As a rabbi, I have long been committed to not offering “the Jewish view” on just about anything. We are and always have been a multivalenced, multivocal tradition, and rarely does our tradition truly speak with a monolithic voice. But when it comes to the Exodus and its main lesson, I think there is a Jewish view, and a singular Jewish experience. If there is a single overarching lesson of the Torah, it is this: We are commanded to empathy.
וְגֵ֖ר לֹ֣א תִלְחָ֑ץ וְאַתֶּ֗ם יְדַעְתֶּם֙ אֶת־נֶ֣פֶשׁ הַגֵּ֔ר כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃
“You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the Land of Egypt” (Ex.23:9)
Famously cited for being repeated 36, though some say 46, times in the Torah, this verse is fairly brought to teach Jewish values around welcoming, around immigration, and around protecting the most vulnerable in society. The Judaism of my adolescence and early adulthood was largely shaped around this verse and those understandings of it; it is still central to who I am as a Jew and a person.
But the longer I do this work, and the longer I live in this world, I understand this verse more expansively. And I think expansive thinking is what our world needs right now. So, I want to offer this teaching, which I have offered before, and to which I return time and again:
The Torah gives us three separate obligations to love. One, quoted by Rabbi Hillel as the essence, the unifying principle, of Judaism: v’ahavta l’re-echa kamocha: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Then, there’s the one we pray each day: v’ahavta et Adonai elohecha—you shall love Adonai your God. And, just a few chapters later: V’ahavtem et ha-ger: you, all of you, shall love the stranger.
Not your partner. Not your parents. Not your children. You shall love: neighbor, God, stranger. The words of the V’ahavta are recited not just once a year but daily. We are commanded, to love people — and a Being — we may never meet, never know, never touch. We are commanded to love not just those with whom we share hopes and dreams, not those with whom we share the joys and challenges of everyday life — but, in fact, those who can seem most distant, most different.
A few years ago, during a protest or a parade in Jerusalem, I saw a sign about which I think often. Quoting Leviticus, it read (in Hebrew, of course): Love your neighbor even if they are not like yourself. It is, again, a call to empathy. It is a call to see the world, and its inhabitants, as connected and complicated…and deserving of our love, or at least our attempt at empathy and understanding. And while I rarely think Judaism offers us a simple answer or message, this call seems clear. The lesson of the Exodus is empathy.
—Rabbi Sari Laufer