Bringing comfort M Rabbi Michael Cahana brings aid to refugees, sees dignity, ‘festival feeling’ at Polish border
By Shannon Levitt Rabbi Cahana unpacks supplies from Portland, Oregon, to be donated
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MAY/JUNE 2022 | OREGON JEWISH LIFE
ore than three million refugees have made their way to Poland since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. With that many people on the move, things could quickly unravel into chaos. Instead, Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana, who was at Poland’s border with Ukraine last month, described “a festival feeling, with all the warmth and love from people helping from all over the world - an amazing thing to see.” Cahana, senior rabbi at Portland’s Congregation Beth Israel, was in Krakow April 9-14, with the Central Conference of American Rabbis. CCAR, along with a handful of other international groups of Reform rabbis and cantors, brought money and supplies to assist a refugee predicament that gets bigger every day. All told, the cohort arrived in Poland with about two tons of supplies and $750,000. Cahana alone brought “five really big duffel bags, about 50 pounds each, and a big check, over $60,000,” he said. Portlanders answered the call for donations so generously, that he didn’t have space to bring everything. Thus, what he couldn’t carry he gave to Positive Charge! PDX, a Portland charity also assisting Ukrainian refugees. Cahana had expected mostly monetary donations, but a lot of people purchased items for him to deliver. “There was something really powerful for people about putting something that they had held in their hands into my hands to give to the refugees – a sense of real physical connection,” he said. Jonathan Ornstein, CEO of the Jewish Community Centre of Krakow and the local point person for CCAR, said all the donations “had a tremendous impact on our humanitarian relief effort.” He was grateful that Cahana and the other rabbis
