HIAS Partners

The first day of high school is always hard. It’s doubly difficult if you are not fluent in the language and barely know where you live.

That was where 15-year-old Ali Wahaj Mosakhil found himself in early December, trying to navigate from his new home in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney to Samuel Fels High School in Northeast Philadelphia.

When a Tulsa synagogue approached HIAS to become a resettlement partner, it didn’t make immediate sense. But this inclusive, non-denominational Tulsa community works differently from most synagogue congregations.

Mark Oppenheimer’s new book Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood traces the response of the community in the weeks and months after the attack. HIAS spoke with the author about what we can learn from the community, the event, and its aftermath.

Betsy Jenkins was watching her foster sons playing with each other in the yard when she saw the email, “Extra help needed for new refugee apartment move-in, can you help?”