Good Monday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we profile the Coalition of Religious Organizations for Mental Health, an Israeli umbrella group created last year, and feature op-eds from Nancy Parkes, Saul Kaiserman and the friends, family and colleagues of Ilia Salita. Also in this newsletter: Robert Grey, Daniel Kaminetsky and Judy Levine. We’ll start with an initiative from HIAS to help synagogues sponsor refugees.
Zia Saberi had worked for the U.S. military in Afghanistan for nine years in the mid-2010s, so when the Taliban took control of his country in August 2021, he and his family had to go into hiding. That December, they were granted Special Immigrant Visas, and they made their way to America, first living on a military base in New Jersey, and then finally arriving in Denver, their new home, in February 2022, where they were greeted by a crowd of friendly faces, reports Jay Deitcher for eJewishPhilanthropy.
The group waiting for them was their Welcome Circle, formed through local congregation Rodef Shalom under the guidance of HIAS. “They gave us dishes, mattresses, pillows, television, dining chairs, dining table, whatever we need,” Saberi told eJP.
The Welcome Circle lined up housing for the Saberi family, and over the next several months, members of the congregation took the family to medical appointments, enrolled Saberi’s wife in English courses and his sister in high school, and helped with finances and legal issues.
This is just one story of refugees being helped by the Welcome Corps, the first U.S. government private refugee sponsorship program in almost 40 years, under whose auspices the Welcome Circles operate. Although HIAS has been running their Welcome Circle programs for two years, the U.S. government formalized their private sponsorship program on January 19 with HIAS as one of the first private sponsorship organizations. The entire list of 12 partner organizations was announced on June 13.
“We’ve heard so many times how the groups have formed close relationships, especially coming out of COVID when people haven’t had as much personal interaction,” Isabel Burton, senior director of community engagement initiatives at HIAS, told eJP. “We’ve also had a number of rabbis saying, ‘This has been incredible for our congregations. It’s created a whole new life for us. It’s brought new people in.’”
Read the full story here.
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