Jewish Texts on Immigrants and Migrants: Or Some of the Many Times the Tanakh Warns Us Against Mistreating the גר

In Bava Metzia 59b, R' Eliezer mentions 36 times 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, and 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.

Remember You Experienced This Before!

(Im)Migrants Are the Same Under the Law:

Take Extra Care of Immigrants/Migrants in Justice and Economic Issues

How Are These Verses Codified in Halachah (Jewish Law)?

Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Human Dispositions 6:10:

"...An individual is obligated to be careful concerning orphans and widows since their souls are very lowly and their spirits are cast down,...And how do we behave towards them? One should only speak in soft tones to them and he should only treat them in a respectful way; he should not hurt their bodies with work, or their hearts with harsh things. And he should be more careful with their money than he is with his own money. Anyone who annoys them or angers them or pains them or oppresses them or wastes their money - behold, such a one transgresses a negative commandment. And all the more so, one who hits them or curses them. And even though we do not give lashes for this negative commandment, its punishment is explicit in the Torah (Exodus 22:23), "And My anger shall blaze forth and I will kill you with the sword." The One Who spoke and the world came into being made a covenant with them that anytime they cry out from wrongdoing, they are answered, as it states (Exodus 22:22), "as if he surely cries out to Me, I will surely hear his cry."

What is the Source of These Teachings?

Mishpatim: Loving the Stranger, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (2008)

Dislike of the unlike is as old as mankind.This fact lies at the very heart of the Jewish experience. It is no coincidence that Judaism was born in two journeys away from the two greatest civilizations of the ancient world: Abraham’s from Mesopotamia, Moses’ and the Israelites’ from Pharaonic Egypt. The Torah is the world’s great protest against empires and imperialism. ... [their] most serious offense – for the prophets as well as the Mosaic books – was the use of power against the powerless: the widow, the orphan and, above all, the stranger.

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.

The Prophets List Mistreating Im(migrants) as Paradigms of Unjust Behavior: