Jewish Woman Helps Eritrean Refugees Get Settled In Brooklyn
Image by Josh Wineberg
A Jewish woman and her rabbi husband are helping two Eritrean refugees get settled in New York City – after the mother and daughter arrived in the United States earlier this month.
“I got a call and they said, ‘Your friend Saba has been approved and would you consider being her U.S. sponsor,’” Mara Getz Sheftel, a professor at Brooklyn College, told DNAInfo.
“I had no idea that would happen, but there’s no choice — we’re not putting her back in limbo,” she said of her friend and asylum seeker Saba Gebremichael.
Gebremichael fled Eritrea a decade ago, after being persecuted for her Protestant faith and forced to serve in the military. She eventually escaped to Israel, where she had a daughter, Koki.
Like many Eritreans in Israel, she was not able to receive permanent asylum in the country – where she met Sheftel and her husband, Rabbi Josh Weinberg.
After being accepted as a refugee, Gebremichael is looking for work as a housecleaner and living for now with Sheftel, Weinberg and their three children.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
