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Refugee resettlement as a Jewish value | By Rahel Musleah
wenty-one-month old Elisa, a refugee from Afghanistan who arrived in the United States in November with her parents, is already calling her new Jewish neighbors “auntie” and “uncle.” On a recent March morning, exactly a month after Elisa’s family moved to the second floor of a bluesided two-family house in suburban New Jersey, two of those aunties, Shayna Schmidt of South Orange
and Liba Beyer of Maplewood— both leaders of a local Jewish effort to resettle the family—visited the young couple, Dina and Ali, and their daughter. Schmidt whisked the toddler away to read and play on the pink shag rug of her new room. Elisa sat in her lap, clutching a Doc McStuffins toy. Nearby in her parents’ bedroom, a pillow set against a patterned ivory bedspread declared House + Love = Home. Dina, a 27-year-old matrimonial MAY/JUNE 2022
lawyer from Kabul, graciously extended her hospitality, bringing out a tray of cashews, pistachios, dates, crescent cookies and cups of cardamom tea. Beyer, whose day job is director of Global Campaigns for Human Rights Watch, chatted with Ali, who had worked for the American Embassy as a forklift driver until the Taliban took over in August 2021, turning their lives upside down. “We weren’t able to bring anything with us,” Dina said in Dari, the form
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(CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) RAHEL MUSLEAH; ANDREW HARNIK/AP PHOTO; AG FOR HIAS
Welcoming the Stranger, Literally