said.
Growing up in Central Southern Pennsylvania, where two of her great-grandparents had been Mennonites, Speidel said that she had little exposure to Jews. Still, she felt a pull toward Jewish culture from an early age.
“I don’t remember when I first became aware of Judaism as a culture,” Speidel said. “But I knew I loved New York City. Many years later, I look back, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I love Jews, I love Jewish culture, that’s what drew me to New York.’”
Speidel is believed to have become the first out trans writer to be hired in a television writers’ room when she joined the hit TV show “Transparent,” which follows the story of a Jewish family in Los Angeles with a parent who comes out as trans.
During the show’s third season, as she became immersed in researching Judaism for the show, Speidel said she began taking conversion classes but then put them on pause because she “wasn’t sure if there was space for me in Judaism.”
That all changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Speidel said she began opening up to faith and spirituality after becoming “burnt out” by her work on “Transparent” and another hit LGBTQ TV show, “Pose.”
“As the world got more complicated and darker and scarier for a lot of people, and especially for Jews, I found that Judaism was able to hold everything for me that I needed to pour out, to release,” Speidel said.
Speidel, who learned as an adult that she is intersex, said that at the time she discovered Isaiah 56, a passage of the Hebrew Bible that promises a place for eunuchs in the Temple.
She said discovering the passage left her feeling that her “intersex and trans identity feels really seen and awakened.”
“It was not only that I was accepted as, you know, this idea of tolerated, but rather I could see a part of me that would be uplifted, actually, and be embraced, and that’s always been in Judaism,” Speidel said.
In late 2024, Speidel began taking conversion classes again at the American Jewish University, saying that rising antisemitism had strengthened her commitment to Judaism.
“In a post-Oct. 7 world, I felt, even though I wasn’t officially Jewish at that point, I felt how much Judaism meant to me — and how much it informed my life and enriched my life — was under threat, and so it made me want to step up and be more conscious in my relationship with Judaism,” Speidel said.
Speidel is not the only person to embrace Judaism amid rising antisemitism. In recent years, some rabbis have reported increased interest in conversion, with prospective converts saying the post Oct. 7 environment strengthened rather than diminished their commitment to Judaism.
In the midst of her conversion, which she completed with Rabbi Igael Gurin-Malous, the lead rabbi at the Reform Beit T’Shuvah in Los Angeles, Speidel also took aim at what she described as anti-Zionism within the LGBTQ community in a social media post.
“Zionism is not a dirty word,” she wrote. “It is the belief in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.”
Speidel faced a spate of online attacks following the statement, but she said she felt obligated to be the “bridge” between the Jewish and LGBTQ communities.
“I think that word ‘Zionist’ means a lot of different things to a lot of people, and so people ran with it and did what they wanted to do with it, and that did not feel good, but at the same time I was grateful for the people who got closer to me and understood my intentions,” Speidel said.
While Pride Month celebrations and parades took place in cities across the United States during June, Speidel said that she had not participated in them in years because of the antisemitism she had seen in those spaces.
“The LGBT movement needs to really look at itself in the mirror and say no to antisemitism, you know, before I come back and dance under the rainbow again,” Speidel said.
Looking ahead, Speidel said she remains optimistic about the future of Jewish life despite present challenges.
“A storm is here, and the storm is going to pass,” Speidel said. “But at the end of the day, we carry this incredible legacy with us, and we get to pass it down, and it’s something to be proud of.”
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