For the citizen and the stranger – one law
Israel’s decision to expel refugees is a perversion of Jewish values and a desecration of the promised land
Persecuted and oppressed people from one end of the world to the other and throughout recorded history have been inspired by the story of our exodus from Egypt. We were slaves, God rescued us with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and brought us into a land of our own. But for what purpose did God bring us out of Egypt?
On one reading of the Exodus story, the one internalized by many of our present leaders, it seems, God redeemed us simply to ensure that we would survive. To that end, he lead us into fortress Israel, a safe-haven from our enemies which, though lost to us for a time, is now once again in our hands. We reject this reading absolutely: it makes a mockery of the story of the Jewish people, whether viewed through a religious or secular lens.
On another reading of Exodus, the promised land was not just a stronghold in which we can cower or posture, depending on the circumstances, and far more is at stake than mere survival.
The promised land is a secure space in which we can live without interference according to the highest human ideals. For the full measure of the guiding principles to which God hoped we would adhere, we must look forward to the revelation at Sinai. But there’s more than a hint of what God intended for His promised land in His instructions concerning the Pesach offering.
Given the enormous effort that God has just made to separate Israel from Egypt, one might have expected a set of rules designating Israel and Israel alone as the celebrants of the Pesach offering. It’s not a free-for-all – neither foreigners nor hired laborers may eat of it, and all who partake must be circumcised. But resident aliens are emphatically included: ‘If a stranger who dwells among you would offer the passover to the LORD, all his males must be circumcised; he shall then be a citizen of the country. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who lives among you (Exod 12:48-49)’. From the very first moment, then, Israel was designated as a place where non-Israelites were included in that most quintessentially Israelite and particularist of all activities: the commemoration of the exodus from Egypt.
Israel’s treatment of the small number of refugees within its border is not just a shameful violation of universal human rights. It is a perversion of Jewish values and a desecration of the land we are privileged to inhabit. And our government could not have chosen a less appropriate time in our calendar to step up its attempts to render intolerable the lives of the strangers in our midst before driving them back into subjugation and oppression.
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Diana Lipton, formerly Reader in Bible and Jewish Studies, King’s College London; now Adjunct Lecturer in Bible at Hebrew University’s Rothberg International School.
Chaim Milikowsky, Professor and Chair, Talmud Department, Bar Ilan University.
The Times of Israel Community.