Remembering the "X" word - Xenophobia in the 21st century

Last Friday night, as we gathered here for services, one by one, folks entered the sanctuary, with shock and horror on their faces. News of the terrorist attacks in Paris, that ultimately took over 100 lives, was trickling in. So frightening. Such heartbreak - to see the destruction, the evil, the lack of respect for innocent  life. Beautiful lives, mostly young, cut short. A beautiful city, one that many of us have spent time in, shaken by bombs and bullets.

And then, to compound the fear and the heartbreak, I have felt deep sadness as governors and congress members have hastily moved to shut Muslim refugees out of our country, from fear that these refugees could be terrorists in disguise. I was at a meeting in Middletown on Tuesday night where the state rep for Middletown shared that he had received 30 phone calls that day from constituents demanding that we not accept refugees.

At that meeting, I also learned about the shooting at the mosque in Meriden, just up the road. Thankfully no one was in the mosque on Friday night, when it is believed the shooting occurred. Several bullet holes were discovered in the walls of the building, and the FBI is currently investigating the shooting as a possible hate crime.

 All of this brings back memories of the days just after the Sept 11th attacks, when Jim and I were living in NYC. It was hard enough to sit with the terror, the fear, the grief, the stench. But to then immediately be assaulted, over the airwaves, by anti-Muslim and xenophobic rhetoric, only compounded the trauma.

But I also had moments of pride this week.

Governor Malloy, announced his commitment to continue taking refugees from Syria and Iraq, into CT. At that same meeting in Middletown, a representative from IRIS, a refugee resettlement agency based in New haven, announced that  a Syrian refugee family who had been en route from a refugee camp in the Middle East to Indiana, was rerouted to Connecticut. She had been there to welcome them to New Haven that afternoon. And last week our synagogue board endorsed our congregations participation in a larger faith community effort to settle 3 refugee families in Middletown this year.

It was good to see that the ADL, a Jewish organization, publicly condemned the shooting at the Meriden mosque. And I was proud to watch Mark Hetfield, the CEO of HIAS, the oldest refugee agency in the US, testify on Capitol Hill this week, making a very clear and persuasive argument that our American values call upon us to continue to welcome refugees into the US and to not put up further barriers . 

I’ll just share a bit of what I learned from watching his testimony:

These refugees from Syria and Iraq wait an average of 2 years to receive clearance to enter our country, and all refugees undergo the most rigorous vetting and screening process of any group seeking entrance to the US. By seeking to block their entry we are blaming the victims of the same perpetrators of the same violence that we witnessed in Paris. They are fleeing bombs and torture, children are dying, and people are risking their lives to get to safety. He clarified that US refugee policy is wholly different from Europe. There, the vetting process begins once the person has already arrived in Europe. Our process begins when the person has fled their country and are waiting in a refugee camp in a second country. We screen out 50% of all eligible refugees that might pose a risk and only take in the most vulnerable  - mostly women and children and older men. They undergo rigorous background checks with a number of agencies, and have an interview with a Homeland Security officer face to face.

(Pause)

At the HHDs this year when we prayed the Ashamnu confession for the first time, using our new HHD prayerbook, there was a word that was notably missing: the sin of xenophobia. I understand that in the new edition, the authors wanted to get away from the traditional alphabetized acrostic of our sins.

But for me, xenophobia is not just a funny word for a sin that just happens to start with the letter “x”. When we say this word out loud as part of our communal confession, it evokes the horror of the Holocaust, the phenomenon of people looking away from the suffering of our people, and the closing of borders to Jewish refugees. I’m sure many of us saw the tweet this week that showed the statistic from 1939 of 67% of Americans being opposed to letting European political refugees into this country.

Two of my grandparents squeezed in that very year, from Germany, just making the quota. We still have the steamer trunk my grandmother carried, stamped with the name of the ship she took to get here - the S. S. St. Louis. Thank God she didn’t have to go through a 2-year vetting process. She made it onto what we think was the last voyage of that ship before the ill-fated voyage that docked in Cuba and had to turn back to Europe, after getting close enough that the passengers could see  the lights of Miami. Hundreds of these passengers ultimately perished in the Holocaust.

Unfortunately today, we are seeing that the sin of xenophobia still needs to be in our prayerbook. The fear of the stranger prevents us from looking at a person and seeing that they are a vulnerable human being, just like me, just because they look different, they have a different religion, they speak a different language. Xenophobia is what allows us to attach a stereotype to a person - to see a Muslim, even a Muslim child! -  and automatically see a terrorist.

Last Shabbat, we presented our congregant, Martha Stone, a noted advocate for children’s rights in this state, with our first Pursuers of Justice and Peace award. One of the most inspiring things she talked about was the poster she described that hangs in her office, that she looks at every day. It asks, “What do you stand for?”

If you were to search the Torah for the most common theme, you would find that the mitzvah of welcoming the stranger appears more than any other commandment. Thirty six times, we are told to love the stranger, to welcome the stranger, to treat the stranger as a citizen. This is what we stand for as Jews, more than any other value in our Torah.

By not taking in refugees fleeing ISIS, we confirm ISIS’s distorted thinking- we play directly into what THEY stand for - that the West is the enemy of Islam and Muslims.

What are WE going to stand for, during this, the largest refugee crisis in the world since WWII?

I believe that the commandment to love and welcome the stranger is repeated so many times in the Torah in order to immunize us against the fear that is so natural to us and which distracts us from what we stand for.

The Paris terror attacks last week understandably stir up great fear. It feels close to home - many of us have been to Paris, speak French. We identify. 

I am probably one of very few if any people in this room tonight who speaks Arabic and has lived in an Arab country. Those places and cultures feel foreign to us. It is important to remember though, when we are taken over by fear, that these types of terror attacks have been carried out by ISIS for years, killing hundreds of people, in other large modern cities like Damascus, Cairo, and Baghdad. In fact, Beirut - the Paris of the Middle East - was also attacked last Friday night. But Lebanon has not stopped welcoming refugees, Jordan hasn’t stopped welcoming refugees, just because those attacks felt “close to home” for them.

I don’t believe that we should decide that now, since Paris was attacked and since this makes us more afraid, that we should block people from seeking refuge in our country. When we feel this intense fear, we need to take a breath and return to our intention - our values - what we stand for. We need to remember to distinguish in our minds between Muslims and terrorists - between refugees fleeing violence, and those who are perpetrating it.

This week in our Torah portion, Jacob is fleeing his brother Esau, who is after him to kill him. On the way, Jacob has a famous dream - angels are going up and down a staircase to heaven. In the dream God promises to be with Jacob, wherever he goes. At the end of the Torah portion, Jacob is finally on his way back home, after living in exile for 20 years. As he makes his way home, angels again greet him to accompany him.

As Americans, as Jews, we can be there for people fleeing into exile. We can be an accompanying presence, a welcoming presence. The best way, I believe, to neutralize extremist ideology, is through love - to show Muslims around the world what it means to be American:  To be those angels – to care for our fellow human beings - to provide a place of refuge.