Mary Byrne
This past weekend, three Beth El Temple Center members arrived at a hotel in Mansfield, bringing with them food and conversation, which they shared with four refugee families living at the hotel until the families find permanent housing.
“Communication was a challenge, but we managed,” said Arlyn Roffman. “One lovely moment was when the grandma in the group, who’d been quite guarded about interacting with us at first but who gradually warmed up, started singing Happy Birthday in English with us, smiling from ear to ear.”
The cultural exchange between the residents of Belmont and families from the Congo, Sudan, and Eritrea was the latest initiative of the temple’s Refugee Response Team (RRT), which has been offering support to refugee families who have recently arrived in Boston for nearly a decade.
“Those of us who went were all delighted by this new RRT initiative, and all of us are eager to do this again,” Roffman said.
‘Looking For a Way to Make a Difference’
In the summer of 2015, Rabbi Jonathan Kraus gave an impassioned sermon to the members of the Beth El Temple Center congregation about the “critical point” of the refugee crisis, challenging members to take action.
“I was feeling that this was something I really cared about,” said Belmont resident Amy Rosenstein, a longtime temple member. “It kind of grew from there for me.”
That sermon marked the beginning of the Refugee Response Team. The team works in partnership with the Refugee Immigrant and Assistance Center (RIAC), a Boston-based nonprofit that serves refugee and immigrant families from Congo, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and other nations.
Over the years, members of the Beth El RRT have collected furnishings and clothing, made and distributed welcome baskets, and, in general, helped families navigate their new communities, from the local schools and the public libraries to the train system. For example, they help people understand the benefits available under SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“[RIAC] is tightly staffed,” said Rosenstein, who served as RRT chair from 2016 until about 2023. “We realized early on we could be useful to them by helping add on to services they provide to different families. Over time, we’ve worked with probably 18 to 20 families at different points, to different degrees, depending on what the family wants.”
‘Like a Family’
Roffman became involved about eight years ago. After watching the team grow, she decided that she would step forward when Rosenstein stepped back last year.
“As I was approaching retirement, I really was looking for ways to make a difference,” said Roffman. “I got really involved when I met one of the Afghan families that had come. They became kind of like family to me.”
Following another exodus from Afghanistan in 2021, the temple members were again eager to step up.
“There was this general sense of, ‘what can we do?”’ said Roffman. “Many of us were feeling that. I know that wasn’t limited to the temple, but people decided they wanted to give both money and their time to help these newly arriving people.”
In addition to the typical support often provided to such families, the Refugee Response Team also raised six months of rental assistance for three families who arrived around that time.
“We would be very interested in having families settle in this area because the schools are great, and we could have more contact with them, but the reality is housing is so expensive,” said Rosenstein. “Most families tend to live in Dorchester, Roxbury, and other parts of the city. A lot of the involvement involved the teams going to where the families were, which could be challenging, but I think people really rose to that and made it work. “
Housing Clinic
In recognition of the challenge in finding housing, Roffman said the team has provided funding to RIAC to create a housing clinic. So far, 40 families have benefited from the clinic by having their names added to housing waitlists.
“[RIAC] had nobody who was in a position dedicated to signing people up for subsidized housing,” she said. “We have provided funds that have made it possible to hire somebody part-time to make sure the families are on the list in lots of different communities where eventually they’ll be able to get affordable housing.”
One recent initiative of the Refugee Response Team was to establish more formal “welcome teams” that help set up apartments for newcomers. When a family arrives in Boston, RIAC finds them a place to live, orders furniture, and arranges delivery. The welcome team then arranges the furniture and unpacks donated household items.
This year, the temple partnered with the First Church in Belmont to knit welcome blankets for the families.
“Doing all this, we’ve made personal connections,” Roffman said. “We’ve all been enriched by these activities.”
