Abraham and Sarah Were Also Refugees

 This week, I would like to talk about an issue that was raised in last week’s Torah reading and this week’s Torah reading.  Something happened to Abraham and Sarah in last week’s Parshah, and twice again in this week’s Parshat VaYera.  What happened to them offers an important perspective and lesson for one of the most difficult and immediate political issues of our times.

Immigration is a serious and difficult issue in our nation. Our immigration system is broken, and the American people are concerned.  Since President Biden assumed office, 1.4 million people have entered the country illegally.  A recent poll confirmed that immigration is the third greatest concern of American voters, right behind the economy and COVID.  It is of particularly high concern to Republicans and Independents. Opposition to building a wall along the border with Mexico has dropped precipitously since when the question was first asked by the Quinnipiac University Poll in November 2016.  Each night the news is filled with stories of desperate people trying to cross our southern border, or who have been stranded across the border for years.  It’s a heartbreaking isssue, made all the more so by the intractability of the problem.  This issue defies easy solutions.  There is sea of competing values and issues at stake.  People are suffering.

So, for the moment, let’s liberate ourselves for a moment from all the irresponsible commentary about who these people are and what they are trying to achieve and focus on the human factor.  Let’s stop seeing the people at the border through our normal Democratic/Republican or liberal/conservative lens and think about what it means to leave one’s homeland and make your way across 2,500 miles of dangerous and hostile terrain, often only with the shirt on your back and your children in your arms, knowing that when you arrive at the border, you will be met with hostility at best and the likelihood of a long process with no guarantee of success of achieving your goal of safety.  What makes a person do that?  

The opportunity to cut my grass or to clean your house?

No! You do that when you have no choice.  You do that when you have to choose not between good and evil but rather between two equally bad and dangerous options.  Yes: we do have a serious immigration problem in our country.  There are too many people who have no legal basis for being here.  But as a result of that fact, we have lost all perspective on the difference between an immigrant, an illegal immigrant, and a refugee.  And we need to regain that perspective because we are a refugee people.  Many, not all but many who are reading this Shabbat message today are descended from families who arrived in this country as refugees.  That’s not an adjective.  That is a different legal category that is separate from normal immigration status and laws. 

We are a refugee people.  It starts in the beginning of Jewish history with Abraham and Sarah.  Look at what happened last week when Abraham and Sarah go to Egypt to escape the famine.  If they stay in the land of Israel, they will die of hunger.  So they flee to Egypt, where Abraham knows that  Sarah will be taken from him for all types of immoral purposes.  He’s not choosing between good and evil but between certain death in the land of Israel and a horrible situation but at least a chance for survival in Egypt.  That’s what it means to be a refugee.  

In this week’s Torah reading Vayera, Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed?  The Midrash teaches that they are destroyed because of the complete moral and social corruption which manifested itself in complete disregard for basic human rights, and a cynical insensitivity to the suffering of others, as evidenced by their treatment of Lot, and the messengers (or angels) who had gone to warn him of the city’s impending destruction.  The story only makes sense if we understand that the Bible operates with a basic premise:  there exists a universal moral law that all humanity is commanded to follow.  These stories about the wanderings of our patriarchs and matriarchs and the dangers that they encountered in those very wanderings are a reminder and a lesson for every generation that reads them.  How we treat the most vulnerable, those with nothing, who have lost everything, is the true test of our religious values.  When confronted with the reality of their needs, will we act like the pharaoh who Abraham encountered, or the violent mob that confronted Lot?  Will we perpetuate the national disgrace at our southern border?  Will we continue to put up with the irresponsible rhetoric of Democrats who believe that you can define the problem of immigration away and jeopardize American sovereignty with nonsense about open borders and abolishing ICE? Or that of Republicans, attached to the fantasy of mass deportation, that ignites the base so necessary to win elections.  And all the while failing to explain to the American people the difference between immigrants and the criteria we use to determine their eligibility for residency, and refugees, who must be evaluated and understood differently.

These issues must be on our personal and communal agenda because Jews have been a refugee people from the very beginning.  And our comfort and security in this great nation should not blind us to the fact that if Abraham and Sarah were alive today, they’d likely be part of the mass of people seeking a chance for safety at our border.  Only this time we have the opportunity to make sure that the conditions that they endured in their time will be different in ours.

Shabbat Shalom