Why Should Jews and Christians be Concerned with Immigrant Justice?

In response to Richard’s request for a religious response to the ICE raids, here is a very brief summary of Judaism and Christianity: God in these religions is intrinsically allied with oppressed peoples, although this truth has been suppressed and co-opted as these religions have been assimilated into societies ruled by aristocracies who depend on military and economic conquests and the subjugation of the working class.

The Hebrew people were enslaved by the Egyptian empire. They were the aliens. They did all the dirty work, the manual labor just as immigrants today. They had no rights in Egyptian society. God raised up the prophet Moses who demanded that Pharaoh free his people. This would be akin to an undocumented immigrant walking up to Bush and saying “let my people be citizens.” Moses was scoffed at. God allowed natural disasters to occur in Egypt culminating in the Passover when the Hebrews made a middle-of-the-night run for the border and narrowly escaped crossing the Red Sea during low waters which subsequently caused the chariots of the Egyptian military machine to get stuck and their soldiers to be drowned. This Exodus is the defining moment in Judaism. It is the moment of liberation. Subsequently, God revealed the Law (inter-personal and social moral codes) to Moses which is the way to make sure that the liberation of the Hebrews did not degenerate into a new society wherein new forms of oppression were created.

We read in Leviticus, the Law book most used to bash queers, “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. (19:33-34) The last few words YOU WERE ALIENS or YOU WERE SLAVES IN THE LAND OF EGYPT are repeated over and over again in the Law to remind the Hebrew people that having suffered the oppressions of slavery, they were to be the last people in the world who would ever oppress anyone else! This is very much like Richard’s post reminding us that our queer sisters and brothers have suffered and continue to suffer dehumanization, ostracization, discrimination, murder and execution throughout the world, including the US, and therefore, we ought to be the last people to stigmatize or oppress on any other group of people.

Skipping ahead in hystory, an unmarried Jewish couple in the Roman Empire is registering for an empire-wide census in Bethlehem. Herod, the local Jewish king/puppet of the empire, learns that a baby is about to be born who is to become a Jewish leader so he orders the execution of all children aged two and under. The baby, born among the poor in a stable, flees with his parents to Egypt. They are on the run. They are away from their people. They are aliens. HELLO.

The Jewish boy grows up to manhood and enters a synagogue one day and reads from the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring GOOD NEWS to the POOR. He has sent me to proclaim LIBERTY TO CAPTIVES and to LET THE OPPRESSED GO FREE.” (Luke 4:18-21) This is his Manifesto. Everything he will say and do revolves around liberation and the struggle against oppression. He chooses a lifestyle as a homeless, itinerant revolutionary and soon gets into trouble by saying things like: “Woe to you rich! Woe to you who are filled now!” (Luke 6:24-25) He is especially accusatory of the religious establishment who also functioned as the civil government: “Woe to you! You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.” (Luke 11:46). Sound familiar?

You can’t go saying things like this in public and not earn the ire of your enemies who conspired against this pacifist anarchist charging him with inciting revolution and opposing the payment of taxes. He was given the death penalty and left to bake in the sun and die of dehydration, something not unknown to immigrants crossing the desert into the US.

Judaism and Christianity are so totally allied with all oppressed peoples, especially poor people, that it is mind-boggling that either religion can be construed to justify the attacks, arrests and deportation of immigrants we are witnessing today by Bush/Cheney, the neo-cons and the presidential candidates. It is the duty of privileged religious citizens of this country to raise up mighty movements against this injustice.