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Finding Refuge in Germany Today

The recent Torah portion, Va-et’chanan, is set as the Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land.  The text repeats the command (Deut. 4:41-43) in the book of Numbers (Num. 35:9 ff) to set aside three cities of refuge on each side of the Jordan, a total of six that will be for people to flee from avengers.  We read in Numbers that these cities are there for someone who kills another unintentionally.  For instance, we read in Deuteronomy (19:5), if two men go together to cut down trees, and the axe head flies off the handle, killing one of the men, the other one can flee to one of the cities of refuge for safety.

The Jewish concern for providing places of refuge continues throughout our history.  From the time of the Mishnah, over two thousand years ago, Jews have lived in fear of being held hostage, and the ransoming of captives was considered a cardinal mitzvah.  Indeed medieval synagogues had separate funds dedicated to the redemption of hostages taken by pirates, enemies of our people, or the state.  We understand the dangers of being an oppressed minority.  And many of our grandparents or great-grandparents were forced to leave their native lands and wandered stateless.

As we are commanded to understand the plight of our neighbors, our hearts go out to all people who are forced to leave their country, who seek refuge and safety and a new life in a new land.  It is part of the Jewish ethic that I teach and celebrate.

So I was pleased to learn about IsraAID, an Israel-based non-profit organization that reaches out particularly to address crises around the world.  IsraAID was there for the tsunami in Japan and for the 2014 ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and for relief following the earthquake in Nepal in 2015.  They take pride in being the first on the scene, the very first responders:  pulling people out of the rubble, helping the rubber boats filled with refugees land on Lesbos.  So for good reason they have added to their work assisting the refugees arriving in Germany.  IsraAID began its work in Germany in February, 2016, when there were 5-7,000 refugees arriving each day.  There are still 85,000 refugees still in Lesbos—trapped there, since the path to Europe has been closed.   By June and July this summer the number of refugees arriving in Germany had fallen to 500 arriving each day.  IsraAID works with the United Nations Commission on refugees and other groups in assisting the refugees, such as Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, Caritas.

The statistics of this enormous migration are staggering, if a bit confusing.  More than 50% of Syria’s population is displaced.  About 6.5 million people are refugees in Syria, and 4.8 million people displaced in other countries.  Around 250,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war, and more than 3,700 migrants were reported to have died trying to cross the Mediterranean to safety and a new life.  According to the U.N., there are almost 5 million “persons of concern,” or registered Syrian refugees.  But not all the refugees are from Syria.  They come from Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries.  From January, 2015, to March, 2016, the refugees arriving in Europe were just less than half from Syria; less than a quarter from Afghanistan, and 10% were Iraqi.  Who are these people?  What is their background?  Why did they flee?  How has the world helped them?

Recently I participated in a special mission sponsored by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the association of Reform rabbis in North America.  We went to Berlin to learn about the refugees from Syria and other countries, their situation, plight, and how we might help.  We met with groups of refugees and those who help them:  aid workers from IsraAID, social workers and psychologists, government officials, staff at shelters, and representatives of the Berlin Jewish community.  We toured shelters and visited community centers reaching out to serve these refugees.   We met with leaders of IsraAID and the American Jewish Committee in Berlin to gain a deeper understanding of the response from the Jewish community.

I must confess that I did not have a good understanding of who the refugees are, or why they have left their homes, or what their needs are.  The numbers are overwhelming for us to consider, as well as for the communities of Germany and Sweden to assist and hopefully absorb.  I had thought of these migrants as uneducated victims of political turmoil in their homelands; that they were from tribes in the wilderness, although we all know that the populations of Damascus and Aleppo (both important in biblical and Jewish history) have been forced to flee.  Of all of Israel’s neighbors, I knew the least about Syria.  They were the most intransigent of enemies, the least likely to have any contact with the Jewish state.  Why, I wondered from time to time, are we interested in the plight of people form a nation that is technically still at war with Israel and has taken every opportunity to hurt the Jewish people?

