PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE – April 2025
“My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there.” In Deuteronomy this is the beginning of the statement our people were to recite when bringing the offering of the first fruits to priests of the Temple in Jerusalem. It is a reminder that we were wanderers, strangers in the land of Egypt.
Several times in Torah we are enjoined to love and help the stranger, to avoid oppressing them, to welcome them among us. We are obligated to feed and clothe the stranger and to love them because “you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Every year at this time we tell the story of how Joseph came to Egypt, how our people found themselves there, how we became enslaved, and how God appointed Moses to lead us after God delivered us from enslavement.
In return for this favor we are to welcome and give aid to the stranger, the refugee among us. It is in gratitude for our own deliverance. As American Jews we know the good fortune we enjoy because our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents were allowed in to this country, and the tragedy that befell those of our family who were not.
Yes, our families came to this country legally, but that isn’t because we held any special virtue, and the fact that there are many in this country that came to this country without the sanction of our immigration laws does not mean they lack virtue. United States immigration laws have been enacted and modified throughout our history arbitrarily or through prejudice, ignorance, or fear. The gates to our shores have been opened and closed against people of various ethnicities, nationalities, and cultures almost since our country’s beginning. It seems almost arbitrary that my grandparents, poor Eastern Europeans fleeing poverty and prejudice, were welcomed in when there are those today fleeing the same kind of poverty and prejudice are deemed “illegal.”
To be sure, no one wants criminals who are undocumented persons roaming our streets committing crime and violence. By the same token, not one wants criminals who are citizens roaming our streets creating mayhem either!
And how can we complain that undocumented people are draining our resources when their children go to our schools, when we provide them with the basics of shelter and sustenance, when can afford to make financial concessions to the most privileged among us in our tax code? And what of those who were brought to our country as children? Raised here and knowing no other life? How can we say to them, “Go back home” when this is the only home why have ever known?
In Mishkan T’Filiah, our siddur, we read:
Standing on the parted shores of history we still believe what we were taught before we ever stood at Sinai’s foot; that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt, that there is a better place, a promised land.
At Passover we must remember, we have reached this promised land by God’s mercy. We must always seek to allay the suffering of the stranger, remembering that we ourselves suffered as strangers in ancient Egypt.
— IRA L. GOLDSTEIN, President
