dangerous and different, the people themselves become targets. They are threatened. They are attacked. Words are powerful. Inflammatory words are even more so.
This is precisely why our Torah commands us to not only tell the story but to see ourselves in it.
“ My father was a wandering Aramean …”
In our Torah, these words appear in Parashat Ki Tavo, and are to be recited when the first fruits are brought to the Temple. They remind us that caring for the strangers among us is not optional. We cannot stay silent when immigrants are demonized or discriminated against, not just because we Jews are so often next in line, but because our Torah tells us that we must not only stand up for the stranger. For generations, rabbis have noticed how frequently this commandment appears. In our Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer teaches that the Torah warns us thirty-six times, and perhaps even forty-six times, not to oppress the stranger.( Bava Metzia 59b)
We must love the stranger, all strangers, because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. We, too, know what it is like to be immigrants. And this knowledge requires us to give dignity and hope to people seeking a better life in a land not their own.
Tonight, as we remember our wandering ancestors who were enslaved in Egypt, our Haggadah asks us to see ourselves in their story,
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