The Torah makes many sweeping declarations, including, “Love the stranger.” But the Torah tradition does not end there. It includes specifics on how this is to be done. You are not supposed to go out and practice Biblical texts any way you see fit.
The Torah tradition says nothing explicitly about how much Jews should push their Gentile governments to aid illegal immigrants. The Torah tradition says nothing clearly about what type of government Gentile nations should develop.
As Rabbi Mayer Schiller said in 1999: “The State of Israel poses a problem for Jews living in the diaspora. A Jew living in America, France or England but yet somehow says I am an Israeli or a Zionist, that creates a tremendous amount of tension. Herzl envisioned Zionism as Jews leaving Gentile nations and going to live in Israel, not staying in France and England and saying I am a Zionist. Jews living in America, England, France, etc, have three moral possibilities: They can be loyal citizens, they can be Zionists which means to leave [for Israel] or they can adopt the Neterui Karta position of non-involvement in the affairs of the nations.”
All the great faiths suggest a different paradigm – one which gives priority to the widow, the orphan and the alien. The Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, has underscored this by refusing to make a distinction between “genuine refugees” and economic migrants. What should govern our response, he says, is the immediacy of the need of the stranger knocking at our door. His predecessor, Jonathan Sacks, was more explicit, calling on Britain to admit at least 10,000 refugees in a conspicuous echo of the Kindertransport which rescued Jewish children from Nazi Germany.
We should not be afraid of such numbers. The cold fact is that more than 500 million people live in the EU. The 350,000 migrants who have entered Europe so far this year represent less than a 10th of 1 per cent of the total population. Our continent has the means to absorb such a tiny percentage with relative ease.