These were not the refugees I met.  I learned that 86% of the Syrian refugees have secondary or university educations.  Most of these refugees are young—under 35 years old—and hoping to live in Germany or Sweden, where there are jobs and opportunities for education, as well as governmental assistance.  Over half the refugees are under 18, and 43% are under 14.  And I learned that those nations that have agreed to help are shouldering great burdens, while their neighbors watch from a distance.  Germany and Sweden have accepted over a million Syrian refugees, while the remaining 26 EU countries have offered just over 30,000 places, or 0.7% of the Syrian refugee population.  The United States has set aside all of 10,000 places.

There are more men than women whom we met and saw:  men who have braved the perilous journey, leaving their wives and children behind while they establish themselves and a place for their families.  There are 60,000 unaccompanied minor refugees in Germany.  The German nation, with a population of 80 million people, is seeking to help and absorb over one million refugees.  By comparison, the U.S., with a population of 320 million, has agreed to accept 10,000.

Let me tell you about a couple of the refugee men whom we met.  Wasim lived in Swaida, Syria, a center of Druze population near Damascus, once with a population of a million residents.  Now there are only 600 people left in his village.  In 1994 he graduated as a teacher of English at the age of 23, and he would like to teach in Germany.  Some time ago he protested against the Assad regime and thus needed to leave the country.  While he was waiting for his exit papers, he was kidnapped and learned that Isis was “at his door,” as he told us.  He applied for asylum a year ago, and his Syrian passport was taken away from him.  He is stateless, without a nationality.  He is 45 and left behind his wife and three children, aged 16, 11, and 8.  He made his way to Turkey, with his cousin—also an English teacher—where they contacted a smuggler who agreed to take them to Europe.  They spent several hours on a rubber boat from Turkey to Greece and then four days in Greece, before they made it to Germany.  (We learned that the journey from Turkey to Europe usually takes about a month.)  Once in Germany, Wasim spent eight months in three different shelters, including some time in a basketball stadium, remade to accommodate as many as 2,000 people.  Despite great odds, and a severe shortage of apartments in Berlin, he and his cousin have been able to rent a flat for €450/month.  To qualify for asylum, he needs to study German diligently and take a series of examinations to prove his proficiency.  He takes classes for 5 hours each weekday and has achieved considerable success, a couple of notches below where he would need to be to be approved as a translator.  He communicates with his wife and children each day via WhatsApp on his smartphone.  His great concern is that his 16-year-old son will not be able to immigrate to Germany once he reaches his 18th birthday, and the wait for asylum status can be over two years.

There was a law in Germany, as in many other western countries, reuniting families, which would have taken precedence in allowing him to bring his family from Syria.  But two months ago that law was changed and then challenged in the German courts so it is now in legal limbo.

We also met Wasim’s cousin, also a member of the persecuted Druze minority. who is also an English teacher by profession.  As he began to tell us his story, he broke down as he reflected on his wife and children who are trapped in Syria and live in constant danger.

We learned that the religious differences are very significant among these refugees.  The Muslims are of many different backgrounds and do not get along with the Druze, a minority, and less with the Yazidi refugees, who are not Muslim and whose beliefs have subjected them to persecution for centuries.  We also learned that despite German laws that guarantee free religious practice for Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, Islam is not an official recognized religion by the German government– in part because the Muslim community is not organized.  While there have been Muslims living in Germany since the 1960s, most of them are from Turkey and came as “guest workers,” without wanting to become residents.  Their mosques are funded by Turkey, and they are seen as guests rather than integrated into German society.

