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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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The post This organization hired asylum seekers to pack Passover goods for Jews in need appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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He reconnected with Judaism as an adult. With his art, he hopes others do the same.
Bruce David’s magnum opus is a psychedelic lithograph depicting practically the entire Torah. Over eight months, David filled it with a plethora of hidden symbols: If you look closely, you can see Joshua blowing a shofar, which hugs the Israeli flag. Squint even more and you’ll notice Joshua’s face is the flared end of an even bigger shofar that encompasses the Ten Commandments, a shofar made up of dozens of small people, seven of whom hold flames as if making a human menorah.
To understand every hidden image in just this one painting would take more words than I have space for. David gave me the “short version” of the piece’s story on Zoom — it still took six minutes.
Although David has now spent decades making Jewish art — prints, mosaics, stained glass and metal works — and exhibiting it across the country, it wasn’t what he had anticipated doing with his life. David doesn’t have any formal art training and for several years, he lost touch with his Judaism.
“Oftentimes I’ll refer to myself as a deeply flawed holy man wannabe,” David told me over Zoom from his house in Bloomington, Indiana. “But I always had this spiritual pull.”
David grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, with a Reform father and a mother from an Orthodox family. His Orthodox grandmother, Bess Harris — who he described as a force to be reckoned with — was a particular influence on him.
“I really learned my Jewish heart from her and her love of God,” David said. “She was involved with starting a Jewish day school, a Jewish nursing home, the synagogue, and she would lead trips to Israel.”
But traditional religious practice didn’t speak to him when he was a kid. He told me that one time he even climbed out of the window during Hebrew school to go play basketball.
Years later, his wife Diane was the one who helped him find new ways to connect with Judaism. Although she was raised Catholic, Diane was curious about Judaism. David needed to refresh himself on the answers.
“We started looking at the different aspects of Judaism and different things started to make sense,” David told me. “Shabbat made sense — you know, everybody needs a time to rest, recharge. Yom Kippur makes sense as a time to forgive and be forgiven. Rosh Hashanah to start again. Sukkot to get out and celebrate and get close to nature.”
When the couple met, David’s job was making deliveries for his grandfather’s wholesale store in Louisville. For David’s 30th birthday, Diane gave him a set of pigment pencils and the art started flowing out of him. Many of his pieces are concerned with biblical stories — like his mosaic of Jonah emerging onto the shores of Nineveh or his rainbow colored print of Balaam and his donkey — and he refers to them as “visual midrash.”
Unsure what to do with his art, David went to the Hillel at Indiana University Bloomington to see if the rabbi had any ideas. The rabbi connected him with art professor Mazelle Van Buskirk who was taken with David’s work. She arranged for an exhibit at IU’s School of Fine Arts, making him the first community artist to be given such an honor and kicking off his career.
He has presented his art at Jewish schools and exhibited it at events like the National Hadassah Conference, the Cincinnati Jewish Folk Festival, and the Coalition for Alternatives to Jewish Education. His work has been on the cover of books and Jewish publications. Many of the events that have had the greatest impact on David’s life were unplanned.
“We’ve always lived our lives on miracles,” David told me.
Among these, David said, was Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, “the Singing Rabbi” who wrote hundreds of liturgical melodies in the 20th century, conducting a (planned) conversion for Diane and an (unplanned) wedding ceremony for the couple in the 80s.
“We went to the mikvah for the conversion,” David told me. “And then he tells us ‘Oh by the way we’re going to marry you Saturday night after Shabbat.’”
Another miracle happened when David met a couple looking for someone to manage 29 acres in Bloomington overlooking Monroe Lake. Nature lovers, the couple quickly took the opportunity to live somewhere they could connect with the earth. David’s admiration for natural forms can also be found in much of his art; the shapes tend to flow and bend.
Over the 46 years that the couple has lived on their property, they’ve turned it into a home base for their Jewish worship and educational group Light of the Nations, which conducts lessons at various synagogues and JCCs through art and music. They host parties for Sukkot and the solar eclipse on their huge lawn, welcoming dozens of visitors.
David said they wanted their home to be a “place where people come out and get close to nature in life and slow down.”
Seventy-five years old and battling blood cancer, David is now spending his time focusing on helping people connect to Judaism in a holistic way and see the beauty that brought him back to religion. He’s slowed down on exhibiting his art, instead working on making sure Light of the Nations’ mission can continue once he is gone and that his art will find a home.
David hopes that people recognize in his art “that there’s this amazing, incredible life force influencing all creation.”
The post He reconnected with Judaism as an adult. With his art, he hopes others do the same. appeared first on The Forward.
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Metropolitan Police investigating abuse of Jewish attendees at London Pride
(JTA) — London’s Metropolitan Police launched an investigation Monday into antisemitic abuse at a Pride parade after videos and pictures circulated on social media showed Jewish participants enduring taunts at Saturday’s event.
The police department said in a statement that officers were “aware of videos circulating online that show antisemitic verbal abuse directed towards attendees” at the parade in central London and that footage was being reviewed to assess whether criminal offenses had been committed. The department added that it “continues to work hard to tackle hate crimes of all types.”
Videos shared online show people carrying rainbow flags incorporating the Star of David being confronted by individuals shouting “Free Palestine.” The harassment escalated with attendees shouting, “Go back to your Zionist homeland,” “You kill Arab children, you kill gay children,” “F*** you, Jew,” and “How many babies did you kill?”
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reached out to Pride in London for comment. The group had not replied by press time.
