We Jews have always been refugees. Torah tells us so. Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden to the east. Noah and his family were the first “boat people.” God commands Abraham to depart from his home. (Rashi believed for religious reasons, to remove himself from the land of idol worship). Famine made the Children of Israel flee to Egypt. Freedom inspired them to fly from it. Into the wilderness for 40 years we wandered until we reached our Promised Land. But it would not last. A life in exile awaited us along the rivers of Babylon, which we filled with our tears, dreaming of home.
Our constant exoduses as refugees continued for millennia. The Diaspora: from Spain to Salonika and the Ottoman Empire; from the European shtetl to the American tenement; and for some, after surviving the horrors of the Holocaust, a new start in Israel on a kibbutz or in Tel Aviv.
The Talmud mentions that Torah exhorts us 36 times to love the stranger. Jews must treat the strangers (foreigners) in our midst as if they were one of us — and to love a stranger (foreigner) as we would love our own — “for you were strangers (foreigners) in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:20; Leviticus 19:33-34; Deuteronomy 10:19). But it might as well say: “for you were strangers (foreigners) in (fill in the blank).”
It came as no surprise to me that so many Jews have demonstrated compassion and support for the millions of refugees fleeing the terror and violence that has consumed Syria. Their story is much like our story. Their exodus is much like our exodus.
Within the last month I introduced a bill in the Wisconsin Legislature to help Wisconsin resettle at least 937 Syrian refugees in Wisconsin. Using federal dollars, the state would distribute funds to local non-profit and religious organizations to help refugees find work, learn English, and become self-sufficient in a new home. America is my Promised Land. I hope to share her milk and honey.
But Gov. Scott Walker believes that accepting “Syrian refugees poses a threat” and that therefore “the State of Wisconsin will not accept new Syrian refugees.” Citing the Paris terror attacks, Walker stated that Syrian refugees “will try to take advantage of the generosity of our country.” Walker announced in his statement that he opposed the bill I recently introduced to resettle a small number of carefully vetted refugees.
Walker’s decision is wrong for Wisconsin because it fails to understand the rigorousness of our current security process. Under current law, the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and State, along with the FBI Counter Terrorism Center, conduct stringent vetting and screening processes for refugee applicants. The screening process takes an average of two years to complete. If there is even the slightest concern that someone could pose even the smallest risk to Americans, we do not admit an applicant to our shores.
Walker’s decision is also wrong for Wisconsin because it will make us less safe. By failing to distinguish between the victims of violence and the perpetrators of that grotesque terrorism, Walker and others like him who conflate Syrian refugees with their tormentors will make it harder to identify and defeat our real enemies — the murderous terrorist killers of ISIS. What the world witnessed in Paris illustrates the very kind of terror that millions of Syrians have fled their homes to escape. The real enemy is ISIS, not their victims. ISIS actually wants us to slam the door in the face of children, women, and men who pose no threat to the U.S.
Rejecting all refugees — no matter how rigorously they have been screened — is also the wrong decision for Wisconsin because it fails to affirm the moral values we share, as Americans and Jews, which instruct us to protect and support those who seek freedom from fear. The risk of inaction in the face of this crisis is too great. While America has been a place of refuge for peoples fleeing from religious violence and persecution, at times we failed to act and inadvertently condemned those we could have saved to a horrendous fate. Jewish readers may be familiar with the number of refugees I propose helping in the bill — 937. In 1939, the German ocean liner the St. Louis carried 937 mostly Jewish refugees to the shores of America. But they were not allowed to disembark. The ship returned to Europe. The Nazis killed more than 200 of the passengers who were compelled to return.
Jewish-Americans in Wisconsin must do what we can to convince our mostly Christian neighbors that Muslims fleeing violence from Islamist terrorists need our help. We must encourage Gov. Walker not to harden his heart to the plight of Syrian refugees.
Growing up, I learned stories about righteous gentiles who helped Jews fleeing the genocidal terror of Nazi Germany — the German industrialist Oskar Schindler, the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, and the Portuguese consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes. (De Sousa Mendes saved the life of one of my Hebrew School teachers, the late Henri Zvi Deutch). Ordinary women and men hid families like Anne Frank’s, or even individual Jewish children, thereby living the affirmation sanctified in the words of the Talmud: for each individual was the world created. (Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 37B).
Now righteous Jews must do the same for Muslims in their time of great need. Their exodus is like our exodus. We understand their suffering because “we know the hearts of strangers.” (Exodus 23:9). These refugees, though strangers, belong to our family, for we too were strangers in the land of Egypt.
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