For We Were Strangers

“From generation to generation, each person should consider themselves personally liberated from Egypt.” For we were all strangers in the land of Egypt.

In 1934, my grandmother was becoming a stranger in a land she no longer recognized, living in Berlin under Nazi rule. As a young child of 11, she was still allowed to travel. She would take the long train ride to visit her aunts and uncles in neighboring countries who had already fled. She travelled by herself, always with an umbrella, rain or shine. Before each journey, her family put Jewelry into the hollow shaft of her umbrella, entrusting it to relatives who they hoped would survive.

Two years later, at 13, instead of preparing for her bat mitzvah, my Grandma Margot said goodbye to her parents for the last time and moved to Paris. At 16, she fled again — this time across the Atlantic, starting over in New York City. While she corresponded with her mom in Berlin and her father who escaped to Columbia, she never saw them again.

In 2014, I sat with my mom in her living room, representing two generations shaped by horrors of the Holocaust. My mom unwrapped a small plastic bag and revealed an art-deco ring with three diamonds. A jewelers inspection revealed that while two were likely from the United States, one bore the unmistakable markings of a diamond shaped in Europe before World War II.

I imagined my great-grandmother Irma taking a ring with that diamond, placing it into her daughter’s hollow umbrella, hoping to preserve memory and wealth. I picture my Grandma Margot nervously taking that diamond with her to Paris, safeguarding it on the long journey across an ocean, before finally setting it into a new ring for a new beginning.

In 2014 I was preparing for my own new beginning. I took that diamond out of the art-deco ring, and had it set for the third time. In March of 2015 in the Denver Botanic Gardens, I placed the diamond ring on Jenny’s finger and began writing the next chapter in our family’s story.

That diamond serves as a link in the chain of our tradition and a reminder of our sacred covenant. In Numbers, God instructs us to make fringes on the corners of our garments including one blue thread. “That shall be your thread,” we read, “look at it and recall all of the commandments.”[1] I do not wear fringeson my clothes, but I do look at Jenny’s diamond as a reminder of my obligation to live by the words “Never Again.”

The phrase “Never Again” directs us to do what we can to protect both ourselves and others from enduring the atrocities experienced by previous generations. Jewish tradition centers our responsibility to protect the vulnerable. More often than any other commandment, repeated over 36 times[2], the Torah instructs us not to harm the stranger, for we were strangers in the land of Egypt, emphasizing that our history of persecution should foster empathy and proactive support for others.

For centuries we have transformed generational trauma of the past into care and concern.

Today we are witnessing an attack on the stranger on a terrifying scale. Last week, masked ICE agents blanketed a tree-lined street in West Chicago, targeting people they believed to be in the country illegally. They arrested people at a grocery store, in their homes, or walking down the street.[3] They continue to detain Americans and minors here in Chicago, including the suburbs, during an operation called “midway blitz.” Just yesterday I learned that my most trusted handyman, who has beautified and fixed my home and my neighbor’s houses, was detained by ICE last Friday. These operations continue around the country while our President tweets an AI image of him sitting in front of a burning Chicago with the quote “I love the smell of deportations in the morning.”[4]

Those taken are then held in unsanitary conditions at ICE detention facilities around the country. In New York, “ICE held more than 100 people, sometimes for weeks, in inhumane and unsanitary conditions without beds, showers, or adequate medical support.” Last week, a US District court ruled that ICE must improve conditions and provide “access to showers, sleeping mats and adequate hygiene products.”[5] Basic human rights.

Yet these conditions pale in comparison to reports from “Alligator Alcatraz,” a facility on a deserted airstrip in the Everglades. Detainees there report inadequate food supply, showers less than 1 time per week, lights on 24×7, no air conditioning, no protection from hordes of mosquitoes, and even unsanitary water flooding the floor.[6] When legislators were finally allowed in, they were prohibited from visiting actual people and denied access to the medical facilities.[7][8] This echoes the reports of the International Red Cross who visited the staged Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1944. Multiple lawsuits are pending against the Florida facility.

My friend was transported from Chicago to a Texas location over the weekend. Our neighborhood community is desperately trying to figure out if we can prevent his deportation.

Thankfully, these detention centers are still under US authority, and subject to US laws, unlike several of the foreign countries where the US deports people. These include so-called “third-party” countries, where the US sends people whose home countries refuse to accept them. The US has sent people to El Salvador, Ghana, South Sudan, India, Iran, and Uganda, all of whom have weak legal protections, especially for non-citizens.

My great-grandmother, Irma Meyer, was deported. Her final German record states that she was forced onto a train in Berlin on September 24, 1942 heading to Reval, today known as Talin, Estonia. She had long suffered from Rheumatoid Arthritis and was mostly bedridden or in a hospital. I can imagine Nazi soldiers loading her into a cattle car, packed with men, women, and children filled with fear and pain. Even if she survived the journey, most people, especially if they were not fit for slave labor, were taken straight to killing fields.

“We must not wrong or oppress others; for we were strangers in the land of Egypt.”[9] Ourselves, our own family, our people, bear the emotional and physical scars of oppression and marginalization.

For millennia, societies have exploited strangers as a lesser class, forced to do the dirty work, like the Israelites who built the cities of Pythom and Ramses for Pharaoh.[10] That is why the Torah commands us, over 36 times, not to wrong the stranger. The United States is no different. We rely upon undocumented labor for many jobs, notably to put food on our tables, perhaps the very food we ate in preparation for our fast tonight.

