Two weeks ago, Julie and I and our children attended my step-sister’s wedding in Newport Rhode, Island. The weekend coincided with the 220^th anniversary of the George Washington’s 1790 visit to the first synagogue ever established in America, the Touro Synagogue. For the congregation, Washington’s visit was significant. The Bill of Rights had not yet been adopted – it would be the following year – and the position of Jews and other religious minorities in the fledgling nation was unclear.

The day after his visit, Washington wrote a letter indicating how America would protect religious rights. He said:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.

In a few short sentences, Washington signaled America would be different. In Europe, we were, at best, tolerated; at worst, the object of violence, imprisonment, and conversionary attempts. America would be different, a place where all persons would have an inherent right to liberty, irrespective of religious belief. America would have no state-sponsored religion, and bigotry would never receive state support.

Over the past two hundred and twenty years, we’ve prospered beyond expectation and are at home in America, unlike anywhere else in the diaspora. Yet, our country is still a work in progress. During these challenging times, the promise of Washington’s letter, for some, seems in jeopardy.

What challenges do we face?

• Ten years into the twenty first century, our country remains at war in the Middle-East, at great financial and human cost.
• We are in the midst of the worst recession since the nineteen thirties with no end in sight.
• Unending war and financial collapse have brought many, at home and abroad, to question America’s preeminent role in the world.
• Coupled with the ongoing war, the unending recession, and a national identity crisis, we are going through a demographic transformation that will leave white Americans in the minority by mid-century.

These challenges have affected all of us, but they have jeopardized the position of the weakest members of our society, the ones whom the Torah exhorts us to protect. The widow, the orphan, the strangers in our midst – they bear our collective existential unease.

The stranger in our midst; tonight I call to attention our nation’s immigrants. Few dispute that the immigration system is broken. Our unwillingness or inability to fix it has compromised Jewish values we hold dearly. No more obviously than with the passage of an Arizonan law that requires immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and allows police to question the residency status of people in the course of enforcing other laws. The Federal government sued to block sections of the law, but its passage has opened the door to other enforcement efforts. Immigration officers began roaming Amtrak trains that pass through upstate New York, checking the immigration status of anyone who looks suspicious, which I think means “looks Mexican and has an accent.” The article describes how officers woke up sleeping families to check their papers. “While immigration officials say that answering agents’ questions is voluntary, part of a “consensual and non-intrusive conversation,” passengers are not told that they can keep silent. But others, from immigration lawyers and university officials to American-born travelers startled by an agent’s flashlight in their eyes, say the practice is coercive, unconstitutional and tainted by racial profiling.”

Such Arizona style tactics, while not yet enshrined in law, are being implemented closer to home. In the Milwaukee County Jail, immigration agents are now present at the booking station. Irrespective of whether an individual is guilty of committing a crime, their immigration status is investigated. If their papers are not in order, they are deported.

Wisconsin’s Attorney General, JB Van Hollen, not to be outdone, has issued a memo to law enforcement encouraging them to inquire as to the immigration status of anyone they encounter in the course of their duty investigating crime in order to be able to contact the person’s home embassy to obtain assistance.

Such tactics might yet prove to be unconstitutional, but regardless, they raise a number of ethical red flags. Racial profiling is only one of several issues that come to mind, as well as requiring people to carry their papers with them, lest they risk deportation.

Judaism speaks unequivocally in support of the stranger. Judaism's call for justice and compassion voiced by prophets like Amos, Micah and Isaiah requires that when we set up a community, citizens and strangers alike are to be treated fairly and equally. “You shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike; I am the Lord your God.” (Lev. 24-22) Beyond defining the obligation we have to the stranger, the Torah even gives us a basis for understanding that obligation.  "When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall not do them wrong. The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Leviticus 19:33-34) All in all, the command to take care of the stranger is uttered in the Torah no less than thirty six times.

Our people’s experience in Egypt creates empathy towards, and responsibility for, the stranger. And ever since we’ve been remind why protecting the stranger is crucial.

• When we hear politicians claiming that illegal immigrants are beheading American citizens on our soil we think of the blood libels, and the accusations of poisoning wells hurled at Jews in centuries past.

• When we hear of government agents waking people on trains and buses to check papers, when those who are the wrong color or have the wrong accent are woken up and intimidated, and held to be guilty until proven innocent, we know these officers, we've seen them before.

• When we learn about immigration officers present at Milwaukee’s central booking station to check every arrested person’s legal status, regardless of whether they are held or charged… When state attorneys general instruct law enforcement to check immigration status, under the cover of wanting to contact the person's consular representative to lend assistance, we think of storm troopers, and Nuremberg laws and the inquisition - we have endured such helpful governments before.