Our group visited shelters where the refugees are housed.  The shelter I visited is in a former cigarette factory, a huge concrete building with very high ceilings.  This shelter houses around 600 refugees now, but could have 1,000 people, or even more.  Men, women, and families with children (There are more than 200 children in the shelter.) are housed in separate sections.  The refugees live in what we would call temporary cubicles, each one just large enough to fit in three bunk beds—six men or six women per cubicle.  There is no door to the cubicle and no ceiling and no place to keep personal effects.  Bathrooms and showers are located in another section.  All the residents, 600 of them, eat their meals at the same time.  We were in the huge dining room an hour before dinner, and the noise from just the early arrivals was almost deafening.  There are only 5 social workers on site to tend to the psycho-social needs of the residents.  Up until now (they are building cubicles for them to meet with residents), there were open hours for social workers to meet with residents in a spot in the dining room, without any privacy.  Many of the children are not able to attend school, where they would like to be, because there is no space for them in the school.

There is a considerable security presence, with lots of guards visible, yet the residents seem to pass in and out of the building and from section to section comfortably.  We learned that there has been crime in the shelter, mostly against the refugee residents or among rival religious groups.  Crime by immigrants has dropped 18% and crime within the shelter is down 10% this year.  While a fifth of Germans report that they fear these foreigners, hate groups in Germany represent less than 2% of the population.   At the same time, we were told that over one million Germans are currently volunteering with the refugees.  Unfortunately I must report that some in the German Jewish community are ambivalent about these new refugees.  While we learned that one congregation has volunteered to assist, we also heard several negative comments from Jewish community leaders about the refugees and the threat they supposedly posed.

There are dire needs:  shortage of social workers who are able to address the overwhelming needs of these refugees, so many of whom have just experienced great trauma and are experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome.  There are over 300 shelters in Berlin for these refugees.  As you would imagine, the burnout from these overworked social workers and counselors is pervasive.  There are even fewer social workers and counselors who speak Arabic, one reason that the assistance from IsraAID is so valuable.

As we learned about the background of these refugees (65-75% of whom are from Muslim countries), their harrowing journeys, their plight, and their fears and hopes, we were all moved.  We learned about the religious minorities among the refugees, the various backgrounds, and the complexities of their situations.  Why is IsraAID there—with its full-time staff in Germany of 8 people, including two social workers, and 5 summer college interns?  Because IsraAID believes in engaging Israelis to work with other peoples to improve our broken world.  IsraAID believes in connecting young Jews and young Jewish professionals in humanitarian work, to broaden their perspective.  IsraAID believes that the work and picture of caring Israelis will help Israel on the world scene.  IsraAID has partnered with USAID, UNICEF, and governments such as Japan and Greece and non-governmental organizations to provide humanitarian assistance throughout the world.  They are non-political, receive no funds from the Israeli government, and do not do their work for the good publicity it might engender.  Their work, their commitment, and their mission remains inspiring to me, as to our entire group.  They are not looking primarily for funding, since most of their funds come from large sources.  But they do need volunteers and especially they need for us to know about their work.

At the end of our mission, several of my colleagues were struck by the turn of history that Germany and Berlin in particular are now the places of refuge for so many fleeing violence and terror in their lands.  We marveled that a city that was so recently a place of terror for our people is now a place of safety and hope for our Arab cousins.  May the message of the need for cities of refuge that we read Va-et’chanan resonate in our lives today.  May we work together to repair our broken world.

Rabbi Fred Reiner serves Temple Sinai in Washington D.C. 

Categories
Social Justice

The Syrian Refugees and Germany: Not Their Story but Our Story

Each of us had different reasons for taking part in the CCAR Mission to Berlin. Among them were:

  • We cared about the refugee crisis and wanted to learn so that we could share the story, engage our congregants and communities with this issue and be part of an effective response.
  • We wanted to see and support a Germany that once cast refugees out and now was welcoming them in.
  • We saw ourselves in the refugee narrative. We have known too many exiles as a people and, in some cases, as part of our personal families.
  • We wanted to learn more about IsraAID and its efforts to bring people together in responding to global crises. Engaging with an Israeli organization that embodies the values of saving lives, humanitarianism, inclusion and building bridges across faiths and peoples was an experience we wanted to have and share.

