In Memory of Myra Becker. It was only a year ago when Myra and I went to visit our congressmen. When we stood outside at a rally about separating children at the border.
This is the sermon I didn’t give on Saturday, because I had something even more important to say…watch for that tomorrow. This is the sermon that makes me angry. Really, really angry. You may not agree with me. It may make you angry too. Good get angry. Then put that energy to work and find a solution.
This week we marked World Refugee Day. A designation from the United Nations in 1980. I know, we Jews don’t always like the United Nations. Let’s save that for another time.
I just finished reading Escape to Virginia. It was this month’s book group book. It is the powerful story of how some teens, not enough, ever, were rescued from Germany in the late 1930s as Europe was becoming…unhinged. Is that strong enough? Some people had the foresight to get their teens out of Germany, then out of Holland etc. We know that story. But by following just these two students, Eva and Topper, it made it all the more real. A little like Anne Frank. Only they were the lucky ones. They survived. Barely.
Let me tell you another story. The story of Greta. Greta was a teenager when she arrived in Saint Louis. My mother’s own words, “My first recollection of Greta Westerfeld was her German accent and her long braids. She was the first of the children sent for safety in St. Louis to escape the War in Europe. I imagine she was terrified. She came to live with the Friedmans who were not related and a middle-aged shildless couple. When they took her to my stepfather, the pediatrician, he said, “I have a kid her age. We must get them together.” The Friedmans didn’t know much about ten year olds, but always made me feel welcome in their house…At first Greta was very shy. And even her clothes were different. She word dark skirts with white blouses and long wool stockings. I guess my mother helped Mrs. Friedman buy American clothes like the other kids wore. Greta went to our school, joined our Girl Scout troop, went camping with us and became part of the group. We all knew she worried about her family who were still in Germany and dreaded their fate.”
The Jewish community of Saint Louis in the 30s and 40s certainly knew what was happening in Europe, and tried, despite closed borders, to desperately rescue as many people as possible. Greta’s family did not survive. Greta eventually married and moved to New Jersey to begin her new life. She died in the late 1960s. Much like in the novel Sarah’s Key, some said of a broken heart.
We remember and we vowed never to forget and never to allow what happened to us as Jews to happen again. Any time, any place. That is why I did an internship with Refugee Immigration Ministry. That is why I am an active supporter of American Jewish World Service and HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the very group that helped so many of our ancestors immigrate to this country.
When the original Simon Klein emigrated from Kerzenheim, Germany in the 1840s, yes, the 1840s, he escaped Germany under a load of hay. Legal? Probably not. Documented, for sure not. He went on to found Klein and Mandel with his cousins also from Kerzenheim. You may know it as Mandel Brothers on State Street.
Currently there are 70 million refugees world wide. Some of them come here as asylum seekers. Trying to escape violence in their home countries.
This week has seen a battle of words about our southern border. It is hard to sort out fact from fiction. First hand accounts from people I trust, including Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitch and my own sister-in-law report deplorable conditions for children.
Others report: No soap. No clean clothes. Sometimes no beds with kids sleeping on concrete floors. Still children being separated from their parents. If this were a family reported to DCS, they would be charged with child endangerment or neglect.
Reports of rampant sexual abuse of children in detention.
USA Today reporting 4556 children were sexually assaulting in federal custody dating back to 2015. The New York Times used the same number. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/02/26/thousands-migrant-children-report-sexual-assaults-us-custody-border-detain/2988884002/
New York Magazine is using the number 5800 children. https://www.thecut.com/2019/02/5-800-children-alleged-sexual-abuse-while-detained-by-u-s.html
The response? The ICE Detention Center as part of a suit filed by the ACLU has said that they are not responsible for sexual misconduct of its staff. https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/immigrants-rights-and-detention/ice-detention-center-says-its-not-responsible
This is not the America that our ancestors dreamed of when they immigrated to this country, legally or sometimes even illegally. These are not the values that the Torah demands that we should welcome the widow, the orphan and the stranger. 36 times in the Torah it demands no less. In fact, it also demands that we love the stranger. The sojourner. The resident alien. You have heard me on this topic before.
