Here’s what I said, more or less, yesterday at the Families Belong Together Elgin.

This morning I spoke at services about the power of speech. The important power of speech. That is what you are doing today. Speaking truth to power.

Today we read the verse of a non-Jewish prophet, “How good are your tents o Jacob, your dwelling places o Israel.” Today, here in Elgin, it is brutally hot. Too hot. In fact, I encouraged some of my seniors to not come. They came anyway. What we are doing here today is that important. But as the weather people keep telling us, it is not safe. So please, please drink your water. I don’t want to be making hospital calls later today.

Now imagine being in a tent city in Texas. Even hotter. Not safe. Without your mother or your father. Without knowing where they are or understanding the language. Without enough water. Sleeping a cement slab floor. With a mylar blanket. And no hugs. Those tents are not good.

In my tradition, all people are created in the image of the divine, b’tzelem elohim. All races, all creeds, all people. And as the U46 mission statement says, all means all. That also means that no person can be illegal.

My tradition teaches, 36 times in the Five Books of Moses, the first Five books of the Bible, that we are to welcome the widow, the orphan and the immigrant. We are to welcome, even love the stranger, because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. It is that simple. It is so simple…yet G-d has to keep telling us over and over again. It is so simple, yet I keep giving this sermon over and over again. My congregation is probably tired of it.

As Jews, who have been exiled all over the world, we know the pain of being refugees. The pain of being the other. We know the damage of being separated from our parents. We have heard these words before, “Children to the right. Adults to the left.” We know the causalities caused by not allowing Jews into the United States when they were fleeing Europe. When the USS Saint Louis was turned back.

It is why Jews all over the United States are at rallies just like this one. It is why in my own family I have a Cambodian nephew who survived the killing fields. And a Guatemalan son-in-law who was airlifted off a football field in Guatemala City in 1983. It is why my brothers-in-law are attorneys and judges in Tucson and why my sister-in-law works for the Catholic Church on refugee resettlement. It is why I worked for Refugee Immigration Ministry with asylum seekers. Why I visited for profit jails in 2001 that were housing women and children even then.

Today we stand here. We pray with our feet…and our voices…to send a clear and simple message. Reunite those children now. Welcome the widow, the orphan and the immigrant. Take care of them. NOW.