• supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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    3 days ago

    In 2018, I delivered a High Holy Day sermon that received some notoriety, because in it, I spoke out against one of my former congregants. I had something to say to my congregation about a policy the immorality of which I felt needed a vigorous Jewish American response — especially, in my opinion, because it was being championed by a Jewish American.

    That Jewish American was Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to then-President Donald Trump. Miller initiated and directed the Trump administration’s policy that forcibly separated young children from their undocumented parents, along with a score of other anti-immigrant proposals. I felt embarrassed and ashamed that a Jew in a leadership role could give voice and support to such inhumanity. And I felt further compromised because, for a couple years in Stephen Miller’s childhood, his family belonged to my synagogue.

    My family’s story would sound familiar to many Jewish Americans. My grandparents, like Miller’s great-grandparents, came to the United States to escape the economic, educational, and social bigotry of European antisemitism. Our ancestors were among the millions of Jews — like Americans of all faiths and backgrounds — who came here to build better lives for themselves and their children in the land of the free.

    Look, now, at how Miller and Trump want to treat this generation’s immigrants and their children. They are willing and eager to victimize the most vulnerable among us — even though the Book of Exodus demands, “There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you.” And the Book of Leviticus clearly states: “The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

    https://forward.com/opinion/670756/stephen-miller-rabbi-trump-harris-jewish-values/

    No need to look to a foreign nation’s government to find forces of antisemitism and xenophobia.