This spring we’re celebrating ourselves, celebrating our honorees, and celebrating TBZ –
and we hope you’ll join us!
TBZ’s Annual Spring Celebration and Fundraiser
Thursday, May 29, 7:00pm
with featured performance by:
Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer,
joined by Yoni Battat and Oren Neiman
Photo credit: Tom Kates
Songs of Elevation and Revelation
in honor of Shavuot
with Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer
joined by Yoni Avi Battat and Oren Neiman
Honoring Jenny Berz & Fiona Epstein, co-chairs of NBARC
(the Newton-Brookline Asylum Resettlement Coalition)
Newton Brookline Asylum Resettlement Coalition (NBARC)
TBZ proudly leads the Newton Brookline Asylum Resettlement Coalition (NBARC), an interfaith group of congregants from seven Boston-area synagogues and churches dedicated to assisting asylum seekers and refugees fleeing persecution. Our mission is to help resettle asylees in the Boston area and support them in building self-sufficient lives.
Currently, we are assisting families from Afghanistan, Haiti, Guatemala, Syria, and Nicaragua. In collaboration with local social service agencies, health institutions, and community organizations, our volunteers provide crucial support, including cultural orientation, immigration assistance, English language instruction, school enrollment, job training, childcare, healthcare access, and guidance on government benefits.
TBZ members Jenny Berz and Fiona Epstein serve as co-chairs, leading the coalition’s strategy and direction. Many TBZ members actively volunteer and contribute through donations and in-kind support.
Our partner congregations provide volunteers, financial and material donations, and help share NBARC’s mission and activities within their communities.
Jenny Berz
Jenny Berz is a licensed clinical psychologist who has always had a passion for refugee resettlement work. She won the Helen Miringoff Community Service award from Vassar College in 1992 for her work resettling Soviet Jews from Samarkand, Uzbekistan. She worked with Russian refugees in the Boston area after college, then became a clinical psychologist, and has practiced psychotherapy with children, adolescents and adults for the past 30 years. In 2016, she helped found the organization that would come to be known as NBARC (the Newton Brookline Asylum Resettlement Coalition) and has served on the steering committee since that time, and as NBARC’s co-chair since 2021. She has worked extensively with asylum seeking families, and won Catholic Charities’ John and Virginia Kaneb Justice and Compassion Award award in 2022 (along with then co-chair, Bobbie Sproat) for leading NBARC’s Afghan resettlement work in Boston. This past year, she helped re-shape and streamline NBARC’s structure, readying it for the three families NBARC welcomed in February 2025. In addition to Jenny’s psychotherapy practice and refugee resettlement work, she is a devoted wife and mother of two college students. She lives in Brookline.
Fiona Epstein
Fiona brings over three decades of experience in nonprofit management, most recently serving as Vice President of Youth and Adult Engagement at JCC Greater Boston. As a member of the executive team, she honed her expertise in planning, program development and delivery, fundraising, and team building. An active listener and strategic thinker, she offers strong leadership and facilitation skills to the groups and projects she engages with.
In addition to her professional roles, Fiona has served on the Jewish Community Day School Board of Trustees and Executive Committee, the Diller Teen International Advisory Board, and has led the strategic planning process at Temple Beth Zion. She has also provided consultation to Second Step in Brookline, providing insight to strengthen leadership and goevernance.
Fiona is the co-chair of NBARC (Newton Brookline Asylum Resettlement Coalition), where she helps shape the organization’s strategy and direction while actively supporting the resettlement of refugee families facing persecution.
As a consultant with ESC (Empower Success Corps), she recently completed a strategic planning project with the Somerville Homeless Coalition.
Fiona lives with her husband Jon in Newton.