Rabbi Joshua Waxman: March 2006 Archives

In our hearts, Jews are immigrants. The very name "Hebrews," Ivri’im, comes from the word ‘to cross over’; Hebrews are boundary crossers.

Our founding story portrays us as refugees arriving to our land, and Judaism itself is a religion forged in exile and the experience of powerlessness, where stock was placed in prayer, study, and building just societies rather than in wealth, arms, or might. And so the Torah tells us: “You shall not oppress the stranger; you know the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Ex. 23:9) Especially at this time of the year, when we prepare for Passover, we remember what it means to be powerless and unloved in a land not our own.

All of this should lead us to support and promote legal immigration to this country. But what can it teach us about those who enter the country illegally in search of a living wage or a better life?

I think the key word in our verse is “oppress.” We are not called on to welcome those who cross into this country illegally with open arms, but neither are we allowed to place crushing burdens on them in order to criminalize their presence and make their lives more difficult as the bill the House of Representatives passed in December does.

Unfortunately, many of the measures currently being proposed in Washington and statehouses across the country are mere posturing that address neither the underlying causes of the flow of illegal migrants across the border nor the unspeakable conditions immigrants find once here.

Illegal immigrants do not have an easy life; and helping to move them slowly on the path toward citizenship as the Senate bill proposes will not change this is in the short term. That bill is not an amnesty that rewards those who broke the rules; it is a way to bring common sense and even a measure of decency to this large underclass of workers on whom our economy relies.

Should we open our borders indiscriminately? Absolutely not–it’s important to give priority to those who play by the rules and also to keep control over our border for security.

Should we reward those who cross illegally? No–but the Senate bill, with its penalties for illegal immigrants and requirement that they pay back taxes before heading down the path toward citizenship is hardly that. Instead, we can deal humanely with a class of workers whose plight is created in part by globalization, our existing immigration policies, and our insatiable demand for cheap goods and services. In other words, we can heed the Jewish experience of exile and the injunction not to oppress. Then we will live up to the words of our tradition: “Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” (Prov. 31:9)

In recent months, public opinion has increasingly been turning against the war in Iraq–and for good reason, as body counts for U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians continue to soar, as the situation on the ground becomes increasingly chaotic, and as each successive justification proffered for the war proves false.

Of course, we all know that hindsight is 20-20 and so it takes no particular wisdom to say that, in retrospect, invading Iraq was a mistake. The question is, does Jewish tradition offer any insights that could have helped us avoid the situation beforehand? The answer is a resounding yes.

The Talmud (Sotah 44b) places great constraints on milchemet reshut (elective wars, as opposed to mandatory wars of self-defense) and also enshrines the religious leadership as a check on power-hungry sovereigns wishing to rush to war (Sanhedrin 20b). In Deuteronomy 2, we see Moses commanded by God to make war on the Amorites and nevertheless offering them terms of peace. The rabbis take this passage to mean that one must always offer peace and that engaging in war is a last resort (Sifrei Bamidbar 42). The current administration appeared to have little interest in finding non-military solutions to the real problem of Saddam Hussein and his supposed cache of weapons of mass destruction. The uncertainty over their existence combined with a lack of immediate threat demanded that the U.S. continue to work through the United Nations to let the arms inspectors do their job–a job they were in fact doing remarkably well when they reported no evidence of WMD’s.

Once at war, our tradition also places strict limits on the conduct of soldiers and the treatment of prisoners of war. Our religious and ethical obligation of k’vod ha-briot (respect for the dignity of all creatures)–to say nothing of our legal obligations–make it incumbent on us to treat prisoners humanely. This is the right thing to do, and it is the smart thing to do; the backlash against the United States has grown in no small part from the torture at Abu Ghraib and similar facilities, and the ongoing degrading treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. When we violate the dignity of others, we diminish our own humanity as well and risk losing the moral core which can lend our actions clarity and rightness.

There is no question that we must support our troops–the vast majority of whom are serving their country with the utmost professionalism. So too we now have an obligation to Iraqis to help return their country to stability at a very minimum. But these obligations are best served not by blind compliance with a war-mongering administration whose values in justifying and executing this war run contrary at every turn to the dictates of both morality and common sense. Instead, we need to reassert the invaluable ethical lessons we learn from our tradition–the reluctance to go to war, and the demand for proper conduct when we do–so we can begin to repair the damage and move toward a stable future.

There are very few things more important to building community than food. Food brings us together in companionship (literally: ‘bread-breaking’), helps us celebrate joyous occasions, and connects us to one another through shared moments.

Some Jews see kashrut–the system of Jewish dietary laws–as a source of separation from non-Jews, and there may be an element of truth to that charge. But kashrut is much more about connection than separation. After all, we can always eat with whomever we please, but when we make conscious choices about what we eat we affirm our connections to the Jewish people.

Kashrut is not only about defining our connections to other people. It is also about establishing our connections to our Jewish heritage and to God.

