.... It was a difficult time for her family as her father sought a dignified livelihood and they all adjusted to living in a new land. The Torah demands that I empathize with the migrant because my people were strangers in the land of Egypt. We are called to go further than that and “love the stranger.” That is why I...

.... about Islam, and I didn’t know any hijabs. That makes me feel safe.” Love the Stranger Muslims. (I’d actually already met Jamal At the same time, we’d had exactly the and Kulsoom, but I didn’t know they were same thought, which...

... into focus, dressed in colors dark as the night. At first the stranger’s words were muted by the music blaring through my headphones — my temporary barrier against the many interlocutors who feel entitled to interaction once they notice my limp. This visibility is something I cannot hide, and I don’t...

... as crossers-over, strangers and slaves, but as events that radically transform the meaning of boundaries in the world; they demonstrate the potential for all objectified others to be reconstituted as subjects similar to ourselves. There is nothing inevitable about this moral understanding of our communal...

... by “dismissed him” and “let him be.” The former refers to not providing the stranger with food and letting him sally forth on his own, hungry. In the eleventh century, Rashi (Rabbeinu Shlomo Yitzhaki) poignantly commented: “This is what is meant by ‘our hands did not spill’. . . . He was not killed as a result...

... of the reigning paradigm. Rather, the keepers of the conventional wisdom were so captivated by their own success that they failed to exit the mindset and institutions that had created wicked problems in the process of making their success possible. What do the shared faith traditions of sacred strangers bring...

..., welcomed strangers and outcasts into their communities. They did not set quotas. They did not turn them away. Rather than complaining that the killers were a burden, they helped them become productive members of the community. Some accidental killers—traumatized and perhaps otherwise troubled—undoubtedly...

...Creative Commons/Remi Mathis What would it mean for immigration policy if we took seriously Jesus’s Torah-inspired call to love “the stranger”? This stained-glass window, Housing the Stranger , was modeled after a print by Maerten van Heemskerck. ...

... assumed regular interaction between neighbors and strangers, and, through seemingly inconsequential legal dictates, articulated an ethic of justice predicated on care for the Other. This is a kind of Levinasian view of obligation, though Cohen helpfully guides us so as to appreciate the differences...

... to collectively love itself. Perhaps the ultimate love challenge is to extend toward the one who naturally provokes feelings antithetical to love, anxiety, and alienation. Can we reach out to the stranger? To do so is an act of great empathy and empathy is the seed of love. It does not take a sophisticated...

... concerns, or a study of how Judaism learned to live in the midst of other nations while maintaining Jewish life. I didn’t even know that there are thirty-six biblical injunctions to care for the stranger, or why gossip is talmudically discussed as a form of murder, or what we mean by “eye for an eye...

...-face. file the holiness of God’s Torah? Wars with the old weapons—sticks and stones, blunt axe, words, Judaism teaches us to “love the stranger,” (the Other...

...Rabbi Michael Lerner When rabbis do not feel free to engage in controversial political discussions or promote notions of “loving the stranger” for fear of losing their jobs, I feel heartbroken. It is so troubling when these fears override rabbis’ ability to convey to the younger generations what...

... on women’s rights, on how to treat slaves and strangers in one’s land, and how to care for the land. While it did not go far enough for most of us who wrestle with its stories and laws, for its time it was a radical vision. It is a critique of empire, of power, of the destruction of the environment...

... of accompaniment” as a system designed to take us, as a community, beyond the natural limits of our affective capacities. It compels us to accompany the stranger across otherwise uncrossable gulfs. It addresses the sad truth that love doesn’t take us far enough. Love simply doesn’t motivate us enough to care...

..., “Be kind to the Why? Despite the natural beauty sug­ loans. Alpena is make-or-break for these stranger in your midst, for you were gesting very much otherwise, the local families, and in a financial climate where strangers in the land of Egypt,” is not economy is devastated. Two...

..., while from below they often appear as the most visible oppressor — for example as landlords, store owners, and bosses in low-income communities. Georg Simmel famously described the status of Jews as that of the perpetual Stranger. Kafka articulated the condition as being told: “You are not from...