The architecture of the Jewish Museum in Berlin created a fitting metaphor for my personal renewed engagement with this country that stole my father’s childhood and a significant portion of my family tree. The architect, Daniel Libeskind, designed the Jewish Museum of Berlin upon three underground axes reflecting the three life paths German Jews may have taken. One path led to a “Holocaust Tower” — an empty concrete silo where the only light and warmth comes from a small slit above. A second path, the Axis of Emigration, led to “the Garden of Exile” which is a disorienting maze of stone pillars on uneven ground in an outside garden. The third and final path, the Axis of Continuity, intersects with the two other paths taking the visitor through exhibits capturing nearly two millennia of German Jewish history. Our coming to Berlin was a collective commitment to be a part of that third axis: the continuity of German Jewish life.IMG_2291

Last year, Chancellor Angela Merkel made the moral choice to open German’s borders to refugees from Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. They poured in by the tens of thousands swelling to more than one million. Germany quickly made makeshift shelters. We visited two shelters – one in an old city hall and another in a tobacco factory. Month by month improvements are being made but still the conditions are stark, cold and harsh.  At the Wilmersdorf Shelter, there are 1200 refugees (half of them children) with 60 toilets and 30 showers. Some stay for five days, some for five months, and some have been there since the day it opened on August 14, 2015.

Patrick Kingsley, in The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis writes that “In a way, the refugee crisis is a misnomer. There is a crisis, but it’s on
e caused largely by our response to the refugees, rather than the refugees themselves.” Had all of the countries of the European Union shared the burden, absorbing the stream of migrants would be manageable. Had a system of resettlement been organized, chaos would have been curbed. Millions of refugees would not be stranded, despairing and overwhelming Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Kingsley notes, “Fear of social meltdown was used to create inertia – fear that became its own self-fulfilling prophecy.”

IMG_2299In Berlin, we connected with refugees. We had meetings and meals with a variety of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. We heard of their fears of turning in their passports and not knowing if they’d ever hold them again; of their anxiety of waiting for papers that would grant them refugee status or render decisions that could lead to deportation; of pleading before judges; of weeping that reunification with families (and in some cases children) seems unlikely in the near future; and some were questioning, “Is Germany where I should stay?”

The citizens of Germany are caring – one million Germans volunteer with refugees. The citizens of Germany are worrying – about the economy and about security.  On one hand, the refugees are vulnerable as victims of exploitation or violence and, if integration is unsuccessful, they are vulnerable to radicalization. On the other hand, they can enrich German society as the birthrate is low, there is a labor gap and these refugees are highly educated.

IsraAID is strategizing and working hard. Integration of refugees is a critical concern. Programs are being created to maximize integration at community centers outside the shelters. Israeli Jews, Israeli Druze, and Israeli Palestinians are helping side by side. American summer college interns are building bridges of social support. Rabbi Gesa Ederberg of the Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue in Berlin, in reflecting upon the potential of her congregation’s engagement, notes: “Refugees need to reorient themselves. If, in this moment of reorientation, we can help reorient them to the idea of Jews and even perhaps Israel — that can be transformative.”

And we, as North American rabbis, have an important role, as well. We are players in this global narrative of creating sanctuary and safety for the Syrian and other Middle Eastern victims IMG_2311seeking refuge from war, oppression, murder, and in some cases, genocide. With education, with programs, with engagement, with advocacy, with fundraising, and with welcoming refugees into our communities and country, we can make a difference.

The Syrian refugee story continues to be written day by day and we can have a hand in crafting its positive outcome.

Rabbi Judith Schindler is an Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Stan Greenspon Center for Peace and Social Justice at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Categories
congregations Rabbis

Humanitarian Mission to Cuba

“Cuba? Why are you going to Cuba on a humanitarian mission, rabbi?” Congregants and friends asked this question numerous times after Congregation Kol Ami and Temple Beth Hillel announced the plan to visit Cuba in April 2016. The answer was simple, the Jewish community there needs us and we need to hear their stories.

