֖רְו גֵ
אֶ ֥ רְֶבּ תֱֶה ִ י י
אַ תֶּ֗ םְו חָ ֑ ץְל
ם ׃ ִי רָ ְֽצ
ת ־ נֶֶא דַ עְ תֶּ םְ֙י
כ ר פ ס Karpas
Karpas: To Dip in Tears and Come out a Dwelling
Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses
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תִ֣ ל ֹ א
ץ מִ ֖ ם
֣פשׁ הַ גֵּ֔ ר כִֶּ
ֽ י ־ גֵ רִ ֥ ים
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A stranger you are not to oppress: you yourselves know the soul of the stranger, for strangers were you in the land of Egypt.( Exodus 23:9)
In repeatedly telling us to remember we were a stranger the Torah asks much of us.
Not only does it ask us to go back in time across generations to an experience our ancestors had as though it were our own; knowing the soul of the stranger means mining our own feelings of radical vulnerability, drawing on our own past of strangeness.
To do so points to the secret chambers, the darkness of our own heart – exposing its most sensitive core. This is not a natural process, it’ s a sensitivity we would of course prefer to leave untouched – but doing so, dipping into those sensitive places means emerging with impassioned empathy, fuel that personally animates the mitzvot commanding us to protect the stranger.
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