Kedoshim: The Humanizing Practice of Love

Nachum M. Sarna, "JTS Torah Commentary: Leviticus," pg. 134

The Torah, and the Bible generally, emphasize the duty to treat resident foreigners as fairly as one is commanded to treat a citizen. Verse 10 includes the ger, "stranger," among those entitled to the leftovers of the harvest. The ger referred to in the Bible was most often a foreign merchant or craftsman or a mercenary soldier. This term never refers to the prior inhabitants of the land; those are identified by ethnological groupings, such as Canaanites and Amorites, or by other specific terms of reference.

In the biblical ethos, the importance of being considerate to foreign residents drew added impetus from the memory of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt - Israelites should be able to empathize with the alien. In fact, because of xenophobic attitudes, which could lead to extreme acts of violence against strangers, most ancient societies had laws protecting foreign merchants, officials, and others.

Hebrew lo' tonu, "do not wrong," usually connotes economic exploitation, the deprivation of property, or denial of legal rights. It was used with particular reference to those who suffered from lack of legal redress, such as the poor, the widow and the orphan, along with the foreigner.

Rabbi Maralee Gordon, "The Heart of the Torah," https://truah.org/resources/the-heart-of-the-torah/

It’s one thing to love your neighbor, the one with whom you have so much in common, as yourself. It is a harder task to look at persons of a different color, class, language, or culture and regard them as equally in need of respect and compassion as your neighbor. [...] Loving the stranger as ourselves – not simply doing the stranger no harm, but easing their oppression – is our most important task. [...] I used to cite Love your neighbor as yourself as the core principle of the Torah. I have come to understand that Love the stranger as yourself is both the core principle of the Torah and our mission as a light unto the nations.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, "Love Is Not Enough," https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/acharei-mot/love-not-enough/

These two commands define Judaism as a religion of love – not just of God (“with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might”), but of humanity also. That was and is a world-changing idea.

But what calls for deep reflection is where these commands appear. They do so in Parshat Kedoshim in what, to contemporary eyes, must seem one of the strangest passages in the Torah. [...]

At first glance these laws [of Leviticus 19] have nothing to do with one another: some are about conscience, some about politics and economics, and others about purity and taboo. Clearly, though, the Torah is telling us otherwise. They do have something in common. They are all about order, limits, boundaries. They are telling us that reality has a certain underlying structure whose integrity must be honoured. If you hate or take revenge you destroy relationships. If you commit injustice, you undermine the trust on which society depends. If you fail to respect the integrity of nature (different seeds, species, and so on), you take the first step down a path that ends in environmental disaster.

There is an order to the universe [and] when that order is observed and preserved, we become co-creators of the sacred harmony and integrated diversity that the Torah calls “holy.”

Rabbi Jonathan Kiligler, "Kedoshim: Love the Stranger as Yourself," https://truah.org/resources/kedoshim-love-the-stranger-as-yourself/

[T]he Torah insists that when we encounter a stranger, we transcend self-interest and instead practice empathy. To accomplish that, we must be able to identify with the stranger and to imagine what it must feel like to be without power in a land not your own. As we are commanded in Exodus 23:9, “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.”

This is very hard to do. The Torah repeats these instructions in various forms more than three dozen times, more than any other commandment. My theory is that the rules that get repeated the most are the ones that people are having trouble following! But the Torah insists that all human beings are made in the Divine image. We are all fundamentally deserving of being treated with dignity, care and respect, including the foreigner, the stranger, the immigrant, and the refugee. The Torah commands us repeatedly to grow to this level of awareness.

The genius of Judaism is that the very story we tell about ourselves and our origins as strangers in a strange land is meant to awaken us to the plight of the stranger we encounter in our own land. The Jewish story, if taken to heart, is an exercise in empathy, a humanizing practice. This is why I feel compelled to reach out to the strangers in our midst. And in the process, I turn strangers into neighbors, and perhaps even friends.

Rabbi Jonatha Sacks, "Loving the Stranger," https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/mishpatim/loving-the-stranger/

It is terrifying in retrospect to grasp how seriously the Torah took the phenomenon of xenophobia, hatred of the stranger. It is as if the Torah were saying with the utmost clarity: reason is insufficient. Sympathy is inadequate. Only the force of history and memory is strong enough to form a counterweight to hate.

Why should you not hate the stranger? – asks the Torah. Because you once stood where [they] stand now. You know the heart of the stranger because you were once a stranger in the land of Egypt. If you are human, so [are they]. If [they are] less than human, so are you. You must fight the hatred in your heart as I once fought the greatest ruler and the strongest empire in the ancient world on your behalf. I made you into the world’s archetypal strangers so that you would fight for the rights of strangers – for your own and those of others, wherever they are, whoever they are, whatever the color of their skin or the nature of their culture, because though they are not in your image – says G-d – they are nonetheless in Mine. There is only one reply strong enough to answer the question: Why should I not hate the stranger? Because the stranger is me.

Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, "My Synagogue Was Attacked, but I Will Never Stop Welcoming the Stranger,"

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/opinion/colleyville-texas-synagogue-antisemitism.html

What happened to us at Beth Israel in Colleyville is only the most recent, dramatic event. Even before the Jan. 15 attack on my synagogue, many Jewish people were on edge. Antisemitic attacks have increased in recent years. Hatred has already led to harassment and even bloodshed in too many houses of worship. These problems have been with us for far too long.

At least part of the problem is because we, ourselves, are strangers. Jews are strangers. Muslims are strangers. People with a different religious tradition — or no religious tradition — are perceived as strangers. People of different ethnicities can be considered strangers. People who hold different political views are seen as strangers. We’re strangers because one can look from afar and make judgments without understanding another’s reality. We’re strangers because it takes too much work to be curious, to give others the benefit of the doubt. It is a lot easier and a lot more comfortable to stick with one’s group. “Love your neighbor” is hard enough. [...]

All of us have a share in [the work of loving the stranger]. It means clergy and community leaders from every background meeting with curiosity, to share our traditions and our lives. It means gathering communities of faith together with those who don’t practice a religion, with a desire to listen, learn and the opportunity to build new relationships. [...]

If we begin with that love of the stranger, but offer it not in response to violence, but encouraged by empathy, we might just change our world.

Martin Niemöller, "First They Came..."

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.