Rabbi Denise L. Eger and I learned about the possibility of doing a Jewish religious mission from other rabbis who led similar trips and we knew that, as the relationship between the United States and Cuba’s relationship is entering a new era, timing was just right. Working with Pierre from World Passage Ltd., we worked out an itinerary that enabled us to meet with the Jewish communities in Havana and Cienfuegos and learn about the country and people of Cuba. Our congregants were excited about this travel opportunity and before we knew it we were on our chartered flight from Miami to Havana.

We entered Cuba poem-1carrying clothes for the tropical climate, a minimum of 10 pounds of physical donations for the four organizations we would visit, cash tzedakah, and enough cash for our trip (United States citizens cannot use credit cards or ATMs so we needed to convert our cash into CUCs). Our enthusiastic group of 22 hit the ground running and began our tour. We went right to the Sephardic Synagogue in Havana, one of three Jewish communities we would visit (we also stopped at a maternity clinic in Trinidad and brought gifts).

Jewish life in Cuba was strong prior to the 1959 revolution. There were approximately 15,000 Jews throughout the island of Ashkenazi and Sephardic descent. Havana was home to 6 or 7 day schools and a private Jewish high school. After the 1959 Revolution, private businesses were confiscated by the government, private schools were closed and if one was to participate in any religious community s/he would not be able to work within the government (this included medical professionals, teachers, etc.). For decades there were not enough Jews at any of the synagogues to make minyanim for the High Holy Days. However, after the fall of the socialist countries, the Castro regime allowed Cubans to practice religion without fear of penalty or retribution. Cuba changed from an atheist country to a secular country.

The Jewish community of Cuba today is approximately 1,500, about 1,100 Jews in Havana and 400 in small communities throughout the country. Like all of the people of Cuba the Jewish community has made life work under difficult circumstances. Our donations consisted of items that the congregations in Havana will use in their pharmacies. The congregations run the facilities and any Cuban who has a prescription can come and receive whatever it is they need, provided the pharmacy has it in stock. We also brought basic necessities like toothpaste, toothbrushes, and men’s and women’s underwear.

While there is much to be proud of within the Cuban Jewish community, they are in trouble. Most of the Jews leave Cuba whenever the opportunity presents itself (today most of the young people plan to make aliyah). 95% of Cubans are intermarried, and at the Patronato Synagogue 20% of the congregants are over 60 years old. Cuba’s Jewish community has a unique history and story of survival and there is much to learn from them.

Of course we did not only meet with the Jewish community of Cuba. We heard an overview of Cuban architecture, and sadly every day three houses collapse in Cuba because of the lack of infrastructure. We saw signs of Jewish life, Jewish stars embedded in stained glass windows, hanging from chandeliers and placed within mosaics. We visited Museo Bellas Artes and saw the immense collection of Cuban art. We heard an acapella concert by a phenomenal group in Cienfuegos and saw a demonstration of authentic Santeria dance and music. We stopped at Jardin Botanica de Cienfuegos, an amazing space filled with hundreds of species of trees. And we stopped at La Finca Vigia, Ernest Hemingway’s home, to view the property and the newly painted swimming pool (thanks to President and Mrs. Obama’s recent visit.)

Narratives in Cuba are very important. We learned the story of the October Crisis (what we in America call the Bay of Pigs) and for many in our group it was eye-opening to hear a different perspective. We also carried the narratives of the Cuban Jews living in the United States with us. One of my congregants has fond memories of her family’s home in Havana and the farm where they grew sugar cane. In 1959 she and her family fled Cuba, their home and farms were confiscated by the government and she vowed never to return. The Cuban people are eager to tell their story. If you are able to do so, I encourage you to go and listen. Listen to the music, dance to the rhythms, and take in the wonders of the vast array of visual arts.

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Rabbi Eleanor Steinman is the Director of Religious Education at Temple Beth Hillel in Valley Village, CA. She blogs at rabbisteinman.com/blog