This week there was more debate. I don’t want to engage in that here. It is Shabbat. Actually, I don’t want any more debate. Period. Let me be clear. Children should not be held in detention centers. Period. Whatever you call them. Prisons should not be for profit. Period. I fought against this in the early 2000s.
Perhaps George Takei says it best: “I was inside two of them, in America,” he tweeted. “And yes, we are operating such camps again.” “internment camps” or “relocation centers,” these terms are euphemisms. The Trump administration has used terms such as “federal migrant shelters” and “temporary shelters for unaccompanied minors.” The definition of a concentration camp is “a place where civilians are confined for military or political purposes based on their identity.” In terms of Japanese internment camps, they were “outside the criminal justice system, designed to detain Japanese Americans based solely on their racial and ethnic identity, sites like Manzanar and Tule Lake were absolutely U.S. concentration camps,” said Nina Wallace on Huffington Post, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-takei-concentration-camps_n_5d0be29fe4b0aa375f49b69f
The response of the Jewish community, and even of the camp survivors themselves have been mixed. However, I do not believe that the Jewish community alone owns the phrase “concentration camp.”
https://nypost.com/2019/06/24/us-holocaust-museum-denounces-aocs-concentration-camp-remarks/
I had heard the news that ICE was planning a major round up of undocumented refugees in Chicago this weekend. They were hoping to find 2000 immigrants who have had deportation orders finalized. This news should also be chilling to us as Jews.
Round ups. Deportations. Internment camps (or whatever you want to call them.) We have heard this language before. We have vowed never again. The time to be aware is now. The time to act is now.
If you have friends that are immigrants, know their rights. They do not have to open their door to an ICE agent. An ICE agent cannot enter their abode without a signed warrant from a judge. They do not have to answer any questions. They have the right to an attorney. https://immigrantjustice.org/know-your-rights/Preparing-for-ICE-Enforcement-Actions
What does this have to do with our portion today? Our portion begins the words B’ha’alotecha. It is the instructions of how to light the lights, the menorah. Literally to “Raise up the lights.” You. Raise the lights. It takes all of us being responsible. Together.
It comes from the same root as aliyah, to go up, to Israel or to go up on the bimah for the Torah blessings. It is a spiritual going up. A spiritual high. Lighting the lights is that too. You might expect the word to be l’hadlik, to light, like the Shabbat and Chanukah candle blessing. But it is more than to light, it is to raise up that light.
All of this makes me think of the poem on the Statue of Liberty. You know the words.
The New Colossus
BY EMMA LAZARUS
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
It seems directly connected to the words of today’s portion. Raise the light. “I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” We Jews have been so proud of these words of Emma Lazarus, the daughter of Jewish immigrants who penned them as part of a contest. What happened to that hope. That promise.
But there is more to it. Maybe it needs to be reset into its historical context.
““The New Colossus” emerges at a pivotal moment in history. The year before Lazarus’s poem was read at the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition in New York, in 1883, the Chinese Exclusion Act became the first federal law that limited immigration from a particular group. Though set to last for 10 years, various extensions and additions made the law permanent until 1943. The year after Lazarus’s poem was read, the European countries met in Berlin to divide up the African continent into colonies. “The New Colossus” stands at the intersection of U.S. immigration policy and European colonialism, well before the physical Statue of Liberty was dedicated. The liberal sentiments of Lazarus’s sonnet cannot be separated from these developments in geopolitics and capitalism.”
We Jews must continue to keep Emma Lazarus’s vision of America alive. We Jews must never forget the lessons of the Holocaust and the pain of closed borders. We Jews must never forget the mandate of the Torah to welcome the widow, the orphan and the stranger. We Jews must never forget. The time to act is now.
Brilliant!
Thank you for providing clarity over this tragic and shameful chapter in US History. We, as Jews, must honor the “Never Again” mandate! That phrase was not intended to apply only to Jewish persecution, but where ever signs of persecution and genocide crop up. Tikun Olam in the most elemental sense.
Excellent! As always, very well stated. You stated what I have been feeling and clearly stated my concerns. Yesterday someone in our community, who is not Jewish, said she felt like our country was becoming like Europe in the 30’s. There are too many similarities. Thank you for this beautifully written statement of our feelings!