For those of us who grew up in Jewish kitchens, the sights and smells of Jewish food transport us instantly and effortlessly to memories of childhood, to family, to identity, to home. Strikingly, many of the special holiday foods we eat have their origins in Jewish law and custom as well, whether having gefilte fish to avoid removing bones from fish on Shabbat; or matzoh ball soup as an inventive way of avoiding leaven on Passover; or latkes as a way to celebrate the miracle of oil on Chanukah.

Jewish food has its origins in–and continues to point toward–our people’s relationship with God. How do we take that most basic of human actions–eating–and infuse it with constant awareness of God? When we keep kosher, we join ourselves to thousands of years of the Jewish people seeking to express their covenantal relationship with God through food. This is the community that we can choose to join through mindful eating.

For thousands of years, Jews have sought to bring holiness into their every action. When we choose to keep kosher we affirm our desire to be part of this grand project, incorporating our awareness of God and of our Judaism into every bite. And that’s quite a mouthful.

At various points in history, the legitimacy of the Book of Esther has been challenged as part of the Biblical canon. Although the Council of Yavneh in 90 C.E. confirmed that the book was, in fact, part of the Hebrew Bible, it is clear that this was by no means a unanimous opinion. And as late as the 16th Century, Martin Luther was challenging its inclusion in the Christian Biblical corpus.

What’s the fuss over this story of the Jews being saved from the brink of destruction? The controversy stems from who does the saving. Or, more to the point, Who doesn’t. Along with Song of Songs, Esther is the only book of the Bible that doesn’t explicitly mention God – a particularly glaring omission given the near-demise and miraculous rescue of the Jewish people. Instead, the Jews are saved through the courage and determination of Esther, the one whose name means ‘hidden’ and who had concealed her Jewish identity from King Achashverosh. Just when wicked Haman’s plot seems unstoppable, Esther boldly goes to the King, risking her own life, and entreats: “If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me-- that is my petition-- and the lives of my people-- that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated….” (Esther 7:3-4)

Purim is the holiday of the hidden miracle. Even more than Chanukah, with its subtle miracle of the oil, Purim is a holiday that speaks to the way people make their decisions and find their courage in a world where God no longer speaks in a clear, commanding voice. But more than that: the Talmud (Hullin 139b) connects Esther with God’s promise “I will surely conceal my face” (Deut. 31:18) – Esther is seen by the rabbis as a representative of the concealed God.

The story of Esther teaches us that we cannot wait for others to perform acts of courage and kindness, to stand up against injustice even at great personal cost. It is each of us, created in God’s image, who may choose to make the Divine that is concealed within us manifest in the world – to turn our hands and our heart over to Godly ends so God may work miracles through us and help bring about a world of “light and gladness, joy and honor.” (Esther 8:16) The power of God to speak to us – and work through us – in a dangerous and ambiguous world is why Esther’s message – and the book that bears her name – should be celebrated on Purim.

I remember very well standing over my beautiful, perfect, eight-day-old son with a knife in my hand.

It was his brit milah, the day of his induction into the covenant between the Jewish people and God through the rite of circumcision. Typically, this procedure is performed by a trained mohel (ritual circumciser). In the traditional ceremony, the father officially cedes his obligation to circumcise his own son to the mohel, who performs the ritual on the father’s behalf.

But not me.

I was determined to undertake this primal act of faith and belonging myself, not turn it over to a stranger. And so the mohel set the clamps for me, handed me the scalpel, and stood aside warily, ready to step back in if I faltered. But I wasn’t going to–even though what I was about to do seemed crazy, how could I really let a stranger do this to my son?

The image flashed into my mind unbidden of Abraham on Mt. Moriah, knife held out over his helpless son, Isaac, whom the Torah tells us he loved so dearly. I imagined Abraham’s heartbreak at what God had commanded him to do. All a parent wants is to protect his or her children, keep them safe from any and all harm. And here Abraham was being called upon to sacrifice Isaac–the ultimate betrayal of the parental imperative to safeguard and shield from danger.

But desire though we might, we cannot fully protect our children. They will grow up, they will leave home, they will make their own choices, they will live their own lives. They will encounter, please God, great joy and fulfillment, but they will also inevitably come to know a measure of sadness, loss, and heartbreak for these too are a part of the life that God gives us.

Any parent whose preschooler has been hurt by the words of a classmate knows just how limited we are in our ability to protect our children from forces beyond our control. We can’t stay endlessly in the classroom waiting to pounce on the offending five-year-old, we can’t control every interaction our children might ever have with anyone–and yet it hurts so much to do nothing. Being a parent means confronting the limits of our ability to protect the ones we love the most. Life cuts; we cannot avoid this basic fact of what it means to be human.

But I realized as I stood with the knife in my hand that the first cut my son would receive in his life, the first of many wounds–physical, emotional, spiritual–he will inevitably experience, could be made in love. Could connect him to a story greater than himself or any of us, to a framework of sacred meaning, and to a people that was cut far too many times in hate.

We cannot protect our children from injury; but we can shape the ways in which they experience the hurt that life sends their way by providing them with a solid foundation of love and trust from which to respond and recover, and with a community that will carry them through the difficult places. The first cut our son would receive in his life would be made with the deepest sense of love and gratitude, would be a prayer that we all draw one step closer to redemption.

I recited the blessing and welcomed our son into the covenant.