Migrants/Refugees adapted for Midrasha

In Bava Metzia 59b, R' Eliezer mentions 36 times the Tanakh warns us against mistreating the גר and other Sages say 46 times.

Note on translation: There are many possible translations for the Biblical Hebrew גר (ger) which usually refers to one of foreign birth or nationality that lives among those of a different nationality. Common translations include "sojourner, stranger, alien, and resident alien." Since the root of the word indicates temporariness of stay and any type of permanent stay is made explicit by the usage of גר תושב (ger toshav, the resident ger or resident alien) or some form of הגר הגר אתכם (ha-ger ha-gar itkhem, the ger who lives among you), the word sojourner seems most accurate of the bunch.

However, in its modern usage, the word sojourner now sounds antiquated and, perhaps more importantly, it has lost its stigma. The גר is stigmatized; the גר is as vulnerable to abuse as the widow and the fatherless. With that in mind, these text translate גר as migrant (a term familiar to those of us who know of the struggle and oppression of the migrant worker) and גר תושב and different forms of הגר הגר אתכם as immigrant - the one who has migrated to live among us.

These translations are not perfect. Most notably, the גר may actually be children or descendants of migrants or immigrants. The need to preserve the sense of stigma the גר faces in society outweighs the option to use a different translation.

Within Jewish law, few tenets are repeated as much as the following. This tenet is repeated no less than 36 times in the Torah.

I used to think that the most important line in the Bible was “Love your neighbour as yourself”. Then I realised that it is easy to love your neighbour because he or she is usually quite like yourself. What is hard is to love the stranger, one whose colour, culture or creed is different from yours. That is why the command, “Love the stranger because you were once strangers”, resonates so often throughout the Bible. It is summoning us now. A bold act of collective generosity will show that the world, particularly Europe, has learned the lesson of its own dark past and is willing to take a global lead in building a more hopeful future. Wars that cannot be won by weapons can sometimes be won by the sheer power of acts of humanitarian generosity to inspire the young to choose the way of peace instead of holy war.

The Israelites receive punishment from G-d when they unfairly treat migrants.

To be a Jew is to be a stranger. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is why Abraham is commanded to leave land, home and father’s house; why, long before Joseph was born, Abraham was already told that his descendants would be “strangers in a land not their own”; why Moses had to suffer personal exile before assuming leadership of the people; why the Israelites underwent persecution before inheriting their own land; and why the Torah is so insistent that this experience – the retelling of the story on Pesach, along with the never-forgotten taste of the bread of affliction and the bitter herbs of slavery – should become a permanent part of their collective memory.

It is terrifying in retrospect to grasp how seriously the Torah took the phenomenon of xenophobia, hatred of the stranger. It is as if the Torah were saying with the utmost clarity: reason is insufficient. Sympathy is inadequate. Only the force of history and memory is strong enough to form a counterweight to hate.

Why should you not hate the stranger? – asks the Torah. Because you once stood where he stands now. You know the heart of the stranger because you were once a stranger in the land of Egypt. If you are human, so is he. If he is less than human, so are you. You must fight the hatred in your heart as I once fought the greatest ruler and the strongest empire in the ancient world on your behalf. I made you into the world’s archetypal strangers so that you would fight for the rights of strangers – for your own and those of others, wherever they are, whoever they are, whatever the color of their skin or the nature of their culture, because though they are not in your image – says G-d – they are nonetheless in Mine. There is only one reply strong enough to answer the question: Why should I not hate the stranger? Because the stranger is me.