London Jewish community to take in Syrian refugee family

A synagogue in central London will open its doors to a refugee family, converting a disused caretaker’s apartment to accommodate the new arrivals.

South London Liberal Synagogue, in the borough of Lambeth, will make the two-bedroom home available as soon as they raise the £50,000 needed to refurbish it, The Guardian reported Saturday.

The synagogue, which is part of the UK’s Liberal Judaism movement, will provide a home for one of 20 refugee families slated to be resettled in the borough.

“This is a very personal issue for a lot of our members,” Synagogue Council Chair Alice Alphandary told the Guardian. “There is a sense that we as Jews have benefited from sanctuary in the past. For example, my father was a refugee in the 1950s. Now we want to repay that welcome to a new generation.”

The synagogue has named the enterprise, “Abraham’s tent project,” after the patriarch who opened his home to all visitors. “People see it as a great opportunity to make a difference,” Alphandary said.

The synagogue partnered with Citizens UK, which helps communities work together for “power, social justice and the common good.”

“Liberal Judaism has been a leading partner in the campaign to bring Syrian refugees to Britain” said Liberal Judaism’s senior Rabbi Danny Rich. “We have done so not only because our own history reminds us of the fate of families whom the world abandons, but because the single most repeated ethical injunction in the Hebrew Bible is: ‘You shall love the stranger because you know the experience of being a stranger in the land of Egypt.’”

In 2015, Lambeth council pledged to take in 20 refugee families from Syria by 2020. So far six families have been resettled in the community, including a family living on the grounds of Lambeth Palace, home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.