Moment Debate | Do Jews Have a Special Obligation to Hide Migrants or Refugees Who Are in Danger of Deportation?

Interviews by Amy E. Schwartz

INTERVIEW WITH DR. SHMULY YANKLOWITZ 

Do Jews Have a Special Obligation to Hide Migrants or Refugees Who Are in Danger of Deportation? | Yes

Do Jews have a special obligation to hide migrants or refugees who are in danger of deportation?

Yes. I see three primary reasons why Jews should be at the front lines of such a movement. First, because the history of the Jews is one of frequently being refugees. For roughly 2,000 years we were second-class citizens at best, and often displaced.

Second, our texts not only command us to save lives but also have a very unique and robust moral commitment to refugees. In fact, the Torah tells us once to love God, once to love your fellow Jew, but twice—in Leviticus and Deuteronomy—to love the ger, sometimes translated as the stranger, which certainly in my view includes the refugee.

Finally, xenophobia right now is in the zeitgeist. People have the illusion of being under attack from the refugee and asylum-seeking communities. A lot of political energy is being directed there, and we’re called to respond to it.

People sometimes call this “the Anne Frank question.” Is that a useful parallel to today’s situation?

While there are clear parallels between protecting a refugee from being deported to a very dangerous situation and providing sanctuary to a Jew in the Holocaust, there are also vast differences in context, so I think we should resist comparisons. But I do find inspiration from the countless righteous gentiles who risked their lives to provide sanctuary for Jews. That history is a moral charge to us. The stakes are often just as high for the refugee, and the risks to us are likely much lower than they were for those providing sanctuary in those moments. So I’d push back a little against the comparison, while also being inspired by it.

How do we decide when it’s OK to break laws to help others?

The principle of Dina d’malchuta dina, that we are bound by the laws of the land, is important to honor. And yet we sometimes don’t obey secular laws that contradict Torah. Defining those red lines is a very interesting question. For example, Jews engaged in civil disobedience in communist Russia to study Torah and perform circumcisions, and also in the U.S. civil rights movement and with Cesar Chavez and his movement for the rights of immigrant workers. Civil disobedience actions such as getting arrested at a protest are important but symbolic. Civil disobedience in the sanctuary movement can be lifesaving: It’s literally providing physical security, standing up not just for someone’s political rights but for their basic survival. So it feels clear to me that a Jewish legal perspective would sanction such civil disobedience.

When the current administration stripped houses of worship of their traditional protection from ICE raids, that was a really aggressive move telling faith communities that they do not have a moral calling above the law.

How much should we weigh the consequences—the danger to migrants, or to ourselves?

If one feels that one’s life would be at risk, one certainly wouldn’t be obligated to provide sanctuary.

The danger might not only be of personal persecution. We know that the murderer in the Tree of Life shooting was largely motivated by his belief that that synagogue was involved in refugee advocacy. And so, if a community feels that rising antisemitism combined with anti-refugee sentiment puts the whole community in danger, I don’t think they’re obligated to embrace that risk. But I do think it is the ideal our community should strive for.

Our texts not only command us to save lives but also have a very unique and robust moral commitment to refugees.

Conversely, I think it’s a very poor moral excuse to say that this is a politically divisive issue and our community should stay out of politically divisive issues. In any case, it’s better to shelter refugees humbly and quietly than to declare sanctuary publicly and symbolically, which can bring more heat than light.

What else should we be doing?

First, continuing advocacy to make clear that the Jewish community is concerned with the dignity and protection of asylum seekers and refugees. Second, humanitarian service to help meet the basic needs of people who can’t find jobs or are afraid to look for basic social services. Here in Arizona, for instance, we have a project to provide migrants who need them with supportive services including showers. Third, learning and teaching. We should educate ourselves and others about the plight of refugees fleeing environmental destruction, poverty, gangs and war. Some Jews lately have been expressing far-right, anti-refugee views—a rarity in Jewish history. We need to foster a healthier cultural discourse.

Do people who personally survived persecution through others’ help carry some kind of special obligation to pay it forward?

