Readers respond to rabbi’s commentary
The April 2 edition contains a deeply disturbing commentary (“Should illegal immigrants be deported?”) by Rabbi Ze’ev Smason, in which he begins with a highly misleading metaphor for people he refers to as “illegal immigrants.” Laying aside the notion that refugees from other nations should be referred to as “illegal,” Rabbi Smason asks us to compare uninvited wedding guests to non-citizens living and working in our country.
By asking us to see newcomers to our country as freeloaders, Rabbi Smason would have us ignore the obvious differences between strangers chowing down on reception fare and families often fleeing poverty and persecution, but willing to work, many in jobs Americans would not accept, thus enhancing the lives of our nation’s citizens. They are the opposite of freeloaders; they are contributing members of society, even though they don’t reap all the benefits citizens enjoy.
Rabbi Smason compounds his offense by couching his disrespect of immigrants in Talmudic law. Although I am no scholar, I fully embrace the simple lesson of Passover, which asks us to accept those outside of our Jewish circle into our homes. In effect, Rabbi Smason asks us instead to accept the President Donald Trump’s cruel, self-serving and racist demonization of immigrants. This is as un-Jewish as anything we’ve heard from Washington in my lifetime.
I would ask that Rabbi Smason revisit the verse, written by the Jew Emma Lazarus, that, thankfully, remains (at least for now) on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Our nation is in grave danger to be sure, but that peril does not come from immigrants. It comes from hatred of the “other.” As Jews, we have an obligation to put compassion ahead of self-interest.
Alan Freed University City
Rabbi Ze’ev Smason’s years of service to the Jewish community in St. Louis and beyond deserve respect. It is therefore with sorrow—and some trepidation, given my more limited grounding in Jewish sources—that I take issue with his claim that deporting “illegal immigrants” is consistent with, even required by, Jewish law and ethics. This argument does a disservice to the beauty of Jewish tradition, given the argument’s internal contradictions and disregard for the lessons of Jewish history.
To his credit, Rabbi Smason acknowledges that Jews have, too, often been denied compassion when we were the strangers, and he affirms that compassion for the stranger is a core Jewish value. But he then dismisses that imperative as mere “emotion,” subordinated to other obligations. This is deeply problematic. The Torah commands us not to oppress the stranger no less than 36 times—more than any other mitzvah. The Rabbi does not mention this, instead narrowing the commandment to apply only to strangers who “fully submit to the customs and culture of their country of refuge.” That unfortunate (and surely unintentional) phrasing echoes arguments used for centuries by those who denied Jews compassion—or even life—on the same grounds.
Rabbi Smason also concedes that most of the tens of millions of “illegal immigrants” he would deport are “otherwise law-abiding residents” who have lived among us for generations. He glosses over the moral implications of this, including the fact that these immigrants do work many native-born Americans will not do—at least not for the wages employers offer. There are valid policy debates about the economic impact of this labor force. But from a moral standpoint, it is hypocritical to demonize undocumented immigrants while failing to hold equally accountable the businesses—and consumers—who benefit from their labor.
That hypocrisy implicates all of us who support deportation while ignoring the complicity of the companies, shareholders, and consumers—including ourselves—who profit from this labor every day. Comparing such immigrants to freeloading “wedding crashers” trivializes the moral complexity at hand.
Finally, Rabbi Smason invokes polls showing a majority of Americans support deporting undocumented immigrants. But history warns us to be cautious about majority opinion. Discrimination against Jews in Nazi Germany—including calls for deportation—had widespread, though not unanimous, popular support. We rightly reject the idea that majority approval justifies oppression. Yet that is what the Rabbi (again, surely unintentionally) implies.
The majority support he cites stems from years of political scapegoating—demonizing immigrants to deflect attention from real but unaddressed grievances. That dynamic, too, is chillingly familiar from Jewish history.
Deporting millions of people—potentially breaking up hundreds of thousands of families—may or may not be wise from a political, economic, or even moral standpoint. Reasonable people can disagree. But we must never claim that Jewish law, ethics, or tradition endorses oppression rooted in demonization that ignores both the humanity of the stranger and our own role in their plight.
Jewish tradition can—and should—guide us toward a resolution that is both morally grounded and politically viable. The Torah’s emphatic call not to oppress the stranger must be central to that effort.
Larry Friedman
St. Louis
Rabbi Ze’ev Smason made an example of immigrants as wedding crashers expecting a meal. Perhaps a better analogy is immigrants as the ones who set up the event, cooked and served the food, and cleaned up afterwards. Most refugees and immigrants add to our country and do not expect a handout. May Rabbi Smason be fortunate enough to not need work on a roof in the next four years, as he will find it unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Hopefully, Coalition for Jewish Values is an outlier in the Jewish community.
Suzanne Schoomer
St. Louis
