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, Adonai, am your God.
Avot D'Rabbi Natan 7:17a
Let your house be open; let the poor be members of your household. Let a person’s house be open to the north and to the south and to the east and to the west, even as Abraham’s house was, for Abraham made four doors to his house, that the poor might not be troubled to go round the house, but that each would find they faced a door as they approached . . .
Quoted from a Virginia newspaper in Arthur Morse, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy (New York: Overlook Press, 1985), 280.
The following passage was published in a Virginia newspaper after the incident of the St. Louis, a ship which set sail in 1939 from Germany, carrying close to 1000 Jewish men, women and children who sought asylum in the US and were turned away. Hundreds had to return to the European continent and were subsequently killed in the holocaust.
[The] press reported that the ship came close enough to Miami for the refugees to see the lights of the city. The press also reported that the U.S. Coast Guard, under instructions from Washington, followed the ship . . . to prevent any people landing on our shores. And during the days when this horrible tragedy was being enacted right at our doors, our government in Washington made no effort to relieve the desperate situation of these people, but on the contrary gave orders that they be kept out of the country. . . . The failure to take any steps whatsoever to assist these distressed, persecuted Jews in their hour of extremity was one of the most disgraceful things which has happened in American history and leaves a stain and brand of shame upon the record of our nation.
The New Colossus
Questions for Discussion:
What does it mean to be a stranger? Why does the Torah command us to be compassionate with the stranger so many times (this example is one of many)?
In what ways are today's refugees and undocumented immigrants in the US "strangers" in the sense of the Torah text?
Why did the US (and all of the other countries in North and South America at the time) keep out the passengers from the St. Louis?
Why does the Statue of Liberty have words from the Emma Lazarus poem on its base? What is the American value or aspiration these words reflect? What Jewish values does it reflect?
In what ways has immigration been good or bad for the US? For other countries?
Are there limits to how many immigrants the US or other countries should admit? What criteria, if any, should be used to prioritize who gets to come in?
What stories of immigration do you have in your own family's past? Why did people leave when they left? How were they received in new places?