The incident comes amid heightened concern over antisemitism in Britain since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, with a record number of antisemitic incidents reported over the past two years. It also comes as Pride celebrations around the world have been roiled by tensions over Israel and antisemitism.
Pride in London drew tens of thousands of participants and visitors to the Soho neighborhood in the British capital. Some Jewish LGBTQ+ organizations have in recent years chosen not to participate in Pride, citing hostility towards Zionist Jews. But this year, around 150 people marched as part of a Jewish bloc at the event.
Organizers said the return this year followed discussions with Pride in London over Jewish inclusion and commitments that organizers would undertake antisemitism awareness training in partnership with the Community Security Trust, the main security consultant to the Jewish community. Jewish LGBTQ group Keshet UK stated earlier this year that the measures were intended to help ensure Jewish LGBTQ+ participants could march “safely and openly” following concerns raised after Oct. 7.
It was not clear whether the Jewish marchers who endured the abuse were part of the official Jewish bloc – accounts from marchers who stayed with the Jewish bloc were generally positive.
“A few people came and chanted ‘free, free, Palestine,’” Israeli author and LGBTQ+ activist Hen Mazzig told JTA. “They were passing through. And there was another person who was at a cafe and then they came by and they were just staring at us.”
Mazzig shared footage from the event on X, writing, ”My pride is not affected by the opinions of others. I am gay, I am Jewish, and I’m here to stay. Am Yisrael chai.”
Mazzig splits his time between London and Tel Aviv, because his husband is British. He told JTA in a phone interview that Saturday’s incidents “were scary, especially when a Pride parade is supposed to be inclusive.”
Mazzig said that since Oct, 7, circumstances have been exceptionally challenging for the British Jewish community “but specifically for LGBTQ youth that are being forced to choose between their Jewish identity and their queer identity.”
Mazzig claimed that Jewish marchers are not accepted unless they specify that they are anti-Zionist. “Every statement of solidarity with LGBTQ Jews seems to come with a ‘but,’” he said. ‘We support you, but not if you’re physically Jewish, not if you’re supporting Israel. You have to renounce half of your identity first.’ That’s not equality.”
In advance of Saturday’s event, some 650 Met police officers were deployed to enforce “zero tolerance” on hate crimes and to ensure that attendees could “safely and securely” enjoy the parade.
When JTA asked the Metropolitan police why at least two policemen appeared to stand by as Jews were subject to abuse, the Met requested that JTA provide the video in question. After being supplied with the video, the Met later told JTA that it had nothing further to add at this stage but would provide an update if it did.
Mazzig said the Met police should consider the abuse at the parade “shameful and it should alarm everyone.”
He added, “I hope that we stop debating whether or not antisemitism is real and accept it. And that communities that are supposed to be inclusive and pluralistic start taking action.”
The post Metropolitan Police investigating abuse of Jewish attendees at London Pride appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s diaspora minister calls Erdogan a ‘grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar’
(JTA) — Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli compared Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Adolf Hitler and slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a post on X on Monday.
“We all know how narcissistic power-obsessed fanatics like you begin and how they end. The Jewish people have never feared mere flesh and blood, from Pharaoh until today,” Chikli wrote. “You are nothing but a pathetic blood soaked zero who history will soon forget.”
In the post, Chikli accused the Turkish leader of being a “patron of Hamas and ISIS” and described him as a “grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar” alongside an AI image of Erdogan in front of a Nazi flag.
Chikli’s post was in response to an address by Erdogan last month, in which the Turkish leader called Zionism a “genocidal occupying expansionist ideology” and said the “struggle” against Zionism was for the “collective survival of ourselves and our nation.”
Long-standing tensions between Turkey and Israel stoked by the war in Gaza have escalated in recent weeks, amid increasing Israeli concerns over the tight ties between Ankara and Washington and the possible sale of advanced American F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. Erdogan, who has consistently voiced support for Hamas, has been one of Israel’s most outspoken international critics.
Chikli’s post followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s blistering attack against Erdogan during an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Fox News Monday. Netanyahu said Turkey was “governed by a man who calls openly for the annihilation of Israel…and talks openly about conquering Jerusalem.”
The Israeli leader warned against the sale of weaponry to Ankara, portraying Turkey as an aggressive country that didn’t help the U.S. battle Iran. He spoke in advance of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to Ankara late Tuesday for a two-day summit of NATO.
“For a regime infected by the Muslim Brotherhood, an extreme movement that hates America and chants ‘death to America’ from that side of the spectrum, I don’t think they should be given F-35’s or the engines for their fighter jets,” Netanyahu told Fox News.
Such a sale would “upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority and … by America’s posture in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said.
Relations between the two regional powers have also been aggravated by the Israeli government’s June 28 decision to recognize the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire during and immediately after World War I.
Turkey has condemned Israel’s recognition of the Armenian genocide. It’s a move so diplomatically controversial that to date, only some 33 countries, aside from Israel, have taken this step, including the U.S. in 2021.
According to Politico, Erdogan said in a public address last week, “We do not give the slightest heed to the slanders about our country from the murder network that has the blood of 73,000 innocent Gazans, most of them children and women, on its hands.”
Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Saar, also took aim at Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, during a press conference in Jerusalem Monday, decrying Fidan’s comments to CNN Türk on Friday in which he said that Israel had become a “burden that humanity can no longer bear.”
“The remarks by Turkey’s Foreign Minister are a clear call for genocide,” Saar said. “The Jewish people know all too well what happens when such words are allowed to go unanswered. The first step on the road to genocide is dehumanization.”
The post Israel’s diaspora minister calls Erdogan a ‘grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar’ appeared first on The Forward.
