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(New York Jewish Week) — Exterior a just lately opened shelter meant to accommodate some 2,000 migrants at Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, two modest tents are arrange the place volunteers hand out necessities like meals, towels and toiletries, in addition to present objects to move the time, like playing cards, chess units and books.
One tent is adorned with an American flag and an indication that reads “Welcome to NYC,” “Bienvenidos” and “Shalom Aleichem.” The opposite has two traces from “The New Colossus,” the well-known poem by Sephardic Jew Emma Lazarus that’s etched into the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your drained, your poor, your huddled plenty craving to breathe free”).
The tents and the free merchandise inside are courtesy of Masbia Aid, a Jewish communal catastrophe aid crew that’s an offshoot of the Masbia kosher pantry community based by Alex Rapaport, an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn.
“I used to be raised in a house the place all 4 of my grandparents had been Holocaust survivors,” Rapaport advised the New York Jewish Week. “There was all the time that thought: The place was everyone else? The place was the remainder of the world when all this was occurring? To me, you can not ignore a state of affairs like this.”
Alex Rapaport, the chief director of Masbia, has been stocking tents with toiletries, garments and meals exterior of town’s migrant shelters. (Julia Gergely)
Rapaport and his crew have been on the bottom welcoming new arrivals to New York Metropolis since final August, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott despatched his first busload of migrants to Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal and Masbia greeted them with presents of free sneakers.
Since final spring, greater than 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York Metropolis, placing a pressure on town’s assets and area. Earlier this summer season, the breaking level turned seen as tons of of migrants had been compelled to sleep on the sidewalk exterior the Roosevelt Lodge in Midtown, a makeshift metropolis consumption middle that had reached capability.
In response, a number of emergency housing facilities have opened in latest weeks, together with massive, tent-style shelters arrange on soccer fields at Randall’s Island within the East River and in the car parking zone on the state-owned Creedmoor Psychiatric Middle in Queens. A lot of these services have opened in Brooklyn, too, together with on the Sundown Park Recreation Middle, the McCarren Park Play Middle and beforehand vacant area at a block-sized constructing known as The Corridor at 47 Corridor Avenue within the Navy Yard.
Mayor Eric Adams has estimated that the inflow of migrants will price town $12 billion. Over the weekend, pro- and anti-migrant protesters clashed exterior Gracie Mansion, and one other protest by these opposing the shelter of their neighborhood is deliberate Monday night at a former Catholic college on Staten Island.
But many New Yorkers stay dedicated to welcoming the brand new arrivals. The Synagogue Coalition on the Refugee and Immigration Disaster is a bunch of 36 synagogues and Jewish non-profit organizations which have come collectively to current a united entrance in advocacy efforts, training campaigns and direct volunteer service on behalf of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in New York. Collaborating establishments embody synagogues B’nai Jeshurun and Ansche Chesed, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Name for Human Rights and the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan.
The coalition, stated co-chair Judith Bass, “provides us, as a part of the Jewish group, a voice and a presence to specific our assist for the asylum seekers and the migrants.”
The group was initially fashioned in 2016 with the assist of HIAS, the Jewish immigrant assist society, in response to the Syrian refugee disaster. Along with conventional resettlement practices — reminiscent of aiding refugees find flats and jobs, and serving to them fill out authorities paperwork — coalition members take part in volunteer efforts like greeting migrants and holding meals and clothes drives.
“We used to do it as a result of the individuals who wanted assist had been Jewish and now we do it just because we’re Jewish,” Bass stated, referring to how, over time, HIAS’s mission has shifted from Jews serving to Jews to a “multi-continent, multi-pronged humanitarian assist and advocacy group” in line with its web site.
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“There’s a ton of exercise that’s occurring and there’s not one single means of serving to,” Charlie Davidson, the coalition’s different co-chair, advised the New York Jewish Week. One such instance is occurring Monday afternoon: Volunteers, together with former Manhattan borough president and SCRIC co-founder Ruth Messinger, will be a part of Crew TLC NYC, one other volunteer group, to fill backpacks with college provides for kids of asylum-seekers forward of the brand new college yr. The initiative will happen at a donation-based, volunteer-run “retailer” on West fortieth Avenue known as the Little Store of Kindness.
Referencing the Jewish tenet of “welcoming the stranger,” Davidson stated that aiding New York’s refugee group is a very Jewish situation. “I can’t consider something that’s extra elementary to who we’re than recognizing that these individuals are in the identical place that our grandparents had been in once they received right here,” he stated. “These individuals are deserving of assist and we’re required to offer them assist.”
Rapaport stated Masbia’s first provides initiative was put into place on Aug. 5 exterior the Sundown Park shelter.
“After we realized that they are going to be housing migrants in Brooklyn, we needed to nurture a communal sense of sharing,” he stated. “We coordinated with the powers that be to convey two tents exterior, the place individuals can move by and see that we’re gathering private hygiene and clothes for the individuals inside [the shelters], and other people can categorical welcoming and good vibes for his or her new neighbors whereas they’re right here.”
Final Thursday, on an overcast morning, Rapaport and two Masbia volunteers staffed the tents exterior The Corridor, the brand new Navy Yard shelter. The trio supplied smiles and provides to dozens of males who got here to gather issues they wanted.
Rapaport performs chess with among the males who’re residing on the The Corridor in Brooklyn Navy Yard. (Julia Gergely)
Carlos, a 30-something man who declined to offer his final identify, had arrived from Venezuela six months in the past. He took a towel, cleaning soap, deodorant and a few peaches from the tents. “It hasn’t been going very effectively in the mean time,” he advised the New York Jewish Week in Spanish. “I can’t say we’re doing nice, however we are able to’t blame New York for what’s occurring. We’re grateful as a result of they assist us.”
Like a lot of his fellow migrants, Carlos stated he got here to New York looking for asylum from the financial and human rights disaster in Venezuela. He had served practically two years in jail there for attending a protest towards the federal government. Whereas he was grateful for the toiletries, he stated what he most wants is figure. As soon as he will get papers, he hopes to convey his mom and his three youngsters to america as effectively. “I’ll do any sort of labor — no matter is on the market,” he stated. “What I don’t know I’ll study rapidly. I’ve no alternative.”
“These are individuals working away from horrors and persecution,” stated Rapaport, noting that that truth can get misplaced within the standoff between town, state and federal governments over duty for assuaging the disaster. “When that occurs, it’s very laborious to see the human facet of the story. It’s very laborious for individuals to know that there’s a actual historic factor occurring right here. It’s a human situation and it’s a New York situation. And we might be welcoming in the direction of new immigrants.”
Bass concurs. “It is a humanitarian disaster, this isn’t a political situation,” she stated. “We have to reply as Jews, as New Yorkers and as involved people.”
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