You may well be thinking: yes, I abhor human suffering, but haven’t these people broken the law? In some cases, yes they have. By overstaying visas, or entering the country illegally, some of them have committed a crime. The question we should ask is: are the laws themselves just? And if they are, are they being applied and enforced fairly? After all, the Torah says, tzedek, tzedek tirdof – justice, justice you shall pursue.  When Justice twice? Because true justice obtains only when the laws are just and their application and enforcement are just.

Tonight, the first step is to acquaint ourselves with the facts of immigration, not the rumors and myths.

Myth: The U.S. is overrun with immigrants. Fact: The number of undocumented migrants coming to the U.S. each year is approximately 300,000 according government figures - equivalent to a population increase of one tenth of one percent.

Myth: The United States cannot absorb present immigrant numbers Fact: 11.5% of the U.S. population is foreign-born today. At the start of the last century it was 15%. Previous waves of immigrants were met with suspicion, too, yet all of them are now saluted for the contributions they have made.

Myth: Undocumented workers come here to get free government services Fact: Most undocumented immigrants come here to work. According to the Urban Institute, their labor-force participation of 96% exceeds that of legal immigrants or native-born workers. Furthermore, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and other government services.

MTYH: Immigrants have a negative impact on the U.S. economy Fact: Both documented and undocumented immigrants have a positive impact on the American economy overall. According to the USA Today, immigrants have raised the total economic output of the country by $21.5 billion per year. Business Week has reported that undocumented immigrants are an important source of growth for banks, insurance companies, credit card providers, phone, internet, and cable providers.

MYTH: Immigrants drive down wages for American workers Fact: According to the New York Times, "There is scant evidence that illegal immigrants have caused any significant damage to the wages of American workers." The real indicator of wage disparity of American workers is education.

MYTH: Immigrants only perform low-skilled labor in the U.S. Fact: 40% of America's PhD. scientists and engineers are foreign-born. According to studies performed by the Migration Policy Institute, 27% of computer-software engineers are immigrants, 20% of U.S. doctors, 40% of medical scientists, 20% of computer specialists, 25% of astronomers, physicists, chemical scientists, and material scientists, and 16% of biological scientists. Even of undocumented immigrants, less than 2 % of undocumented workers are day laborers.

Another current reality is that undocumented immigrants are subject to draconian legal measures and have little if any of the protections afforded the rest of us. Consider the experience of Tomas Contreras. Tomas has been in the US legally since 1964. He lives in Madison and owns a business that employs 250 people. In December of 2007, he went to Mexico to visit his family, a pilgrimage he makes with some frequency. This time, a new computer system at the border turned up old police records, showing an arrest and a $250 fine back in 1989. That fine should have been the end of it, but a 1996 law meant the incident could now be reclassified as a deportable offense. He was taken into custody and a nightmare began. He spent 81 days in a string of detention centers. These centers aren’t jails, and they afford the detainees few of the services routinely offered to inmates in regular prisons. Tomas was lucky; hundreds of people from Madison, among them politicians and business owners, pressed for his release. 81 days later – almost three months – he was released. He knows he was lucky. Ninety nine percent of those he was incarcerated with were deported.

I’ve gotten to hear quite a few of these stories. I’ve gotten involved with a group called La Voces de la Frontera, which works on behalf of immigrants in our area. One such story concerns a local woman whose husband worked in Milwaukee for 21 years. Last year, he was injured while on the job. Rather than facilitate the filing of a worker’s compensation claim, his employer fired him.  This is not unusual. Many undocumented immigrants are taken advantage of by their employers. They get paid less, have fewer benefits, and, as the story illustrates, are expendable if keeping them on proves costly.

And there’s the heart of the problem: controlling immigration is supposed to keep us safe from

international terrorists, but in practice, it’s focused on ferreting out undocumented immigrants and sending them home. Their transgression is being different, and like generations of immigrants before them, they’ve become the target of fear, misunderstanding, and retribution. If you don’t agree, consider how many people in town hall meetings during the last election cycle, complained constantly about immigration. What they complained most about, it turns out, wasn’t the possibility of lost jobs or crime. It was that when they called their bank, a recorded message told them to press number 2 for Spanish.
Sinai’s social action committee has made the immigration issue one of our foci this year. For those who choose, we’ll be attending a vigil at the immigration offices here in Milwaukee and welcoming the wider community to a vigil here at Sinai sometime in the spring. Immigration may no longer be on the front burner of the Obama administration, but until justice can be assured for all, we have to keep our eyes on the ball.

