Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of stories about Jewish Family Service of San Diego’s centennial celebration, and eight women who will be honored at the organization’s gala on April 21. To see previous stories please click on the number in the series: 1, 2.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Jenny Daniel, who immigrated to the United States with her family when she was 9, says her childhood experience was much different than those of the refugees whom she helps to find jobs, but she certainly can empathize with their sense of disorientation following their arrivals in the United States.
The Jewish Family Service staff member noted that while refugees are forced to flee their countries often without having any financial resources, her comparatively well-off parents decided to immigrate to San Diego from Mexico City after considerable deliberation. Notwithstanding that major difference of choice versus no choice, she said, she can relate to the concept of “coming to a new country and not speaking the language.” Like the refugees whom she serves in her capacity as an employment coordinator in JFS’s Refugee and Immigration Services Department, she recalled, it took her “a while to make friends, because they didn’t understand me, and I didn’t understand them.”
She remembered thinking as a 9-year-old that the friends she had left behind in Mexico had been her friends for life and that she never would be able to make such friends again.
There is another reason for Daniel’s sense of identification with the refugees. Her family is descended from Syrian Jews, who spoke Arabic when they immigrated to Mexico, and, she said, many names in the Syrian Jewish community are similar to the names of Muslim refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria who now are making their homes in San Diego County.
During an interview with Daniel, who is one of eight women being honored April 21 at JFS’s “Heart and Soul” gala, I asked her to describe for me some of the situations she has encountered as an employment coordinator, agreeing that for the sake of privacy the names of the clients would neither be asked nor divulged.
In one instance, she said, an Afghan family consisting of a husband and wife and a year-old infant arrived in San Diego following considerable confusion over whether they would be allowed in the country because of President Donald Trump’s proposed travel ban. The couple had spent three years in a refugee camp in Indonesia, and when they finally arrived, the first order of business for JFS was to settle them in an apartment equipped with all the necessary furniture. Thereafter, there was urgency to help the father find a job before the end of a three-month period during which the federal government paid the family’s rent and other essential expenses. After 90 days, such aid from the federal government would stop.
JFS has been settling refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria in El Cajon, where there already is a sizeable community from the Middle East. El Cajon reportedly has the second largest population of Iraqi Christians, known as Chaldeans, in the United States, just behind Detroit, Michigan. JFS settles refugees from other countries such as Myanmar (formerly Burma) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the City Heights area. In far smaller numbers, refugees also are being resettled in the Mira Mesa area of San Diego and in National City.
After the Afghan family was settled in an apartment, they were brought to JFS’s refugee resettlement offices on Mission Gorge Road to discuss the kind of work skills the father had. An interpreter who speaks the refugees’ native language—in this case Pashto—is always on hand for these interviews, but in this particular case both the mother and father spoke reasonably good English as well. The father had worked in Afghanistan as an animator—a job that is hard to come by in San Diego, especially in three-months time. Daniel said she often urges refugees to accept an entry level job in one industry or another, just to be able to put on their resumés the fact that they have worked for an American company. Otherwise, she says, American employers are likely to skip over the refugees’ resume in favor of a potential employee whose references easily can be checked.
In the end, the man took a position in the shipping department of an Internet sales company. “It’s not a very well-paying job, but it is better than minimum wage, and he already has been promoted,” Daniel said. “He is hoping, at some point, to move to Los Angeles where there are more opportunities in his field.”
Another case Daniel remembers quite well was one of her first, involving a single father with a daughter, 13, and a son, 11. “From day one, his motivation was to make a life for himself and his kids,” Daniel recalled. “From day one. he wanted to work. I was emotionally touched by it in an ongoing way. I took him to countless interviews; I suffered with him through rejections; we practiced interview questions together. Taking his kids to school, I began to feel that I was part of his family.”
Daniel and her colleagues at JFS Refugee and Immigration Services developed a team approach to helping the Congolese family. “We would drive him at 6 a.m. to job interviews, taking turns,” she said. “He had lived in a refugee camp in Uganda for 20 years, and both of his kids were born there.” A magic moment was when he finally landed a job in the landscaping department of a large hotel. “One of his jobs at the refugee camp was trimming trees, and collecting wood both for housing and for fire,” Daniel said. “We took him to interview for other jobs in the hospitality industry, but he didn’t have that experience. However, when it came to landscaping, he was able to discuss things I didn’t even know.”
Over the years, the JFS Refugee and Immigration Services department, under the leadership of Etleva Bejko, herself an immigrant from Albania, has established friendly relations with landlords who are willing to rent to refugees, notwithstanding their lack of local references or their inability to pay first and last month’s rent in advance. Similarly, the department seeks out employers who are interested in the Jewish tradition of “welcoming the stranger” and finding employees who are very loyal. A very high percentage of refugees want to remain with the company that first hires them, desiring to work their way up through the ranks, Daniel told me.
I asked Daniel to tell me a little bit about her life, and what led to her applying for a job at Jewish Family Service. She responded that she attended the San Diego Jewish Academy, and also was active at the Ken Community Center, which caters to Spanish-speaking Jews. After attending the academy, she went to La Jolla High School, during which she was selected to participate in the Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs International Teen Leadership Institute (JITLI). That program brings together Israeli and American Jews, and an equal number of Israeli/ Palestinian/ Bedouin Arabs for a three-continent exploration of Jewish and Arab relations in the United States, Spain, and Israel.
“That trip altered the way I look at the world,” she said. “I grew up in an environment where animosity between Jews and Muslims was very prevalent, where people were quick to judge a whole group of people both in my community and I assume theirs as well. We just can’t think that everyone from one group of people is a terrorist, or hates Israel, or hates Jews, because that is not what I experienced. Especially when I got to be a JITLI counselor I got to go into their communities, hear their parents’ stories, and get deeper into it. That is what drove me to study [at Santa Clara College] Political Science, with a minor in Middle East Studies. Now fast forwarding 10 years, I still experience people in my Jewish community hesitant – asking ‘Why are you helping Muslims?’ Or, ‘Do they know you are Jewish?’ So, I think when people on either side have a question ‘Why are you helping?’ it is because they have never had a relationship with someone of the other group.”
Daniel said that in her time working with refugees, she has not encountered any questions about her Jewish religion, nor about why Jewish Family Service was helping them; instead, “All I encounter is gratitude for our services.”
She added that she is grateful that an organization like Jewish Family Service, while rooted in the Jewish community, reaches out to people in need no matter what their faith.
Being one of eight women honored this year is “humbling on a personal level, but I am grateful that not just my work, but our department’s work, is being honored, because it is such an important part of JFS and what our agency does,” Daniel commented.
When people ask her what she does, they tend to react right away, Daniel related. “They say, ‘your work must be really gratifying,’ and it truly is. We truly help people in some capacity. We truly get to see the impact that we make, whereas in some jobs you don’t get to see that right away. That moment we help a client get a job, or that first paycheck, or to feel independent, or to see their kids being successful in school, even on the honor roll, you truly feel that you did something!”
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via Donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
Love this article!! Very interesting!!