“According to USDA data, 42% of U.S. farm laborers lack legal work authorization. In meatpacking, that number rises to nearly 50%.”[11] This past June, the Chobani CEO, said that aggressive immigration enforcement practices pose risks to the food supply chain. We rely upon undocumented workers to pick our food because it is tedious, manual labor, baking under the hot sun with no protection, often for minimal pay. Jobs shunned by US citizens who have a choice to work elsewhere. This system is wrong and ripe with abuse, yet exploitation is better than deportation.

Incarcerating and deporting people is extreme marginalization. In the New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander writes: “While marginalization may sound far preferable to exploitation, it may prove to be even more dangerous… Tragedies such as the Holocaust…are traceable to the extreme marginalization and stigmatization of racial and ethnic groups.”[12]

We are marginalizing millions of people who fled extreme poverty, famine, or war, often with their families, seeking the same things we want, and the same reasons why we are in this country today: safety, security, and prosperity.

In the winter of 2024 at a large interfaith gathering in Wilmette, our community heard the heartbreaking story of parents who left Venezuela because they could no longer provide for their family. Their multi-month journey crossed several countries and treacherous landscape. At one harrowing moment the father dislocated his shoulder and then had to carry his son, who couldn’t swim, through a river.

This family and others don’t make this journey because they simply want a better life, which would be valid. They are crossing through rainforests, deserts, and rivers because they have no choice. This is their Exodus, they are escaping their Pharaoh.

“Sorry,” we tell them when they arrive at our doorsteps. “We already have enough tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free,”[13] We are full. And we slam our golden door in their faces.

The same message my great-grandfather received 1937. The same message 937 Jewish refugees on the St. Louis Steam Ship received in 1939, before being forced back to Germany.[14] The same message we sent to desperate Afghanis as the Taliban returned. A cruel message repeated again and again and again.

Thankfully, not the message we or at least one of our ancestors received when they came knocking.

We each have an immigration story – a story motivated by fear, and hope for a better future. Just like Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Joseph who each fled hardship and famine, doing whatever they could for themselves and their families.

We are the lucky ones. Most of our ancestors made it here, were permitted entry, and were allowed to stay. Some of us are here still without full citizenship and carry the fear of deportation regardless of our legal status. We don’t deserve safety and freedom more than others – all human beings are all equal in the eyes of God. Every person deserves to be free and to pursue happiness, safety, and prosperity. Everyone deserves hope.

The Haftara reading on Yom Kippur, from Isaiah, admonishes us during our time of repentance not to turn so far inward that we neglect others.

“‘Why, when we fasted, did You not see?

Because on your fast day you see to your business and oppress all your laborers! Because you fast in strife and contention, and you strike with a wicked fist!

Is this the fast I desire, a day for people to starve their bodies, bowing their heads like a bulrush and lying in sackcloth and ashes?

No, this is the fast I desire:

Unlock chains of wickedness and let the oppressed go free; … share your bread with the hungry and take the poor into your home; clothe the naked, and do not ignore others.”[15]

Isaiah reminds us that our prayers and fasting on Yom Kippur are meaningless if not paired with action.

Today, visitors to the US Holocaust Museum in DC are reminded that “Thousands of courageous non-Jews risked death or imprisonment to save their Jewish neighbors. The vast majority of Europeans, however, were bystanders who did little to deter the Nazis or to aid Jews or other victims of Nazi persecution.”[16]

We were strangers in the land of Egypt and we will not sit idly by.

As the federal government continues to target Chicago, the Chicagoland faith community has been mobilizing, including protests, legal actions, and seminars. Next week our Social Justice committee will offer a “Know your rights” training to our community in partnership with the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. Surrounded by the temporary protection of our Sukkah, we will gain tools to help our neighbors protect themselves from arrest and deportation.

We will fulfill the positive commandment to “love the stranger, for we were strangers in the land of Egypt.”[17]

Diamonds don’t block light – they refract it, focusing and clarifying it. When Jenny’s ring catches the light, it glistens and spreads light in all directions, like a lighthouse guiding a ship to stay along a safe course. Just like our Yom Kippur prayers provide clarity and guidance for us to return to our own right paths.

We don’t need a diamond rescued from the Holocaust to remind us of our obligations. The mezuzahs on our doorposts already do that, each time we come and go. Each mezuzah scroll contains the commandment to look at the fringes on our garments; recall all the commandments and our commitment we make as a human family.

When we enter or exit our sacred space, look at our new blue mezuzah, lovingly crafted by Sukkat Shalom member Jill Shananmen Parker, a dove representing peace. Look at that mezuzah and remember our obligations as a community, to ourselves and to others.

Or, we can heed the call of Isaiah and look around, at our community, at other people, at our children, and see the divine reflected in each human soul and we can ask ourselves, what would we do to protect the people we love.

G’mar Chatima Tova, may we be written for blessing in the book of life.

[1] Num 15:38-39

[2] Babylonian Talmud, Bava M’tzia 59b

[3] https://patch.com/illinois/wheaton/masked-ice-agents-arrested-over-dozen-people-west-chicago-villa-says

[4] https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/09/06/ice-raids-chicago-immigration-saturday-trump

[5] https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/district-court-grants-order-prohibiting-ice-from-detaining-immigrants-in-abusive-conditions-at-26-federal-plaza

[6] https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2025/09/17/alligator-alcatraz-immigration-detention-ice-florida-desantis/

[7] https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2025/07/22/florida-governor-defends-conditions-at-alligator-alcatraz/

[8] https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/12/us/alligator-alcatraz-lawmaker-tour-conditions

[9] Ex. 22:20

[10] Ex. 1:11

[11] https://www.forbes.com/sites/philkafarakis/2025/07/17/deportations-whos-picking-the-lettuce-and-cutting-up-steaks/