You Were Strangers in the Land of Egypt
Exodus 22:21: “You shall not wrong or oppress a foreigner, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Like many prosperous western democracies, Israel faces a painful dilemma in its attempts to deal with illegal migrants. In recent years 50,000 Africans, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, have escaped dictatorial regimes and illegally crossed the border from Egypt to Israel. Many have experienced hair-raising tragedies; all are destitute and in search of a life free from poverty and fear.
Over the years Israel has traditionally reached out to refugees in search of a safe haven, welcoming symbolic numbers of Vietnamese boat people, Bosnians and Lebanese Christians. However, the sheer number of asylum seekers arriving in Israel (until an impenetrable physical barrier was erected on the Israel-Egypt border in 2012) forced the Israeli government into siege mentality. Since Israel is a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention it is bound to grant legal residence to asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan. However, by refusing to hear their cases for asylum or designate them as refugees, the state abandons them to a veritable Purgatory. They cannot apply for work permits and are left to languish on the streets or in prison.
Some Israelis have refused to make peace with the Interior Ministry’s cold approach to the refugees. On March 23, 2015 Israel Social TV reported on a “Refugee Seder” that took place at the Holot Detention Facility in the Negev Desert. More than 150 Israelis and asylum seekers joined over 300 asylum seekers imprisoned at Holot (out of 2000) in celebrating a Passover tradition inaugurated in 2007. At this seder Israelis and refugees recline together and each participant tells his “Exodus” story. At the event, copies of “The Refugee’s Haggadah – Additions to the Passover Haggadah” were distributed, in the hopes of adding these modern “Exodus” stories of the African refugees to the upcoming seder reading and to raise awareness of their difficult situation amongst Jewish families as they celebrate the Festival of Freedom.
Tishome, one of the detainees, spoke to all those gathered:
"We are punished because we come here asking for protection. The life in the prison of Holot is a life of sadnes, it is a place that depresses the soul and the mind. The living conditions inside are difficult. Everything is to remind us we are not wanted in Israel. The purpose of this place is to pressure us until we leave but we don't have where to go. We can't go back home - it is too dangerous for us. Please remember us when you go home. Talk to people about us. Tell them our story. We hope this place will be closed soon - and our suffering will come to end."
Sarah Sholklapper wrote about the refugee seder in an editorial in Haaretz on April 9: “This past weekend, we sat down to the Passover seder and remembered our journey through the desert to freedom. We recalled when we cried out to God from the bonds of slavery, and remembered how God ‘heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery and our oppression.’ If we truly are b’tzelem Elohim – if we walk in God’s ways – how can we ignore the plea and plight of the African asylum seekers in our midst, especially as we relive our own flight to freedom?”
