“Like tikkun olam, we take for granted” Sarah says, “we take for granted that “loving the stranger” is a core Jewish value—but its origins are quite radical. In the Torah, God repeatedly tells the Israelites to care for the stranger “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” But God seems to be getting way ahead of Godself, addressing a problem the Israelites did not face. The Israelites were a powerless group of former slaves under constant attack from rival peoples—they were the strangers of the ancient world. But the Torah seems to anticipate a time when the Israelites would be well-established enough to have a say in how the strangers among them would be treated. And again and again, it tells us: No matter how powerful or secure you may one day become, your fundamental moral orientation must always be in the direction of the outsider, for in some essential and eternal way, the plight of the stranger was, and always will be, your own.”
8 Nights, 8 Jewish Values: Reflections for Chanukah on the Jewish Obligation to Build a Better World ~ by Sarah Hurwitz
As always, in this series of Hanukkah reflections, we begin with the words of Ms. Hurwitz.
For these last three reflections, however, I want to take…not a detour, exactly; I absolutely endorse and affirm her words. Rather, even as we celebrate Hurwitz’s writing, I would like to turn more overtly inward, to how these words can be applied to our community of Lace on Race.
By the time you finish considering and reflecting on these three, it would be understandable indeed if you thought these words were written for, and aimed very specifically at, our corps of fellow walkers (although I don’t particularly love the word ‘plight’. I much prefer ‘struggle’).
They weren’t. But what I think it does, and what is particularly gratifying to me, is to strongly affirm that the convictions and ethos we are inculcating and internalizing are not outlying concepts; rather their universality is echoed and reinforced in Hurwitz’s words.
These last three: Caring For The Stranger; Being Thoughtful About The Words We Speak; and, crucially, Chesed (or Hesed) are at the core of what we do here. We will take them one by one, but I think it is of importance that we keep this particular trio in our minds as we consider these last three elements of building a better world.
This sixth one, that of caring for and welcoming the stranger, is, or should be, so readily agreed upon as to not even warrant explication. But, as always we are invited to look far beyond the surface of the soil of this exhortation, and to examine the roots.
Here, as I reflect again and again upon Ms. Hurwitz’s words, what emerges for me is something that has been said over and over, by me, and now also by leadership and seasoned walkers in our shared orange grove. We have spoken often of capacity, volition, and agency as necessary ingredients to walk this path with resilience, reliability, and relentlessness.
Firstly, capacity. Do you have the capacity within you to truly, truly, expand your awareness beyond yourself; your immediate family; your chosen community; your chosen identification? Again, this seems to warrant a quick, almost glib answer. Just the idea that you are in this space should answer the query–or so one might think. I think this instinct toward the knee jerk can be a danger to fully entering in. ‘Of course, I love all people!’ ‘Of course, I value living out welcoming and caring for the stranger!’ And I have no doubt that this response, should you make it, comes from a sincere place. But we need to always be aware of the soup that we live in. We need to always be aware that those who dominant culture have deemed ‘strangers’ to full community and acknowledged and affirmed humanity are part and parcel of our shared heritage of white supremacy. It goes back to an earlier element of Hurwitz’s essay we would do well to remember here. Earlier in this series, we discussed equality, and the turn of phrase that allows for feeling good without authentic consideration, and which allows for the status quo to continue unchecked and unabated.
‘Treating everyone *like* equals’ is the blue packet of stated ethos (see what I did there? ‘Equal’ is fake sugar packaged in a blue packet. Heh.). It’s a small leap from that to treating the stranger–The Other– *as if* they belong. Indeed, whenever I hear caveats like these–’like’ or ‘as if’ or ‘even though’, I know that the person speaking or writing those words has at least a little bit of an issue with seeing the person they are considering fully eye to eye. Entire indoctrinations from the world are embedded in these only seemingly benign words. Like drugstore lipstick dupes, those who they consider strangers are only approximations of what the world, and the person speaking, considers to be the real thing.
Maybelline is not MAC.
It implies and enforces a strata and a brutally enforced standard that embroils both sides of the slash; for the person who lacks the capacity to fully embrace The Other’s full humanity, and for the marginalized person, who knows all too well the meaning of the carveout. Both sides are fully cognizant of the almost microscopically fine, but blindingly bright line that those words detail.
So when we consider if we have the capacity to welcome and embrace the stranger, we must also in the moment be able to consider the possibility that the designation is artificial and can be queried and critiqued with no deleterious effects on either or ourselves or on those whom we have chosen to love and affirm. That affirming and acknowledging the worth, worthiness, and equality of The Other will not diminish those already loved and affirmed. Drawing the circle wider to fully include will not dilute our capacity for those already in the circle. Sounds so simple in the writing, and the speaking, and even in the hearing and agreeing. Which is why we need to consider it more not less. The only seemingly simple, even simplistic concepts are so often the most foundational.
So then, we move to volition; to willingness. Are we willing, truly willing to, after deep consideration, to drop the blue packets? Are we willing to implement and employ what we now know is true? If we fulfill capacity, what does that mean for us? If we embrace it as a core value, how will we change?
To reject the world’s notion of the stranger; to draw your circle wider and wider, to make your table longer and longer, in a world that turns on scarcity, is a revolutionary act. What once was considered exceptional, even foolhardy, now becomes normative, even commonplace. In another faith tradition, it speaks to giving people more than they ask for. You ask for sandals? Let me throw in a cloak! Here in the present day: you ask for a dollar; here’s a 20! Next year in the Cafe, we are going to resurrect the Dimes exercise and the Envelope challenge. This is where living out values in real time, with real sacrifice and real consequences (as was alluded to in that essay, you will not sip the latte; you will not enjoy the mani). Doing more than the minimum is what you do for people you love. More accurately, it’s what you do for people *you choose* to love. Volition. Choice. Willingness.
So then, we have the capacity, and the willingness. What about agency? What about feeling deep in your marrow that you can live the way you say you want to live and have decided that you will live? Not just materially, but with time, with talents, with presence (none at the expense of any of the other convictions).
Earlier in this series, we talked about the man with the Gatorade on Broadway and how the eye to eye was as important as the dollar (or 5 dollars, or 20 dollars) exchanged for the salty Kool-aid dupe. How fully seeing–fully loving–in the moment was as important as going home and writing a piercing, trenchant letter to the Mayor of Lemon Grove about the homeless situation; even more important than the material currency or the expending of social capital was the courage, the belief that your small action could and would alter the larger dynamic.
Caring for the stranger in a deep way is always a both/and proposition. Meeting right where they are; staunching the bleeding that the world has caused in the moment (either to the individual or to orgs that share your ethos, preferably both); and always pivoting to societal, systemic, and institutional forces that create and enforce those fine bright lines; and then doing it again, and again, till the ability to believe you *can* act in effective and sustained ways becomes not even second nature, but fully a part of who you are.
In the last installment of the Hopes series I talked about deeply considering the stranger till there was no such thing as a stranger. It invites us to work on two tracks, because we must never, ever forget that even as we are transforming, we are still operating in a world that sees us as outliers; and will push back hard on New People Doing New Things in New Ways. As Hurwitz notes, all of us have elements of the stranger within us, both visceral in our histories and shared collective consciousness, even as we have only seemed to escape and transcend them.
Our gender; our religion; our region; our education and still other markers can reinforce current or former marginalizations. Best case, they *should* move us to solidarity; all too often though, they can entrench our hoarding and toxic parts of our identities and of our stories and we will relapse into contracted circles.
On this Sixth Night of Hanukkah, let it not be so. Let us remember and live out the virtue of expansion. Of our circles, of our tables, of our love.
And another night ends.
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