Jewish Woman Helps Eritrean Refugees Get Settled In Brooklyn

Image by Josh Wineberg

By Daniel J. Solomon September 25, 2017

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

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO