{"id":84304,"date":"2016-01-03T18:29:20","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T02:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=84304"},"modified":"2016-01-03T18:29:20","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T02:29:20","slug":"were-all-human-beings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=84304","title":{"rendered":"We’re All Human Beings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleveland Jewish News<\/a>: When Donald J. Trump announced a proposal for \u201ca total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until the country\u2019s representatives can figure out what is going on,\u201d criticism poured in.
\nThe condemnation came swiftly from his fellow candidates, from national organizations \u2013 and from local rabbis.
\nOne example was Rabbi Richard A. Block, senior rabbi at The Temple-Tifereth Israel in Beachwood and Cleveland, who took to Facebook with strong feelings about the New York business magnate\u2019s proposal.
\n\u201cIn a political season when a leading presidential candidate advocates the exclusion of Muslims from our country, we understand anew the importance of the Torah’s commandments to \u2018love your neighbor as yourself\u2019 and to \u2018love the stranger,\u2019 and of Hillel’s teaching that \u2018what is hateful to you, do not do to another. That is the whole Torah. All the rest is commentary. Go and learn,\u2019\u201d Block wrote. \u201cHow many radicals will (Trump) inspire to commit mass murder? If we remain silent in the face of Trump’s despicable proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., we become complicit in it.”
\nFor Rabbi Rosette Barron Haim, also of The Temple-Tifereth Israel, Trump\u2019s proposal hit home \u2013 as in her family\u2019s ancestral home in Turkey, where her family had many Muslim friends.
\n\u201cI\u2019m just very much aware that not all Muslims feel the same way about any given issue really,\u201d Haim said. \u201cIt\u2019s never good to lump all people, all minorities into any one category. I think that\u2019s as true for Muslims as it is for people of Jewish background. That\u2019s what they did in the countries where they wanted to persecute the Jews was that they made a generalization from an experience with perhaps just a few people and made policy that way.\u201d
\n…Block said Jews might be extra sensitive to Trump\u2019s proposal, recalling how Jews attempting to flee Nazism were kept out of the United States, including the famed case of the MS St. Louis, a ship with nearly 1,000 refugees forced to turn back toward Europe.
\n\u201cI believe that the Jewish people’s experience with bigotry, persecution and rejection should stimulate special sensitivity to discrimination against other minorities,\u201d Block wrote in an email. \u201cWe still recall with bitterness that the doors of the world were shut in the face of Jews attempting to flee Nazism. The vast majority of American Jews are the descendants of immigrants. The Torah reminds us more than 30 times that we were strangers in the land of Egypt.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s hard to find a parallel for Trump\u2019s proposal in American history \u2013 a time when an entire race or religious group was denied entry into the United States.
\nCertainly, Jewish refugees from Europe during World War II were denied entry due to a \u201cnativist movement tinged with hysteria about hidden spies,\u201d according to Jay Geller, Samuel Rosenthal Professor of Judaic Studies at Case Western Reserve University. Geller noted \u201cactive anti-Semitism\u201d in the State Department and that officials had \u201ccarte blanche\u201d to refuse German Jews. In that case, however, there were already quotas in place from the Immigration Act of 1924, which aided American efforts to prevent immigration of undesirables.
\n\u201cAmerica at that point simply needed to admit far more German Jews than the law stipulated they could and there was no widespread movement among non-Jewish-Americans to revise the quota or make an exception,\u201d Geller said.
\nThe idea of keeping out a seemingly dangerous minority then is not new. Still, his proposal is fairly unique in American history.
\nAs a result, it\u2019s also difficult to imagine how it would work. How would American authorities be able to figure out if someone was Muslim?
\n\u201cThe very first thing I thought was how would border control in this country even know who\u2019s Muslim,\u201d Geller said.
\nGeller said that the Germans solved that problem by putting a big red \u201cJ\u201d on the passport of Jewish citizens, allowing other European countries like Switzerland to easily deny them. Most countries, however, including the United States, don\u2019t put religion on one\u2019s passport.
\n\u201cI think the important thing is to remember that they\u2019re all human beings,\u201d Haim said. \u201cWe\u2019re all human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cleveland Jewish News: When Donald J. Trump announced a proposal for \u201ca total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until the country\u2019s representatives can figure out what is going on,\u201d criticism poured in. The condemnation came swiftly … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29752],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t