The Stranger in our Midst

D’var Torah 5/28/18

שבת שלום

Our Torah portion for this week is בְּהַֽעֲלֹֽתְךָ֙, which is Numbers 8:1-12:16. It has a lot of material in it. It starts out describing the menorah lamps on the lampstand and then discusses the purification of the Levites in front of the people, the Levites substituting for the firstborn of all the people, who have belonged to God since the Tenth Plague. Levites serve between ages 25 and 50. After that, they can still stand guard at the Tent of Meeting but can’t do any labor. The parasha continues, anybody who can’t make the Passover sacrifice in the first month of the year can do it in the second month; anybody who doesn’t do one at all is to be cut off from his kin. There is a cloud that covers the tent of meeting and the people only march when it lifts off and starts to lead them. Moses’ father-in-law (maybe; he isn’t called Jetro here) wants to go back home but Moses begs him to stay. The people tire of manna and demand meat, and they are given a huge surfeit and then struck by a plague, perhaps from spoiled or infested meat. Closer to home, Miriam and Aaron are tired of Moses getting all the glory when God speaks to them, too, and God strikes Miriam with leprosy. At Aaron’s request, Moses speaks his poignant prayer for healing her - אֵ֕ל נָ֛א

רְפָ֥א נָ֖א לָֽהּ

[Oh God, please heal her.]

In the midst of all of this activity, there is a single clause in line 9:14 that I wish to discuss. It is when the annual Passover sacrifice is being described, and the text notes that a stranger dwelling among the people can also make and eat the sacrifice under the same rules (which include being circumcised, according to Exodus 12:49). The clause reads:

חֻקָּ֤ה אַחַת֙ יִֽהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם וְלַגֵּ֖ר וּלְאֶזְרַ֥ח הָאָֽרֶץ

[One law there shall be for you and for the stranger who dwells in your land.]

We have already encountered this earlier in the Torah. Exodus 12:49 says, “There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who resides in your midst”, and Leviticus 24:22 says, “One law shall be exacted for you, convert and resident alike, for I am the Lord your God.” This intrigues me greatly. I know that we are commanded over and over again to treat well the stranger among us, for we were strangers ourselves throughout our journeys. But since we’re studying mythology and comparative ancient law this week, I thought it would be interesting to investigate how commonly held this view was in the ancient Near East. I could only find one source outside the Bible, an instruction given by a Hittite king to his border guards that the stranger should be provided with everything he needs for his own sustenance. More common might be the view expressed by Aristotle, who thought that non-Greeks were barbarous people and were slaves by nature. We do find concern for the widows and orphans and generally weak – the Code of Hammurabi expresses this concern, along with ancient law of other lands. But nowhere else is there explicit protection of the stranger. The notion that all human beings have certain inalienable rights that have to be recognized whether they are in their native lands or have moved to another country is fairly modern .

Our foundational stories show why the consideration of a stranger among us, extending the protection of our laws to that stranger, is so important. The stories start with Abraham being told to leave his native land and cross the river to a new country. A few generations later, Jacob and his family travel to Egypt to find food during a period of famine and are strangers there and eventually slaves. When God brings the people out of Egypt through Moses, they wander in the desert for 40 years and eventually return to the Land of Canaan, where they are once again strangers, since they have not lived there for a few hundred years by that point. So our having been strangers ourselves is a crucial part of our narrative and helps explain why we are enjoined to treat the stranger with such consideration.

You can see this dynamic in play in a group that you have belonged to for years. A new member comes along. Partly, you have a tendency to withdraw, to close in, to emphasize that you are part of the in-group and they are outsiders. Partly, you have a human curiosity and a natural friendliness, as well as sympathetic understanding of how this person might be feeling, and you open up the group in a welcoming way. Knowing that we are commanded to treat the stranger just as we treat one another, with the same set of rules, helps us to give preference to that second inclination and welcome the stranger into our group.

כן ׳ה׳ רצון