Assisting ‘humanitarian parolees’

Congregation Beth Israel of Scotch Plains received an award for providing financial and resettlement support to a family that was temporarily relocated to the United States from war-torn Ukraine.

HIAS, a global refugee resettlement agency once known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, presented the Pathways Leadership Award to the Conservative synagogue, which organized a HIAS Welcome Circle.

The Welcome Circle is a privately supported approach to meeting urgent relocation needs. The program began after the U.S. military evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021, which left many Afghans vulnerable to being killed by the Taliban.

Under the Welcome Circle model, community groups are given guidance so they can independently provide direct assistance to what are termed “humanitarian parolees” for six months or more — until the newcomers become self-sufficient.

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This designation allows Ukrainian citizens and their immediate family to live temporarily in the United States without fear of deportation. The program is called Uniting for Ukraine and is managed by the Department of Homeland Security.

The initial period of humanitarian parole is two years, but it now is renewable, because the crisis in Ukraine in ongoing.

With this program, “we pool our resources to try to tangibly help the family or individual,” said Laurie Woog, co-chair of the synagogue’s Welcome Circle with Karen Simon.

Congregation Beth Israel volunteers assisted a family of four, two parents and two daughters, 2 and 10 years old, who arrived in the United States in February 2023. The volunteers assisted the family in acclimating to life here.

Ms. Woog acknowledged the efforts of Welcome Circle volunteers. “We couldn’t have helped this family or earned the Pathways Leadership Award without the generous contributions and efforts of so many people,” she said.

She became involved because she felt helpless in the face of the Ukrainian conflict and overwhelmed by the number of displaced people around the world.

“I think the war in Ukraine really made people want to do something,” Ms. Woog said. “There wasn’t a lot people could do other than give money to the war effort. The Welcome Circle model provides a way for people in the U.S. to offer tangible assistance to individuals and families fleeing danger or persecution.”

Rabbi Howard Tilman of Congregation Beth Israel said that forming the Welcome Circle meant a lot to the 360-member synagogue.

“I think it’s a really powerful project for us as a community to be involved with,” he said. “We really saw the community, as a whole, step up in a lot of different ways.”

A core group of seven volunteers worked on logistics and preparation for almost a year. Then they became directly involved with the family, from meeting them at the airport to getting them settled in their apartment.

The volunteers, who eventually numbered 50, were not all synagogue members. The synagogue and the wider community donated and moved furniture and helped provide food and transportation.

In addition to the synagogue members, a local Ukrainian American woman helped with translating, and there were contributions from ESL volunteers, as well as civic and private organizations in the Westfield and Fanwood-Scotch Plains areas.

Ms. Woog used her background as an immigration attorney to help the family with their legal paperwork, including work authorization.

The family was not Jewish; HIAS now resettles people of all faiths and backgrounds.

“We said we would help anyone who needed it,” Ms. Woog said. Like HIAS, “we had this underlying Jewish value system that says you help people who are refugees. You welcome the stranger. It was something that we’ve been taught, something we thought was important and we wanted to be a part of.”

The synagogue raised $40,000 for its Welcome Circle project, part of which paid the family’s rent for a year. Volunteers took on fundraising, finding translators, managing school enrollment, benefits applications, transportation, locating medical professionals, and obtaining educational and language resources.

Outside the synagogue community, contributions came from translators, ESL volunteers, and civic and private organizations in the Westfield and Fanwood-Scotch Plains areas.

After a year in New Jersey, the family moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where life was more affordable and they had ties to a church community.

“The father got a job in long-haul trucking, which is something he really wanted to do,” Ms. Woog said. In New Jersey, he worked in maintenance for apartment buildings. In Ukraine, he had owned a construction business.

“He’s very handy and smart but didn’t have a lot of English when he came here,” Ms. Woog said.

Rabbi Tilman remembered a moment that was special to him. “Seeing my daughter and theirs play with each other, they didn’t need to speak the same language,” he said. “They had their own language. They had these smiles and to see them running around the playground really spoke to the power of the moment.”