Abraham's Hospitality and Today's Immigration Debate

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, October 27, 2007

In six weeks the Union for Reform Judaism will hold its biennial conference in San Diego California. The Biennial is part leadership training program, part adult learning showcase, and part religious revival, a gathering of more than 5,000 Reform Jews from all over North America who spend four and a half days together studying, praying and sharing their experiences.

The delegates to the biennial also take up resolutions dealing with the issues of the day, and this year, the first resolution that will be debated is a resolution on Immigration. This is not the first time in recent years that the issue has come to the fore. Recent resolutions on immigration include a general resolution on Immigration in 1989 and 1995, and on Citizenship in 1997.

The resolution mentions many Jewish teachings, the commandments to be fair and generous with the ger, the resident alien, the model of Ruth, the outsider allowed to glean alongside the Israelite poor, the historical experience of the Jewish people as a community of immigrants and refugees with a long history of sojourning in foreign lands but ultimately it flows from Max’s Torah portion which we read this morning. It is a reflection of a tradition that finds its roots both in the story of Abraham’s hospitality and in the contrast the portion highlights between Abraham’s tent and the cities of Sodom and Gemorrah.

As Max mentioned Abraham went out to greet three approaching strangers and offered them hospitality. As admirable as that is, the rabbis of the Talmud find in the text something even more remarkable. They examine the first two verses of this portion carefully:

“And the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day.

And he lifted his eyes and looked and lo three men stood by him and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door and bowed himself to the ground.”

God appeared to Abraham, something awesome and very special. Yet Abraham, as it were, puts God on hold, to go out and greet three approaching strangers.

Rabbi Eliezer said: Come and see how the character of the Kadosh Baruch Hu, Blessed Holy One is not like that of flesh and blood. For it is in the character of flesh and blood that a person of lesser rank could not say to his superior, “Wait until I come back to you.”

From this the rabbis conclude that God is not offended when we part from God to attend to the image of God that is in every human being. They teach that greater than talking to God is to be like God, and practice acts of kindness and generosity.

The second legacy that this Torah portion provides is the contast between Abraham’s open tent and the cities of Sodom and Gmorrah. In rabbinic midrash these rich cities on the plain did not wish to share their wealth with their poorer neighbors from the desert. Therefore they did everything they could to prevent their entrance into the city. According to the rabbinic midrash found in Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer, they flooded all the approaches to their city so that no one could come to share their wealth. The portion goes out of its way to contrast Abraham’s generous welcome of the strangers, with the response of the residents of Sodom and Gemorrah who riot upon hearing that Lot has acted hospitably and seek to rape and kill these men.

In December our movement will discuss a resolution which calls for a comprehensive and generous immigration policy which recognizes the contribution of immigrants to the US economy and creates pathways for earned citizenship. While maintaining support for effective and humane border security, it calls on the government to deal with the problems of visa backlogs, and to consider family separation in provisions that allow for undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status. In that our movement is a big tent including people from all over the country with different experiences and political outlooks it is likely that this issue will prompt some serious debate, but I hope that God’s mandate to Abraham will guide our discussion, “For I have singled him out that he may instruct his children and his children’s children to keep the way of Adonai by doing what is just and right.”