A D’var Torah for Pesach
One way to read the Passover story is as a migration story. A persecuted people, fleeing for their lives, seeks safety in another land. They travel in a sort of “caravan,” on foot. They ask permission to pass safely through the land of Edom but are refused, forcing them to find another route. (Numbers 20:21) Of course, most asylum seekers don’t have the kind of divine protection our ancestors did — though it might be satisfying to imagine the splitting of the Rio Grande — and their journeys here are arduous and dangerous.
In February, the Biden Administration announced a new rule — “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways” — which, if enacted, would effectively close the southern U.S. border to asylum seekers. (See T’ruah’s statement here.) The rule specifies that people are not eligible to seek asylum in the U.S. if they have passed through other countries on their way here and did not complete the asylum process in each of those countries. During the official comment period, required by federal law before the rule can go into effect, 31 T’ruah rabbis and cantors wrote in to share their opposition to the new rule, grounding their remarks in Torah and the historical experience of the Jewish people. For this week’s (M)oral Torah, we offer a sampling of their teaching.
Interested in bringing conversations about immigration justice to your seder table this week? Check out T’ruah’s brand new haggadah supplement on immigration: Download here.
Cantor Vera Broekhuysen, spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El of Haverhill, MA, teaches:
A saying in the fight for fair and affordable housing is that “everyone loves more housing until it has an address.” It is disingenuous and un-American to profess empathy for asylum seekers and then say, “You have to seek safety somewhere else. Don’t come here first.” As a Jew, I think of the legacy of the M.S. St. Louis, a ship full of Jewish refugees from Europe that crossed the Atlantic in 1939 fleeing Hitler. The refugees originally made for Cuba. All but 28 had their Cuban visas canceled and were refused landing in Havana. So they sailed for Miami. We Americans shamefully refused the ship landing, blocking the 937 passengers aboard from applying for asylum. Our federal government, well-informed of the Nazi aims and headed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, told these desperate people to try somewhere else. The Canadian government also refused the ship permission to land. In defeat, it headed back to Europe. Nearly a third of the passengers died in the Holocaust.
How many more needless deaths will American federal administrations cause before we finally make good on the words of Emma Lazarus, upon which our Statue of Liberty stands?
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
- “The New Colossus”, 1883
Victor Reinstein, Rabbi Emeritus of Nehar Shalom in Boston, MA, offered these two brief, penetrating texts:
From nineteenth century Germany, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch offers a stunning standard by which a society is to be judged: “The treatment accorded by a state to the aliens living within its jurisdiction is the most accurate indication of the extent to which justice and humanity prevail in that state.”
And in the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, it was illegal to offer asylum or sanctuary to those approaching from elsewhere, however desperate their straits.
Rabbi Elizabeth Goldstein of Ner Shalom, the only synagogue in Prince William County, VA, roots her call in the Prophets:
The Prophet Isaiah teaches us that we are to clear the stones from the roads and build up pathways for pilgrims returning to the Holy Land. If America is to be the land of the free, a melting pot of diversity and equality, it too must clear the stones from the proverbial roads and build up pathways for immigrants, especially refugees and asylum-seekers. A medieval rabbi, Ibn Ezra, points out that the Hebrew verb for “build up” is repeated in Isaiah 57:14, so as to prompt us to repeat this proclamation regularly. Every new wave of immigration must have clear pathways to safety. Every generation of refugees must be welcomed in. We must continue to clear the stones from the road, the obstacles such as requiring pre-applications for asylum from people actively fleeing dangerous situations.
Rabbi Jessica Dell’Era, spiritual leader of Temple Shalom in Medford, MA and a former Spanish bilingual public school educator, shares:
Judaism places the highest priority on pikuach nefesh, protecting and preserving life. The rabbinic tradition uses the principle of kal va-homer, which extends the reasoning for offering leniency from a strict case to one already more permissible. Here is what immediately leapt to mind when I read the “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways” rule: Deuteronomy 23:16-17 instructs us that “You shall not turn any slave who has sought refuge with you back to his master. He shall live in the place of his choosing among any of your settlements, where it is good for him; you must not mistreat him.” If we are commanded to offer safe harbor to one fleeing hard labor and lack of freedom, kal va-homer — how much more so must we protect a refugee whose life is actively in peril! Allowing the person who has escaped slavery to remain instead of returning them to a cruel situation protects their life and health. Offering them a choice in where to settle also protects their dignity as a human being created in God’s image.
