The following was written and delivered by Nick Barr upon becoming a b'mitzvah for Parashat Mishpatim 5784 // February 10, 2024.
God gives the Israelites the simple command not to oppress the stranger 36 times in the Torah, as the great medieval French rabbi Rashi first noted. Yet in Exodus 23:9, the command takes a different, expanded form: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” The verse explains that the Israelites, having been liberated from their enslavement in Egypt, “know the feelings of the stranger.” The Hebrew word נֶ֫פֶשׁ (nefesh), here rendered as “feelings,” can also be translated as “soul”: there is a claim that through their own experiences of having been oppressed elsewhere, the ancient Israelites possess knowledge of the soul of the strangers among them. The Israelites should not oppress the stranger because God commands them not to, of course, but also because they themselves should know better.
This particular verse caught my attention because I’m actually suspicious of the claim to know the soul of the stranger. I can understand the impulse, as a bid for empathy, but does having one set of past experiences really mean that you know someone else’s? What if you can’t really put yourself in someone else’s shoes? And how long does this knowledge of the stranger’s feelings last before calcifying? The African American writer James Baldwin expressed bitter skepticism on this point in 1967. He pointed out that while many white Jewish Americans recalled the Exodus story during the Civil Rights Movement, some of them took the wrong lesson from it, urging moderation and patience in the face of oppression. And tragically, the long history of Jewish suffering is now even being used as grounds for not seeing the humanity of Palestinians.
Even in the context of parshat Mishpatim itself, the message of this verse may be less uplifting than it seems on the surface. Here, it is the Israelite judges, recently appointed by Moses, who are asked to tap into this knowledge of the stranger’s feelings in order to take special care in their communal responsibilities. But many of the Talmudic commentaries give an additional, negative reason: the stranger is said to be prone to straying away from the mitzvot, at risk of returning to their previous ways of living and to idolatry. In the first century CE, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus said that the stranger’s inclination is toward evil, and so oppressing them will only drive them further toward evil, away from Torah. The commentary seems to say: “you don’t want the stranger to fall into the debased state in which you yourselves were not long ago, so don’t oppress them, or you’ll only reinforce their evil tendencies; they may even drag you down with them.”
Of course, many advocates have grounded their commitment to social justice in this verse and similar ones about having been strangers in Egypt. But I would like to hold fast to one particular aspect of the seemingly more negative dimension. There may be useful lessons in not believing that you really know the stranger, and conversely, in thinking of being a stranger not as a fixed status of inferiority, but rather as an experience of being unfamiliar to others, and perhaps even to ourselves.
Rabbi Laura Rumpf, Director of Project Kavod for Jewish Family Service in Seattle, writes that in verse 23:9, “we are called to access the part of our own hearts that still feel lonely or strange sometimes, not in a distant past, but in the present. We are invited to feel compassion for those neglected parts of us, as well as for the stranger in our midst.” As someone who has been struggling for some years to figure out my Jewish identity and my relationship to what has felt like a neglected part of myself, I know that this b’mitzvah ceremony will not, once and for all, cure my sense of estrangement. But perhaps that sense can also be a strength, not a deficit.
Today, I am wearing a jacket that was gifted to me when I was a teenager by my late grandfather, Milton John Barr, who was born Jewish but decided that remaining a stranger to white-Christian America in the mid-20th century was too great a burden. After not wearing this jacket for about two decades, I recently went to get it altered, but the tailor told me it was impossible; I simply have to wear it as is. That seems like a fitting metaphor for the sometimes uncomfortable path of finding my way back to Jewishness. Perhaps it also suggests that a sense of strangeness to ourselves can be not just a burden or hurdle to transcend, but rather a gift.
God gives the Israelites the simple command not to oppress the stranger 36 times in the Torah, as the great medieval French rabbi Rashi first noted. Yet in Exodus 23:9, the command takes a different, expanded form: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” The verse explains that the Israelites, having been liberated from their enslavement in Egypt, “know the feelings of the stranger.” The Hebrew word נֶ֫פֶשׁ (nefesh), here rendered as “feelings,” can also be translated as “soul”: there is a claim that through their own experiences of having been oppressed elsewhere, the ancient Israelites possess knowledge of the soul of the strangers among them. The Israelites should not oppress the stranger because God commands them not to, of course, but also because they themselves should know better.
This particular verse caught my attention because I’m actually suspicious of the claim to know the soul of the stranger. I can understand the impulse, as a bid for empathy, but does having one set of past experiences really mean that you know someone else’s? What if you can’t really put yourself in someone else’s shoes? And how long does this knowledge of the stranger’s feelings last before calcifying? The African American writer James Baldwin expressed bitter skepticism on this point in 1967. He pointed out that while many white Jewish Americans recalled the Exodus story during the Civil Rights Movement, some of them took the wrong lesson from it, urging moderation and patience in the face of oppression. And tragically, the long history of Jewish suffering is now even being used as grounds for not seeing the humanity of Palestinians.
Even in the context of parshat Mishpatim itself, the message of this verse may be less uplifting than it seems on the surface. Here, it is the Israelite judges, recently appointed by Moses, who are asked to tap into this knowledge of the stranger’s feelings in order to take special care in their communal responsibilities. But many of the Talmudic commentaries give an additional, negative reason: the stranger is said to be prone to straying away from the mitzvot, at risk of returning to their previous ways of living and to idolatry. In the first century CE, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus said that the stranger’s inclination is toward evil, and so oppressing them will only drive them further toward evil, away from Torah. The commentary seems to say: “you don’t want the stranger to fall into the debased state in which you yourselves were not long ago, so don’t oppress them, or you’ll only reinforce their evil tendencies; they may even drag you down with them.”
Of course, many advocates have grounded their commitment to social justice in this verse and similar ones about having been strangers in Egypt. But I would like to hold fast to one particular aspect of the seemingly more negative dimension. There may be useful lessons in not believing that you really know the stranger, and conversely, in thinking of being a stranger not as a fixed status of inferiority, but rather as an experience of being unfamiliar to others, and perhaps even to ourselves.
Rabbi Laura Rumpf, Director of Project Kavod for Jewish Family Service in Seattle, writes that in verse 23:9, “we are called to access the part of our own hearts that still feel lonely or strange sometimes, not in a distant past, but in the present. We are invited to feel compassion for those neglected parts of us, as well as for the stranger in our midst.” As someone who has been struggling for some years to figure out my Jewish identity and my relationship to what has felt like a neglected part of myself, I know that this b’mitzvah ceremony will not, once and for all, cure my sense of estrangement. But perhaps that sense can also be a strength, not a deficit.
Today, I am wearing a jacket that was gifted to me when I was a teenager by my late grandfather, Milton John Barr, who was born Jewish but decided that remaining a stranger to white-Christian America in the mid-20th century was too great a burden. After not wearing this jacket for about two decades, I recently went to get it altered, but the tailor told me it was impossible; I simply have to wear it as is. That seems like a fitting metaphor for the sometimes uncomfortable path of finding my way back to Jewishness. Perhaps it also suggests that a sense of strangeness to ourselves can be not just a burden or hurdle to transcend, but rather a gift.
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