Dear Lab/Shul Community,
Fifteen of us showed up on the Greek Island of Lesvos exactly a month ago: Lab/Shul’s first ever Refugee Task Force Mission to the International School of Peace is officially a success!
We learned a lot, meeting inspiring activists, refugees, locals and leaders; built furniture and helped with dinner; bonded as a team of many ages and agendas; and came together as a stronger team to show up for the world’s largest refugee crisis, one smile and open heart at a time.
I am so proud of our communal effort, the money we’ve raised this past year to support the school (just over 50K!) and the work ahead that we can now continue with more of us invested and committed to this incredibly important project. Bravo Lab/Shul: It’s On Us.
I invite you to check out some of the photos + read below for inspiring short notes and takeaways from Boris, Janee, and Jim. And check out the video from Lino, Zadie and Ally who joined us along with their parents just a few weeks after Lino’s B Mitzvah to truly walk the talk of Justice.
My deep gratitude to the leaders in our community who made this trip a big success – Janee Graver, Boris Khmelnitskiy and Nathaniel Obler. We are grateful to and inspired by the tireless team of the International School of Peace leaders, our Israeli friends who are making each day a much better day to hundreds of children and their families.
Inspired to join the task force to help us do more this coming year and get back to Greece next summer? Please contact Janee (janeegraver@gmail.com) or Boris (boris.khmelnitskiy@gmail.com).
Enjoy these moving reflections.
– Rabbi Amichai
From Boris Khmelnitskiy
They say that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. That one step, the first step, takes bravery, audacity, and hope. We recognize when others take that step because we have all been there, launching some of our own journeys.
First step of a refugee’s journey is abandoning home, replacing former comfort with uncertainty, loss, hardship, and hope of brighter future. Second, third, fourth steps are a series of shelters, border crossings or sea passages, food lines, unfamiliar languages and foreign communities. Many steps later, some of the refugees from lands as far-flung as Pakistan and Congo, find themselves on the Greek island of Lesbos, the physical and symbolic outskirts of the European Union, a few nautical miles off the coast of Turkey.
Lesbos’ International School of Peace is a step of the journey that no one expects, or can expect. It is a gracious, embracing, multilingual, therapeutic companion for refugee youth of all ages; the School holds a hand of a young child, offers life skills to a rambunctious teenager, and coaches young adults to be educators and leaders in their communities. In a stark contract to the overwhelming sense of despondency, lackluster resources, and debilitating anxiety of a nearby Moria refugee camp, the School offers a safe haven to the kids, a venue for learning and playfulness, an opportunity of social support and reflection. It is indeed a friend in the time of need.
Over the course of the last twelve months I visited and volunteered at the School of Peace three times, and the School started to look and feel familiar. I befriended some of the teachers and students, and was delighted to see them last month – though it was simultaneously deeply saddening to encounter familiar faces, to recognize that they were not yet able to leave the island and progress on their journeys onto continental Greece and beyond. Arriving with the Lab/Shul delegation, it was a treat to witness the open hearts and minds of my fellow travelers, to hear their impressions, and to immerse in our shared spirit of empathy and duty.
There were numerous episodes and anecdotes that made our time heartfelt and meaningful. Yet the image that stays with me throughout my visit was the front gate of the school, a simple swinging plank of wood, a threshold that the stream of excited kids hop over every day. With that threshold, that takes just one step to pass, the School provides its students a brief reprieve from the chaos and unease of the camp and island life, and offers a leap toward the normalcy of their childhood, healthier relationships with their peers, sense of safety, wonder, curiosity, and self discovery. One step, but a step that will matter a great deal for the rest of their lives.
Last month’s trip with the Task Force members reinvigorated my dedication to the School and reaffirmed my intention to support it. I will be returning to Lesbos in two weeks to expand on the ISOP’s mission, and help develop a twin project – the school for adults. In 1990s, as a seventeen year old refugee from the post-collapse Soviet Union, I ventured onto my own quest filled with confusion and uncertainty; luckily, my journey had been empowered by the kindness, compassion, and generosity of others. A quarter of a century later, I am honored to be able to reassert the sense of dignity and humanity for the fellow migrants in the midst of their thousand miles’ voyages.
From Janee Graver: One Small Tile in the Mosaic of Volunteer Efforts
The Refugee Task Force trip to Greece revealed the deepest desperation and the brightest hope in the same day, most days.
We toured the Moria Refugee Camp, known as the worst refugee camp in the world. At the overcrowded camp (built for 3,000 and currently housing 8,000) we witnessed a small garden and refugees baking bread. I could not stop crying to see how difficult the lives of these people are. Then, after a small break, we were in the happiest place in the world as we watched and participated in the opening ceremony at the International School of Peace. Over 200 students of all ages and origins gleefully sang together: “If you are happy and you know it clap your hands”. The School of Peace and the Community Center that houses it (called One Happy Family) provide refuge for the refugees. It is hopeful to see people who are on such a difficult journey find solace and a cup of coffee. A place to go and meet up with friends, play some basketball, checkers, or guitar.
While at the ISOP, we became one small tile in the mosaic of volunteer efforts at the school. Organized by our expert leaders who are also the ISOP founders, we worked together to build game tables before the students arrived. And then, once the students got to school, we did projects with them like planting, building, crafts, and picture taking. We also helped serve food, and give hugs as we learned more and more from the teachers and the students. There was no language barrier because bright eyed students were excited to greet each other and us each day, and words became secondary.
Some of the daily contrasts that we saw included vacationers enjoying Greece, volunteers and teachers pouring their hearts into creating just one moment of joy for the students, an enormous mountain of life jackets, each which was used by someone who hopefully lived to be housed in an overfull box while waiting for a stamp that would release them into European Society, a student strutting about with a hat and sunglasses offered for dress up by one of our group’s members, students arm in arm taking polaroid selfies, students learning about recycling while making paper mâché beads, learning from HIAS about how the government in Greece is criminalizing the refugee population, the hopeful ‘saint’ Melinda – founder of the Starfish Foundation who was willing to give up lifelong friendships to lend a hand, and so many more. All in, a memorable and profound experience that makes me want to become many more tiles in the mosaic as this complicated refugee situation continues to evolve all over the world.
From Lino, Ali, and Zadie Israel-Muszkatblit
From Jim Mintz
I would describe our trip as very present-tense. Sure we heard some terrifying and fascinating stories about what made people leave their homes – visits from the secret police, questions from ISIS, family abuse. And courageous, also terrifying, stories about how they got from home (Afghanistan, Syria, Congo, etc.) to Lesbos. And as to the future, it’s unpredictable for the thousands trapped in the camps.
But mostly we were busy in the vivid-color present.
One specific moment that stood out…
Buses of kids from the refugee camps arriving at 3pm (school is held in the heat of the afternoon because that’s when the camps are most volatile). The entire school – dozens of staff and hundreds of kids – packs together and begins the school day singing songs in unison. The teachers, refugees themselves, are visibly in tune with their students, but also strong with them.
Amichai told us an aspect of the Exodus story that this Jew had never heard: 4 out of 5 of the Jews enslaved in Egypt, when Moses offered them a chance to throw off the shackles of oppression, opted to stay.
We had the honor of hanging out with the fifth who went with Moses.
