Escaping Narrow Spaces Print E-mail
Written by Josh Rosenthal   

Reflection on Passover and Immigration
On April 10, as thousands marched across the country against a rabidly anti-immigrant bill in Congress, Jews across the globe began preparing for the upcoming Passover holiday. While the timing of these events may have been coincidental, in my mind, they could not have been more appropriate.

Traditionally, the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, is considered a variation on the word meitzarim, meaning small or narrow spaces. Just as our spiritual ancestors left their Mitzrayim centuries ago, and our more recent ancestors left their homelands in the past two centuries, immigrants today are leaving their political, economic, and social “narrow spaces.” For many of them, the United States, with its civil liberties and relative economic opportunity, represents the milk and honey of the Promised Land.

HR 4437, commonly called the “Sensenbrenner Bill,” would turn undocumented immigrants into felons just for continuing to live in this country. It would also make it a felony to aid undocumented immigrants in any way, unnecessarily turning nurses, labor organizers, and educators into federal criminals.

Our commemoration of when we were strangers in a strange land lasted but a week. Today’s immigrants still face continuous hardships. By supporting immigrants’ rights now, we pay tribute to our own narratives of freedom, whether they took place 3000 years ago or 100 years ago, that continue to shape us as Jews.
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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.
 
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