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Jewish Community Refugee Initiative's Fifth Annual Drive-Through Sukkah for Refugees
August 2024
By Amy Lefkof
Although Sukkot doesn’t officially begin until the evening of Oct. 16, 2024, the Jewish Community Refugee Initiative (JCRI) invites you to participate this fall in its fifth annual DriveThrough Sukkah for Refugees a month earlier than usual. JCRI will once again partner with Refugee Support Services (RSS) to provide food and kitchen items to 125 local refugee families.
Volunteers are needed to box food and kitchen items at Shalom Park at the Poliakoff Pavilion on Tuesday, Sept. 17, from 12-2 p.m. Given that COVID is still with us, this event will be outside, assembly-line fashion, with volunteers spaced apart. Delivery of the totes will be early the following morning, Wednesday, Sept. 18, at RSS, located on the grounds of Aldersgate, 3925 Willard Farrow Drive.
Jonathan Lee, RSS’s food and community info program coordinator, is looking forward to partnering once again with JCRI, noting: “The 125 families loved the totes filled with food and kitchen supplies last year. They were so happy to walk away with such a heavy bag!”
On the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, we commemorate both the fragile “booths” set up during Biblical harvests and the temporary shelters used during the Jewish people’s 40-year migration in the desert following their exodus from Egypt. JCRI’s Drive-Through Sukkah for Refugees project recognizes the plight of today’s refugees and asylum seekers who often occupy temporary precarious housing on their journey to a safe new destination.
During the June 28 presidential debate, immigration was spotlighted with much misinformation about who immigrants are, and why they come to our country. With more than 120 million people displaced worldwide due to conflict and violence, it is important for us as Jews, who have also been refugees and resettled in strange new places, to be sensitive to dangerous and inaccurate immigration rhetoric.
Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS (formerly Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), one of nine resettlement agencies authorized through the federal government to resettle refugees in the U.S., said regarding immigration at the first Presidential debate: “Former President Trump had nothing truthful to say about refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers, and President Biden said too little to forcefully speak the truth that refugees and immigrants are a blessing to this country. After 250 years of history, this is one lesson we should have learned by now. The way to make America great again is to make America greet again.”
HIAS particularly opposes the use of anti-immigrant rhetoric and conspiracy theories about an “invasion” at the border, which echo discrimination faced by “generations of immigrants in some of the darkest moments in our history.” HIAS’s local Charlotte affiliate is Carolina Refugee Resettlement Agency (CRRA), which often partners with JCRI. According to CRRA’s Executive Director, Marsha Hirsch, for Fiscal Year 2024 (Oct. 1, 2023-Sept. 30, 2024), CRRA will resettle 300 new arrivals, and Catholic Charities (another Charlotte resettlement agency) expects to resettle about 400. Most of these new arrivals have come from Afghanistan, Venezuela, Central America, Syria, Burma, Congo, and Ethiopia.
JCRI needs to raise around $700 more to purchase food and kitchen supplies. If you are interested in making a monetary donation, please send a check payable to Temple Beth El (TBE) with JCRI in the memo line. Although JCRI is a Shalom Park-wide social justice initiative, TBE is JCRI’s fiduciary agent. To volunteer to be a “buyer” or an assembly line worker, please contact JCRI co-chair Elizabeth Weinstein at elizabeth.c.weinstein1@gmail. com. You can also donate ONLINE on TBE Shulcloud in the "Donate" tab https://tbe.shulcloud.com/ and select The Fund Type: Pass Through Fund and Fund name: Jewish Community Refugee Initiative.
