Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

………This is part 1 of two-part focus on immigrant/refugee issues; the second part will focus on threats to the refugee in community in Salem, Oregon………

The rabbi starts an essay in the New York Times with this profound summary:  “The Bible Tells Us to Love Immigrants”

Then he goes on to make a case for this requirement by citing various Bible passages.

The “he” is Rabbi Shai Held, president and dean of the Hadar Institute, and the author, most recently, of “Judaism Is About Love.”

Here is how he started his essay:

“A hallmark of the second Trump administration has been the hunt for the foreign born, from children to adults, criminal status apparently notwithstanding.  Many of the administration officials who champion this project often invoke God in their speeches, asserting that their allegiance to the Constitution is rooted in their fealty to a far older text:  The Bible.

“It is clear that many of our leaders lack the most fundamental understanding of the central biblical commandment to love and care for the immigrant.”

Held continues to say that “the Bible explicitly commands three loves.  The first and second many modern Christians and Jews cite easily — love of God and love of one’s neighbor.

“The third, and most often overlooked, is love of the ‘ger.’  Several English translations interpret ger as ‘sojourner,’ someone born elsewhere who has come to dwell among the people, most likely temporarily.  Other translations render ger as ‘stranger, ‘alien’ or ‘foreigner.’”

In recent decades, Held says some biblical scholars have returned to an older idea:  That ger should be translated as something close to “immigrant.”

He goes on to outline background on other Biblical references:

• Writing about the book of Exodus, the 11th-century Jewish biblical commentator Rashi explains that “wherever ger occurs in Scriptures it signifies a person who has not been born in that land where he is living but has come from another country to sojourn there.”  The word “immigrant” matters, in this context — it reminds us that in the ancient world, just as now, someone seeking a home among people foreign to him had likely endured significant upheaval in his life, like war, famine, political oppression or economic crisis.
• The commandment to love immigrants is one of the Bible’s greatest moral revolutions.  Other ancient Near Eastern cultures instructed people to care for widows and orphans.  The Bible expands the category of those who deserve special protection to include those who live among our community but are not quite of it.
• The book of Exodus explicitly forbids the people from mistreating an immigrant.  Contrary to popular assumptions, the prohibition on abusing the vulnerable does not derive only from the children of Israel’s past experience of slavery and oppression.  It is a basic demand of morality:  We must not take advantage of the weak. \
• The book of Leviticus repeats the injunction not to oppress — then adds a mandate to actively love the immigrant. These commands resurface in the book of Deuteronomy, which implies that loving immigrants is a way of emulating God’s love.

Now, in this context, it is impossible for me to omit concerns about Trump and his ilk who go about mistreating immigrants every day.  All immigrants.  Not just those who have committed crimes in this country.

First, the number of immigrants who have committed crimes – or even gotten a traffic – is small.  In the range of, at most, 15 per cent.

Second, Trump himself is the son of an immigrants, his mother.  And his father had German ancestry two generations ago.

So, the question remains:  How can Trump have so much animosity against his own.

For Held’s part, he closes his essay this way:

“Those of us who treat the Bible as authoritative in our lives are aware — through the very text we cite most often — that unchecked, unbridled power is always abhorrent, let alone when it is deployed to attack precisely those who are most vulnerable.”

That paragraph describes Trump exactly.  As Christians, we ought to do two things:  Abhor what he does against immigrants and, more importantly, practice “love for our neighbors” in our own lives, even if those “neighbors” don’t look like us.

The Bible tells us to do so.

Which reminds me of what the pastor of the church we intend always says after he reads Bible verses:  “I have just read from the greatest book ever written and I attest that all of it is true.”

So, I say, follow it.

I add that my wife is doing in her support for a great program where we live in Salem, Oregon – “Salem for Refugees.”  For one thing, there are more refugees that you might think there are in our town.  But, for another, she is practicing the fine art of “loving your neighbor.”

Kudos to her!

[Part 2 tomorrow]