Avraham Avinu, our common ancestor Abraham, was an immigrant. “Go,” God commands in this week’s portion, “from your land, from your native territory, from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Taking his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and his household members with him, Abram (as he is still named at this point in our story) does exactly that. He leaves behind forever his native territory in Aram and journeys to a new place, the land of Canaan, where he knows no one, and no one knows him.
For the rest of his life, Abram/Abraham is an outsider wherever he goes, not a privileged native of the land he lives in. When circumstances force him to relocate from places where he has become known to new locations, he is so concerned for his safety that he twice passes off his wife as his sister so that no one will decide to eliminate him as her husband to make her available. When Sarah dies, Abraham, who owns no land, must negotiate with the local citizenry for the right to a grave.
Abraham set a pattern for much of subsequent Jewish history. In Babylon, in Europe, in countries all around the modern world, Jews have lived as immigrants, an identifiable minority within a different host culture. That experience has brought with it plusses and minuses. Carrying the extra perspective of a second culture, Jews have been creative and innovative presences in societies that have allowed them space. At the same time, a sense of vulnerability and sensitivity to feeling like an outsider has contributed to a Jewish mindset. The Torah enjoins us to care for aliens (an accurate translation of what is rendered as “strangers” in most texts) because we know the heart of the alien, having been in his or her shoes ourselves.
In today’s world, concern for immigrants and refugees is not an abstraction. Stories and images of whole families, men, women, and children, fleeing for their very lives trouble our minds and hearts daily. The unlivable conditions that force people to risk their very lives are well known to us: war, violence, oppression, poverty. Our ancestors, too, have known all of these.
Abraham, the rabbis tell us, took the mitzvah of hospitality to strangers so seriously, that he kept his tent walls open in four directions to avoid missing any passerby he could aid. As descendants of Abraham, we, too, are bound by the mitzvah of reaching out to assist strangers in need. The human race is not composed of “us” versus “them.” We are all part of a larger “us,” all of us, natives and refugees, citizens and immigrants, bearing the Tzelem Elohim, the Image of God, in our very being. Each human being is worthy of our compassion and our assistance, whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself.
Several congregations I know of have already declared themselves willing and committed to assist in absorbing refugees in the United States. National Jewish organizations have joined others in gathering financial support to aid in meeting immediate needs in Europe. We will not lack opportunities to be helpful in this difficult time. It is up to us to, like Abraham, keep our lines of vision open so that we can see those in need of help and respond.
Rabbi Neil Kominsky is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel of the Merrimack Valley in Lowell, Massachusetts, and Jewish Chaplain Emeritus at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.