What is Refugee Shabbat?
For over 100 years, Jewish Immigrant Aid Services has helped newcomers to Canada, guided by the commandment to “love the stranger among you, because you were once strangers in Egypt” (Leviticus, 19:34).
JIAS Toronto is proud to partner with our American counterpart HIAS for the 8th annual Refugee Shabbat, an international shabbat experience in support of refugees. We are urging community members and partners to choose a shabbat in March or April to highlight this important humanitarian issue.
Canadian Jews, many of whom are descended from refugees, have a long history of sponsoring and supporting refugees. Today, this is more important than ever. In 2025, Canada saw a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment and a drastic reduction in this country’s admissions targets for sponsored refugees, undermining humanitarian efforts at a time of record global displacement. As Jews, we know all too well what it means to be forsaken – and we cannot abandon those desperately in need of refuge.
How to participate
Refugee Shabbat is an opportunity for Jewish community members, organizations, and congregations to reaffirm our commitment to refugees, remember our own experiences as a vulnerable and displaced people, and to learn more about how we, as Jews and as Canadians, can make a difference for those seeking safe haven.
Participation in Refugee Shabbat can be as simple as a discussion around a Shabbat table with family, giving a D’var Torah on this theme, inviting a relevant speaker to synagogue services or a feature program, or sharing the work of your own sponsorship group, “Welcome Circle,” or social action committee with others in your network, congregation or community.
**To register for Refugee Shabbat click here, and to speak to a JIAS representative about Refugee Shabbat programming, please email jewish@jiastoronto.org.
A Worsening World Refugee Crisis
The numbers are staggering. Over 117 million people around the world have been forced to leave their homes due to natural disasters, conflict, and persecution. Among them are over 40 million refugees and asylum seekers living in temporary, transitory circumstances outside of their country of origin with no possibility of returning safely to their homes.
In June of 2023, Canada’s population reached the historic milestone of 40 million people. Tragically, there are more refugees and asylum seekers around the world -- forced out of their countries as a result of persecution, violent conflict, and human rights violations – than there are people in all of Canada.
The Canadian Response
Over the last decade, Canada has been a world leader in humanitarian resettlement, ranking in first among 26 countries in refugee resettlement.
Since 1979, it has been a point of pride for Canada that our government works in partnership with Canadian citizens and organizations to bring refugees to safety through Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program (PSR), which accounts for two-thirds of Canada’s resettled refugees.
Private sponsorship offers hands-on, community-based support for refugees that has been shown to help refugees achieve slightly better outcomes and become better integrated into their communities than government-sponsored refugees. Canada’s PSR Program has been a model for other countries around the world.
In 2025, Canada paused certain sponsorship pathways and reduced admissions targets for refugees, undermining our country’s humanitarian efforts at a time of record global displacement and dramatic policy changes impacting refugee resettlement south of the border. Join us in standing with refugees at a time of increased vulnerability, family separation, and human rights abuses impacting millions of displaced people worldwide.
Learn more about JIAS’s refugee sponsorship support here.
Celebrate 10 Years of Private Sponsorship
As a way to mark Refugee Shabbat in 2026, amplify 10 years of refugee sponsorship in our community by hosting all or part of our 100th anniversary Love the Stranger exhibit or our new exhibit, Sponsorship Stories. These stories mark a decade of bold, life-changing work —stories of courage, commitment, and perseverance, of strangers becoming neighbours, and of communities strengthened through compassion. Read the stories online, see the physical banners and contact jewish@jiastoronto.org to borrow one or more banner for your congregation/organization’s Refugee Shabbat.
Five Ways To Support Refugees
1. Learn and share: This Refugee Shabbat, commit to learning and sharing information from trusted sources including the many people in our community who are personally engaged in refugee support. Share your experience and commitment to helping others – whether around your table, through an adult education program at your congregation, or by offering to give a D’var Torah. For JIAS staff support, email jewish@jiastoronto.org.
2. Host a speaker or JIAS exhibit: Celebrate and amplify important work that is being done across our community by featuring a speaker with lived experience as a sponsor, volunteer, or refugee. Consider showing all or part of the JIAS Sponsorship Stories exhibit featuring stories of refugees and sponsors in our own community (physical banners available to borrow)!
3. Volunteer: Volunteer to support refugees and other vulnerable newcomers. Research has shown that volunteers have a significant impact on refugee integration, acting as a key defense against social isolation and newcomer despair. This Refugee Shabbat, consider signing up for these or other opportunities.
4. Donate: This Refugee Shabbat, donate to JIAS to help bring refugees to Canada and provide crucial supports to vulnerable newcomers as they settle and rebuild their lives.
5. Save a life: Canada’s Private Sponsorship Program has saved lives. This Refugee Shabbat, inquire if your synagogue or other groups in your community are sponsoring refugees and join their efforts. You can also create your own sponsorship group that can be supported by JIAS.