No—we can’t expect or demand victims always to be in leadership. But it is uniquely powerful when we can involve them, and their personal stories can open hearts and inspire others to engage.

INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM A. GALSTON

Do Jews Have a Special Obligation to Hide Migrants or Refugees Who Are in Danger of Deportation? | No

Do Jews have a special obligation to hide migrants or refugees who are in danger of deportation?

No. Obligation is a very strong word—it doesn’t mean it would be nice, or praiseworthy, but that it’s a moral baseline, and if you fall short, you’re culpable. I’m not prepared to take that step. On the other hand, there’s a lot of force to the adjective “special,” because of our history as Jews. We’re famously enjoined 36 times in the Torah to remember that we were strangers in Egypt. So from a Jewish point of view, there is reason to engage questions like this seriously.

People sometimes call this “the Anne Frank question.” Is that a useful parallel to today’s situation?

Not sheltering Anne Frank would have condemned her to death, a fate she ultimately suffered. But her helpers were incarcerated, and they might have been executed. What they did was morally admirable in the extreme. They were righteous gentiles, the sorts of people whose names end up in Yad Vashem. But as the moral philosophers say, their act was supererogatory—not obligatory.

I don’t think the case of immigrants in danger of deportation is the same, except for the relatively few who have fled a legitimate fear of persecution, incarceration, even death in their home countries—say, if they’ve unintentionally run afoul of the drug cartels in Guatemala.

Deliberately breaking the law for what you consider a good reason gives others an opportunity to break laws with less reason.

If you think that under U.S. law a particular immigrant has a legitimate claim to asylum because of fear of persecution—and you also believe the government is ignoring the law and indiscriminately expelling people back to risk danger and death—well, under those circumstances I might take a risk, a legal risk, to create a visible example of what can happen when the government itself doesn’t take the law seriously.

But most illegal immigrants in the United States don’t face that kind of threat if deported. That dramatically weakens the case for obstructing the government.

How do we decide when it’s OK to break laws to help others?

We can’t know, actually, because—as I learned from that great Jewish thinker Isaiah Berlin—the moral world doesn’t have one simply dominant good. Multiple goods are always in conflict at some point, especially in extreme cases. The moral calculus doesn’t have an algorithm; we have to make an “all things considered” judgment that is inherently contestable.

The problem with deliberately breaking the law for what you consider a good reason is that it gives others an opportunity to break laws with less reason. And the rule of law is itself a very Jewish principle and an essential building block of every decent political order. There’s also the Talmudic maxim that “the law of the land is the law”: Wherever Jews live, they should follow the laws of the community. American Jews in modern times especially should think twice about deliberately breaking laws, since they are citizens in full and get to participate in making those laws.

During the civil rights era, American Jews participated in nonviolent civil disobedience. They felt the cause justified it—a strong argument. Does sheltering people who are in the country without benefit of law fall into the same category as fighting against segregation? I would say no. A liberal democracy has no right to discriminate against citizens on basic rights. But deciding whom to admit to the citizen body is a core democratic decision. There’s a very strong presumption against impeding those laws.

How much should we weigh the consequences—the danger to migrants, or to ourselves?

It’s an important component of the moral calculus—not dispositive, but important. There are two factors that point in opposite directions. The greater the risk to the migrant, the greater the presumption that one must do something to help. The greater the risk to the helper, the lower the presumption that there’s an obligation.

What else should we be doing?

First, we should insist on, and organize around, the rule of law. Governments zealously pursuing immigrants are typically indifferent to the facts of individual cases. We see that now, with people being rounded up and treated illegally. Second, Jews ought to financially support lawyers and other groups arguing for case-by-case determinations—I would reach into my pocket for that. Finally, if we are dissatisfied, as we have every right to be, with the immigration laws, we should back leaders who are committed to changing them. I’ve worked on immigration reform for many, many years. It’s steady work! Political circumstances are not salubrious right now for immigration reform. But we have the obligation to continue the fight.

Do people who personally survived persecution through others’ help carry some kind of special obligation to pay it forward?

If I were such a person, I think that that would have considerable weight in my calculation.