As a trustee of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, I am proud of our 28-year history of celebrating the lives and cultures of immigrants — what brings us together as Americans, not what divides us. This is an apolitical mission; from the museum’s founding, we have neither endorsed a single candidate for public office…
Seventy-eight years ago this week, on December 2, 1938, the first Kindertransport left Germany. In the following months over 10,000 mostly Jewish children were saved from Nazi-occupied territories, because their parents were willing to separate from them. In England they were placed in foster families, schools and shelters. British authorities agreed to grant visas; private…
— The Jewish Family Service of Buffalo will help resettle 50 refugees from the world’s trouble spots. The agency will settle the refugees in Niagara Falls, New York, in an area with affordable housing, the Buffalo News reported. It is not known which country or countries the refugees will come from. The five top home…
In America, the Facebook post announcing a Jewish social event focused on human rights might seem innocuous, if a bit cute: “No One Is Illegal: Concert, New Klezmer Disco, Syrian Dance Lesson,” the invitation to a fundraiser for refugees read. But it’s a significantly more risky proposition in a country led by a right-wing prime…
What is it in life that inspires or compels each of us to tell our stories? Is it the realization that we, too, have lived important historical events? Or is it something much more personal, some nugget of our experiences we want our children’s grandchildren to know? And if we have an important story that…
Ten years ago I received a phone call that changed my life. Gerri Trooskin, the director of our city-wide book club, One Book, One Philadelphia, called me with an unusual request. She asked me to choose ten of my Drexel University undergraduate creative writing students to interview ten Sudanese refugees. These interviews would be serialized…
The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends. The report was compiled by the World Wildlife Federation and the London Zoological Society, and shows that destruction of…
Over the past seven weeks, the British Jewish community raised £200,000 ($260,000) for the resettlement of 100 unaccompanied children from the Calais refugee camp here in the UK. The campaign was initiated by a group of leaders from Masorti (Conservative) communities in and around London, who came together in the early summer to try and…
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