At The Mexico-Arizona Border

Summary of My Remarks After the Service on Shabbat January 12

This past week I attended the annual Rabbinic Training Institute at the Pearlstone Retreat Center outside of Baltimore. It is a gathering of about 60 Conservative rabbis to study, learn practical skills and share personal stories. I always find it refreshing and energizing. One of the most dramatic things I heard this week was a devar Torah on Thursday morning by the organizer of the retreat - Rabbi Julia Andleman - who reported on her participation in a small rabbinic mission in December to the Arizona-Mexico border.

Before I share some of her thoughts allow me to provide some context. The current standoff in our government is a travesty. No matter whether we are Democrat or Republican we can agree that the fact that our elected officials and our president can't reach a budget agreement and the fact that thousands of Federal employees are furloughed is a "shanda". It's an embarrassment to America and makes us a laughing stock around the world. 

Not only is the standoff a "shanda" but I would argue that policies of this administration have gone against basic principles of social justice. I have argued about that in other posts but I'd like to focus on the administration's stance on the thousands of migrants from Mexico and Central America who are seeking asylum in America. Those government policies have ripped families apart and have gone against our historical posture of being a refuge from tyranny and a home for all seeking freedom.

As Rabbi Andelman described, the situation at the border is heartbreaking. An organization called the Kino Border Initiative organized the trip to grant first hand knowledge to the rabbis. Using references from this week's Torah portion about the exodus from Egypt, Rabbi Andelman provided some details on what she saw.

We are told that the Jews left Egypt in a hurry. 

"This is how the migrants we met at the border are living their lives. They have fled on short notice, with only what they can carry on their backs. The only way to navigate through [the desert] is by orienting oneself toward one particular mountain. So people have no choice but to go with mafia (i.e. the cartel) guides who have satellite phones with GPS and lookouts in secret caves in the mountains. Either you pay a huge amount up front or you have to agree to carry a backpack full of drugs."

We are told that everyone - children and elderly included - left Egypt.

"We met Letty and her daughters at the soup kitchen, the comedor. She had been a hair stylist but all her customers were gone because everyone in her village was too scared to go outside. Her daughters had been in school - but the mafia showed up and started violently dragging girls around by their hair. Then they started chopping off their hands. She told us about driving with her 5 year old daughter and seeing severed heads hanging in the streets. I asked what she said to her daughter. She answered: 'I told her that they were like the mannequin heads in my salon.' Did her daughter believe her? She said that kids know everything."

We say in the Passover hagaddah, in every generation we are obligated to see ourselves as if we left Egypt.

"I want to suggest that perhaps our obligation extends further than that. Perhaps we can read our own sacred texts in a way that gives us new insight into the journeys of other peoples - that opens our eyes and lets us identify their journeys with our own. And perhaps those insights can cultivate within us the compassion and the commitment to act with a "strong hand" on their behalf."

Let us be so motivated.