During a tumultuous time for refugees in the United States, the annual HIAS Refugee Shabbat has taken on a new urgency. Two Washington, D.C., synagogues featured Afghan refugees in this year’s refugee Shabbat programming, not solely as guest speakers but as community members.
Tifereth Israel Congregation in Northwest D.C. partnered with New Neighbor Interfaith Alliance for a Feb. 22 Shabbat service to understand the experiences of people who fled Afghanistan and sought refuge in the U.S.
The neighboring Congregation Ohev Sholom hosted its first Refugee Shabbat with NNIA on Feb. 21, hearing from two Afghan refugees who detailed their journeys.
Rachel Seidel, a congregant volunteer who organized the Tifereth Israel event, has been involved with NNIA for two years. During morning and afternoon services, attendees heard from an Afghan refugee who is a legal case worker for the Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area.
“I think it’s so poignant to hear from them,” Seidel said of the guest speaker. “The man who’s coming is an Afghan refugee and his family is one of the ones we’re working with.”
Kate Rozansky, Ohev Sholom’s Yeshivat Maharat intern, said it’s important that members of her synagogue community put faces to the names of families they’ve been helping.
Seidel added that the speaker’s story is an important one to share especially now with President Donald Trump’s executive orders barring thousands of Afghans from entering the U.S.
Three agencies and nine individuals filed the first lawsuit Feb. 10 challenging Trump’s executive order that suspended the U.S. refugee resettlement program and the Trump administration’s efforts to harm the program by withholding critical, congressionally appropriated funding for refugee processing and services, according to HIAS.
“As of the last few weeks, he told me there are people who’ve arrived on planes in late December, early January. They’re in a hotel room and there’s no government support. … I think it’s much more powerful to hear someone who’s been through it,” Seidel said.
The speaker’s story may strike a chord with some TI congregants whose family members had been forced to seek refuge, she said.
“Often, it’s their relative [or] grandparents who had a similar story, not quite the exact trauma or threat to life, but leaving everything behind and having to start over,” Seidel said. “As Jews, I think it resonates really strongly and I think we have a responsibility to do what we can for our neighbors.”
She added that social action, specifically helping others in need, is a fundamental Jewish value that TI is built upon: “I couldn’t tell you the exact number of times in Torah that we’re told to be kind to the stranger, but it’s a lot.”
She felt the need to help Afghan refugees because many of them “put their life on the [line]” helping the U.S. Army during the War on Terror following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The TI community is attempting to give back by supporting two Afghan refugee families. On Feb. 19 and 20, a group of congregant volunteers learned how to make Afghan food from “an expert,” one of the two Afghan women who work in the TI kitchen as chefs, to serve at the Refugee Shabbat.
“She’s trying to earn money desperately to help her family back in Afghanistan,” Seidel said.
Rolling out dough together in the kitchen, the chef shared how that recipe evoked family memories and how she misses her relatives but is “extremely happy” to be part of the TI community.
“Her English isn’t perfect, but somehow we communicated enough to cook together, and that was really special,” Seidel said.
As rewarding as it has been for congregants to get to know these refugee families in the community, Seidel wishes it wasn’t necessary to help them get back on their feet.
“Many of us feel devastated by what’s happening,” she said, referring to Trump’s actions targeting refugees and other displaced people. “I can speak for NNIA in general but I think also what Tifereth Israel members would understand is that the government isn’t stepping up and faith-based communities are going to have to do what they can.”
Rozansky, who discovered NNIA through TI’s newsletter, said NNIA “filled in the gaps” in providing social services and support to local refugees when larger agencies were unable to help or were limited in scope. The Trump administration’s pausing of refugee resettlement and funds to nongovernmental organizations has left many organizations and thousands of refugees without support for necessities such as food and rent, according to NPR.
“Now, a lot of these organizations are turning to NNIA and similar groups and saying, ‘We’ve been cut off,’” Rozansky said. “One of the benefits of NNIA being all volunteer-run is that you can’t cut off their funding because they never had any. They’re trying to do more with less right now.”
Rozansky noted that while she can’t change federal programs such as food stamps, the community can help individuals by donating household items or food to refugees in need.
“Something I really hope we emphasize [at Refugee Shabbat] is that there are a lot of ways to help, and we can’t all be like every NNIA driver taking someone to multiple doctors’ appointments, but [we can all do] small little things,” Rozansky said.
She said the TI and Ohev Sholom communities have done what they can to help a few refugee families, who live in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of D.C.
“It’s important to be a refuge when we can be,” Rozansky said.
