Sanctuary Sukkah

Rabbis Charley Baginsky and Danny Rich, together with other faith leaders and members of their communities, will be leaving from KLS at 1.15pm on the 11th October to walk to the Bentalls Centre in Kingston-upon-Thames.  Bring your lunch to KLS if you are going from there.  Otherwise, meet us outside the front entrance of the Bentalls Centre at 1.45pm.  Please bring some greenery and decorations for the sukkah.

Outside Bentalls, we will be building a sukkah​ – representative of all the places where we as a people have been offered sanctuary. We will petition the Council of Kingston to make attempts to house Syrian families. We will be sharing our stories of our own journeys and decorating the sukkah together.  Please join us, all welcome – including children.

We live in times when we often do not know how to respond to the many difficulties present in society. There is never a more poignant time in the year than during the Chuggim for us to really think about what it means to have as part of our identity a history of slavery in Egypt, refugee status in more recent times and now to live lives in freedom.

Citizens UK, a civil society alliance of 350 synagogues, mosques, schools, churches and unions, is launching a campaign for the 2015 elections to ensure that the next national government resettles 1500 UN refugees per annum in the UK. These refugees, who are the victims of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, would be resettled through an EU funded program. Partnering with Liberal Judaism synagogues, they’re looking to go throughout the country to build ‘Sanctuary Succot’ and ask local councils to commit to resettling 5 families.  In the Jewish community, we know the importance of sanctuary. Whilst many were turned away, we remember that 70 000 Jews found sanctuary in the UK during the 1930s.