This is an updated version of my previous newsletter article. I realized that I did not give enough credit for these ideas to my teacher and rabbi Shai Held, who continues to inspire me with his wisdom and Torah.
Dear friends,
This past weekend, I celebrated Martin Luther King Day, and read the inspired writings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the leading rabbis involved in the civil rights movement. Remembering Heschel and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., I want to reflect on a message in this week’s Torah portion that inspired civil rights leaders and continues to inspire me. I learned this teaching from Rabbi Shai Held.
In the Torah reading cycle during this blustery time of year, we read the story of the Israelites enslavement to Pharaoh and their liberation from Egypt. Throughout the narrative, Moses and God instruct the Israelites to remember the story in the future, and to turn our collective memory of pain and oppression into empathy and moral responsibility for people who face oppression and hardship in our own time.
This week’s Torah portion contains the best-known expression of this idea: “You shall not oppress a stranger (ger), for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9; cf. 22:20). As Rabbi Shai Held teaches, by ger, the Torah means an alien to where he lives, who lacks power and citizenship, and “who is therefore vulnerable to social and economic exploitation.”
In telling us not to oppress the stranger, the Torah does not offer a rational argument. Instead, as Held teaches, the Torah appeals to our memory to stir our empathy and make us feel connected with those who are vulnerable. We must help the stranger because we remember the suffering and degradation that can face vulnerable people, and must help the stranger because we know her pain.
Though we may have heard this teaching so often at Passover seders and in synagogue that it seems self-evident, our experience of oppression could have led to a very different response. As Rabbi Held writes, the Torah could have said, “Since you were tyrannized and exploited and no one did anything to help you, you don’t owe anything to anyone; how dare anyone ask anything of you?” Instead, Judaism chooses the opposite path. In remembering our people’s pain, we also remember not to cause that pain for others.
Yet, it is possible to obey the command not to oppress without doing anything proactive in the face of the suffering of minorities and poor people, as I believe is the case in some ultra-Orthodox communities that have shut themselves off from the wider world after the trauma of the Holocaust. In his teaching on the subject, Rabbi Held shows a powerful development of our obligations to the stranger from Exodus to Leviticus to Deuteronomy. As Rabbi Held teaches, where Exodus commands us not to oppress the stranger, Leviticus takes us one step further, moving from a negative commandment (lo ta’aseh) to a positive one (aseh): “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34). It is not enough to do no harm; we are mandated to love the stranger actively.
Finally, the Book of Deuteronomy gives us one more clue about what God wants from us in caring for the stranger. Here, the command to love the stranger is a form of imitatio dei, walking in God’s ways. Just as God “loves the stranger” (10:18), so also must we (10:19). In other words, as Held writes, “If you want to love God, love those whom God loves. Love the fatherless, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.” And that means not only caring for these vulnerable groups, but also working to prevent the causes of their suffering.
With this view, we are better able to understand one of Heschel’s most famous quotes, reflecting on his participation in a civil rights march with Dr. King. Heschel writes, “When I marched in Selma, I felt like my feet were praying.” If loving God means caring for those whom God loves, then working for the rights of poor people and other disadvantaged groups is a way of expressing love for God, and thus a form of prayer. May we all be blessed with the compassion to love the stranger, and to serve God in word and deed by caring for those in need.
Blessings,
Rabbi Margie