“The stranger who resides in your midst….”

Perhaps the most familiar instance of God saying “because I say so” in the Torah is in this week’s parsha, Kedoshim. The portion includes God’s detailed prescriptions for ritual and ethical behavior that have come to be known as the “Holiness Code” because of the opening line: “You shall be holy, because I, Adonai your God, am holy (Leviticus 19:2). God commands the Israelites to do right because that’s what it means to be holy.

The woman who gave the d’var Torah at services today focused on one particular line in the portion: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I am Adonai your God” (Leviticus 19:34). She spoke in gentle but eloquent terms about how casual language often dehumanizes foreign workers in Israel. She offered a few examples such as someone who talks about “my Fillipini” instead of “the Fillipini helper who cares for my elderly father” or “the Thais who live over there”” instead of “the Thai workers who live over there,” (since obviously at least a few Thai people are left in Thailand).

It was a good talk and an important subject. The Israeli government estimates that there are approximately 250,000 foreign workers in Israel today, about half of them illegal. They work in construction, as housecleaners, caregivers, and other menial jobs, and come from over sixty different countries including Romania, Russia, Nigeria, the Phillipines, Thailand, and Ukraine. They have been part of the social landscape of Israel since the early 1990s, replacing what had been a Palestinian workforce who were no longer welcome or trusted to work in Israel. Indeed, there were years when their numbers were even higher, but the government has been more vigilant with expulsions in recent years, including at times, Israeli born children of foreign workers. Though last year, an organization called Hotline for Migrant Workers, mounted a successful media and grassroots campaign that resulted in the government’s suspension of its plan to expel hundreds of children and refugees who have spent most of their lives in Israel.

Many foreign workers in Israel start out legally but overstay once their visa expires or they lose the job that first brought them here. Most work for low pay, under difficult and often dangerous conditions, with no benefits and few protections. Those are problems common throughout the developed world, often exacerbated by racism and xenophobia (note a recent bill passed by the state of Arizona that cracks down on illegal immigrants and people who hire them). But, there’s an extra twist that makes the situation all the more troublesome in Israel. Those who argue for strict limits on these economic migrants not only say they bring illiteracy and disease but that they are a dire threat to the Jewish character of the state.

Such attitudes make it easy to reduce the foreign workers to a sub-human category that allows their nationality to serve as a stand-in for their task and erase any sense of individual identity. “Filipini” means caretaker. “Thailandi” means farm-worker. They serve a necessary but somewhat distasteful service and that’s the end of it. Parshat Kedoshim teaches us it should be otherwise. The “stranger in our midst” deserves rights and protections equal to the citizenry because we too were strangers in Egypt, in Spain, in Britain, and Poland, and Russia, and Algeria, and Iraq. If we violate this basic precept that God commands with no explanation other than because “I am Adonai your God”, then what exactly is the Jewish character of the state we are trying to preserve?

Now I know this is a highly complex and difficult issue that many states confront and few deal with well. States have a paramount obligation to protect their own citizenry first and foremost. But at what point does the line blur between protection and xenophobia, between human rights and Jewish rights?

The drash called attention to common speech that either inadvertently or intentionally diminishes another person’s humanity. Certainly the relationship between foreign workers in Israel and Israeli citizens is a topic worthy of more than one sermon, since foreign workers are clearly an underclass at risk in many ways beyond the threat of deportation. But their presence in Israel is in some large measure due to a deeper root cause – the separation, de-legitimization, and even demoninization of Palestinians as an entire people. Indeed, that was the big glaring elephant in the sanctuary for me this morning. I know it’s easier to talk about foreign “others” whose only agenda is to find an economic opportunity that will help support their family, than it is to talk about the native “others” who are viewed and experienced as enemy. But that’s the sermon I would have liked to hear. That one would have taken a lot more courage and a lot more risk, which is exactly what seems to be needed in these challenging times.