Toronto Star | 06Sep2010 | Orest Slepokura
http://www.thestar.com/article/856690--marmur-our-duty-to-welcome-strangers#comments
Israel to deport 400 foreign kids
That was the banner headline a month ago in the world media.
Considering how routinely Rabbi Marmur goes to bat for the Jewish
state, I wasn't at all surprised he had avoided mentioning Israel's
decision to deport 400 of the children of its foreign workers. Were
Canada deporting 400 children of its foreign workers, I'm sure he
would've found a way to work it into his Welcome the Stranger op-ed,
though.
Orest Slepokura
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Toronto Star | 06Sep2010 | Dow Marmur
http://www.thestar.com/article/856690--marmur-our-duty-to-welcome-strangers
Marmur: Our duty to welcome strangers
In her book, After Such
Knowledge, Eva Hoffman, who moved to Vancouver
with her parents from their native Poland as a teenager and later lived
in the United States before settling in Britain, has written --
probably
from personal experience -- how the indigenous population often reacts
to immigrants: “Well -- one can almost understand. Nobody likes to be
saddled with inconvenient, needy people, or to be disturbed in the
course of daily life by true tales of infernal torment.”
Canada has often been welcoming to newcomers, including refugees. The
positive reception of the Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s comes to
mind. But it hasn’t always been consistent. Writing about the ship of
Tamil refugees that reached our shores recently, Professor Michael
Byers of the University of British Columbia refers to two tragic
instances when Canada turned away people in similar circumstances.
In 1914, a Japanese ship brought 376 passengers from the Punjab. They
were forced back to India where at least 19 of them were shot by
police. In 1939, the St. Louis arrived in Halifax with some 900 Jewish
asylum seekers fleeing Hitler’s Germany. Like Cuba and the United
States, Canada refused to accept them and they had to be taken back to
Europe. More than 200 of them were later murdered by the Nazis.
The story of that ship, soon to get its Canadian memorial, has become a
metaphor for the plight of victims of persecution and prejudice and
should be a lesson to us all. Yet many people in power still refuse to
learn it. For example some politicians, be they engaged in the U.S.
mid-term elections or in the Toronto mayoral race, seem to be tempted
to exploit popular xenophobia by warning citizens against accepting
newcomers. They implicitly play on the kind of sentiments Hoffman wrote
about.
A straw poll in the online edition of this paper on Aug. 15 asked:
“Should Canada intercept migrant boats and turn them away before they
reach Canadian shores?” Seventy-eight per cent of the respondents said
yes and only 16 per cent said no. The figures, though not
authoritative, may nevertheless be more representative than we’d like
to admit.
Even those who acknowledge that Canada has prospered because of its
immigrants often appear to have only themselves and their forebears in
mind.
The Hebrew Bible is sensitive to the propensity of yesterday’s
newcomers to reject those who followed them. That’s why Scripture
commands us to love strangers “for you were strangers in the land of
Egypt.” Though it may be expedient and reflective of human nature to
keep out aliens, moral norms and religious principles obligate us to
welcome all who seek shelter and safety.
The late French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, himself an
immigrant, went even further. He argued persuasively that the other
must always have precedence over myself, not because she or he is
necessarily congenial or shares my opinions, but simply because she or
he is there and needs me.
I’ve been an immigrant in six countries on three continents. My first
move, on the day Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939 -- an event I
again marked last Wednesday as the birth of my anxiety neurosis -- and
the second that took us to Siberia were both traumatic, especially for
a child. My last two as an adult, including coming to Canada, were warm
and welcoming. Knowing the difference makes me keenly aware of the
perils of dislocation and the imperative to ease it.
Dow Marmur is rabbi emeritus at Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple. His
column appears every other week.