By Mary Jane Suzman
The volunteers visiting the Syrian family use every possible opportunity to practice English. If cooking with the mom, we point out the names of food ingredients and cooking utensils. If playing with the children, the names of colors and toys. Thus one day, the “art project”: the idea was to color a circle of white paper with markers, cut it into a continuous spiral, and hang it from a string. The three-year old soon tired of coloring, but with a gleam in his eye discovered that the markers could be stuck together and stacked into a tower. He proceeded to carefully and patiently stack up as many markers as he could wrest from his brother into a tower that he could lift up almost to the ceiling! Meanwhile, his four-year-old brother finished his circle. We cut it out, and then the last step – to staple on the string. He regarded that staple with such a mixture of entrancement and curiosity! We folded more paper and he stapled a couple more times. He carefully extracted staples from the paper to examine them more closely. We opened the stapler so he could see how it worked. Then he wanted to try it out on more things – a marker, the cuff of his shirt, the edge of the couch! In the short term, this sort of activity could perhaps be a little hard on clothes and the apartment. But in the long term, it is just this sort of curiosity and experimental spirit that has in the past, is now, and will in the future, make America great.
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By Mary Jane Suzman
The family has been here a month, and they have begun to tell their story. Because of the war, they left Syria in 2011, one week after they married. They sought refuge in Jordan, and for the first year, life went well. But as more and more Syrian refugees came, Jordan made it harder and harder for them to get permits to work. And without a permit, working was illegal. Thus it became very difficult to earn enough to support the family - two boys were born to them in Jordan. Both the mom and the dad have very large families. The mom has 8 brothers and sisters, 25 nieces and nephews; the dad has 15 siblings altogether from his father’s 2 marriages. The brothers and sisters are scattered over Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and one in Germany. None are here. The family had developed an extensive friend-and-family network in Jordan during the 6 years they resided there. This made it very very hard for them to leave into the complete unknown. They cried on the airplane all the way here. They immediately began to feel better upon getting the warm welcome from the team who met them at the airport with smiles, teddy bears and flowers. And by the next morning, after exploring their apartment, they were thrilled! They recognized the thought and care that had been taken with the apartment and its contents – the drawers full of just the right-sized clothes; the kitchen beautifully stocked with dishes, pots, pans and food; toy trucks and blocks and books; even a big welcome sign and labels in Arabic! And they were most moved that Jewish volunteers would think to provide halal meat for them. They also got a warm dinner and welcome from the two other Syrian families that are in the same apartment complex. With the help of a translator, we were able to say a couple of things too. We told them that many of our grandparents came here as immigrants and were helped to get settled, and that it was therefore our joy and job to help them get settled in turn. Perhaps when their children or children’s children are settled, they would be able to help the next group. We also told them that we were sorry they didn’t know it while they were flying and crying, but that our hearts were with them on that airplane the whole time. And how happy we all are that they are here. I think this will not be an easy year for the family. New beginnings are difficult. America is not easy for those who are just learning English. And there is no replacement for the family they left behind in troubled places. But this plan our temple has with JFS - we can help a lot! |