Dear Friends,
How do we treat the stranger – the visitor?
In Fiddler on the Roof, when Tevye encounters the student radical, Perchik, studying by the water, he invites him home to eat at his table for Shabbat. That act of kindness paid off: eventually, Perchik would no longer be the stranger and would marry Tevye’s second daughter.
How do we treat the stranger?
The question is addressed in this week’s parasha, in reference to who may keep the Passover ordinance. Would a stranger – perhaps someone who wasn’t born Jewish – who was not rescued from Egypt but who joined the Jewish people afterwards, be obliged to keep Passover? The Torah clearly affirms his duty: “If a stranger shall sojourn among you and will keep the Passover unto the LORD, according to the statue of the ordinance thereof, so shall he do; you shall have one statute, both for the stranger and for him that is born in the land. …” [Num 9:14]
This is exceedingly progressive, and timely.
Today, when America is still in the effects of a lingering immigration battle which threatened to tear our community apart, we read in our sacred text to expect of the stranger the same which we demand of ourselves. There should be one law for both.
Yes, this text is addressing a particular statute, namely that of Passover, and it is concerned with Passover in the desert in the Israelite’s second year of wandering. Yet, its import and its message is transportable: a sacred community must make the “other” be welcome, for we were once strangers in the land of Egypt.
The recent Pew Memorial Trust study of Jewish demography, which was released last week, asserts that the Jewish community is not only more diverse than ever before, but is now described as a multiplicity of multiple definitions. We are not simply descendants of Eastern European shtetls.
The Torah text demands of us to shed any xenophobia, to drop any arrogance, and to overcome any fears. It reminds us that there is an intrinsic human and even Divine value in the visage of another, and that a Godly society cannot have one law for the home-born and another for the sojourner. Such is the rode to ruin.
Let’s embrace all – the other and one another – in the spirit of our Troah teaching!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
How do we treat the stranger – the visitor?
In Fiddler on the Roof, when Tevye encounters the student radical, Perchik, studying by the water, he invites him home to eat at his table for Shabbat. That act of kindness paid off: eventually, Perchik would no longer be the stranger and would marry Tevye’s second daughter.
How do we treat the stranger?
The question is addressed in this week’s parasha, in reference to who may keep the Passover ordinance. Would a stranger – perhaps someone who wasn’t born Jewish – who was not rescued from Egypt but who joined the Jewish people afterwards, be obliged to keep Passover? The Torah clearly affirms his duty: “If a stranger shall sojourn among you and will keep the Passover unto the LORD, according to the statue of the ordinance thereof, so shall he do; you shall have one statute, both for the stranger and for him that is born in the land. …” [Num 9:14]
This is exceedingly progressive, and timely.
Today, when America is still in the effects of a lingering immigration battle which threatened to tear our community apart, we read in our sacred text to expect of the stranger the same which we demand of ourselves. There should be one law for both.
Yes, this text is addressing a particular statute, namely that of Passover, and it is concerned with Passover in the desert in the Israelite’s second year of wandering. Yet, its import and its message is transportable: a sacred community must make the “other” be welcome, for we were once strangers in the land of Egypt.
The recent Pew Memorial Trust study of Jewish demography, which was released last week, asserts that the Jewish community is not only more diverse than ever before, but is now described as a multiplicity of multiple definitions. We are not simply descendants of Eastern European shtetls.
The Torah text demands of us to shed any xenophobia, to drop any arrogance, and to overcome any fears. It reminds us that there is an intrinsic human and even Divine value in the visage of another, and that a Godly society cannot have one law for the home-born and another for the sojourner. Such is the rode to ruin.
Let’s embrace all – the other and one another – in the spirit of our Troah teaching!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn