Dear Friends,
The national conversation around immigration has grown increasingly painful.
In recent weeks, enforcement actions and public rhetoric have left many people frightened, angry, and deeply divided. Some are focused on the rule of law and the responsibility of government. Others are drawn to the human cost. Families have been disrupted, communities are living in fear, and people are spoken of in increasingly dehumanizing ways.
In this week’s Torah portion, we are deep into the Exodus story. The plagues are unfolding, but freedom has not yet arrived. Pharaoh’s heart remains hardened, and the Israelites are still living in a society that refuses to see them as fully human. Liberation, the Torah suggests, rarely comes all at once. It begins when suffering is finally acknowledged and when power is forced to reckon with the lives it affects. That is, it seems, the moment to which we have arrived in our own day.
Again and again, the Torah teaches, “You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the heart of the stranger, having been strangers in the land of Egypt.” The Torah does not deny the need for laws or boundaries. Because we know where forgetting leads, the Torah insists that power be exercised gently, and that the responsibility to care for the vulnerable never be forgotten.
Judaism lives in that tension. It teaches that structure and boundaries matter but that they cannot come at the cost of forgetting the value of human dignity. When fear hardens systems or language flattens people into categories, something essential is diminished.
What feels most troubling to me in this moment is not disagreement over policy (as troubling as I find much of our current policy to be), but the ease with which entire groups are being reduced to caricatures. These early portions of the Book of Exodus remind us that moral blindness often looks like certainty, and that redemption only begins when people are seen again as people.
Shabbat offers a pause from the noise. It offers us a moment to breathe, to remember where we have been, and to reflect on who we are becoming. By doing so we are reminded of our own humanity and, in the process, I pray we are able to renew our commitment to the humanity of others.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Daniel Cohen