I would be remiss if I were not to address another outbreak of xenophobia in America, concerning the building of the Park51 project in New York City. Erroneously, and for maximum effect, called the Ground Zero Mosque, Park51 is planned to be a Muslim Community Center, much like our own JCC, with a pool, a gym, classrooms and, yes, a small chapel. Originally, it was to be called Cordoba House, after the city in Spain where, a thousand years ago, Islam, Judaism and Christianity existed in relative harmony. Critics pointed out that the city was later taken over by Muslim extremists who had little use for interfaith dialogue, and so, in deference to those sensitivities, the project was renamed Park51, after the street address.

Initially, the project met with little resistance until some influential voices on the Internet made it a cause celebre. They claimed it would be an affront to the 9/11 victims’ families; that it would be a victory mosque, celebrating the terrorists’ deadly attack. In recent weeks, the voices of intolerance and hate have reached a crescendo. Some claim the plans to build a victory mosque at ground zero began as the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoldering. Others agree with politicians, like Newt Gingrich, who said: there should be no mosque built at Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. As Newt said: “The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over. . . . Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington." And in recent days, some are calling for a burning of Korans on 9/11, calling to mind the words of Jewish poet Heinrich Heine – Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”

As you know, I have some standing in this conversation, as my brother in law Andy, was one of the victims at Ground Zero. I recognize among the affected families a range of feelings and opinions. Some are angry and want no part of an Islamic symbol anywhere near where terrorists killed their loved ones in Islam’s name. In truth, their anger comes from a number of sources. First, nine years have passed and Osama bin Laden is still out there, somewhere. Second, nine years have passed and there is still no memorial to those who died, though at least construction has now begun to build one – but nine years is a long time. Third, many families are uneasy because they never were able to give their loved one’s a decent burial. Some families were able to retrieve a small part of a loved one’s body, but, when the buildings fell, some of he victims simply disappeared. Without a marked grave, all of lower Manhattan has become, in a sense, a sacred burial ground. For those victims’ families, there is no place, not two blocks away or even ten blocks away, appropriate for a symbol of Islam to be erected. I understand their pain.

Other families, however, feel that the Park 51 project should proceed where it’s currently sited. They point out that the project’s religious leader, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a moderate Sufi Muslim, who has worked with the US state department for years speaking on America’s behalf. Rauf writes that the very purpose of the planned Islamic center is to unify all cultures and religions. Rauf says bowing to political pressure to move the site would harm everyone and adds, "This is why Americans must not back away from completion of this project. If we do, we cede the discourse and, essentially, our future to radicals on both sides."

I could not agree more. The Imam and I may not agree on many other things, say, the course of peace talks in the Middle-East; but he is a moderate we can talk to and work with. As William Salaten wrote on Slate.com: “One by one, the arguments against the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero have collapsed. A "13-story mosque"? No such plan. "At Ground Zero"? Wrong again. The imam's radical politics? A myth. His shadowy jihadist financiers? Imagined. His failure to denounce terrorism? Debunked. The "angry battle" he's "stoking"? Please. The guy isn't even returning phone calls. The anger and stoking have come from the other side.” It seems to me that Rauf represents the face of a moderate Islam that wants to live with us in the modern world. If we can’t make common cause with him, who are we waiting for?

Because fear trumps forward movement, and it’s the same reason we are cowed by the debate over immigration. As Nick Kristof wrote, “The starting point isn't hatred but fear: an alarm among patriots that newcomers don't share their values, don't believe in democracy, and may harm innocent Americans. Followers of these movements against Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese and other immigrants were mostly decent, well-meaning people trying to protect their country.” But they were manipulated by demagogues playing upon their fears – not so different from those who currently demagogue on cable television.

And today, no matter if we are first, second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth generation American Jews, it is time to move past fear of those who are different. If the Torah still speaks to us, then protecting the strangers within our society should be second nature. The renewal of the new-year reminds us to have hope. Not naive hope, but Jewish hope -  'bruised and scarred, and rooted in a realistic and unsentimental understanding of the world, its cruelties and injustices' (after Rabbi Sanford Ragins).  Hope that understands, as one writer puts it, that "there are only two kinds of madness in the world one must guard against ... one is the belief that we can do everything.  The other is the belief that we can do nothing..."

May this new year renew in us the conviction seek justice for the strangers in our gates;

May it arouse in us the sensitivity to reach out to others in compassion;

And in this new year, 5771, may we work to create a community, and society, and a world of righteousness and peace.

Ken Yehi Ratzon - May it be God's will.

Ken Yehi R'tzonenu - May it be our will.

Rabbi David B. Cohen

Congregation Sinai

Milwaukee Wisconsin

Rosh HaShanah - 5771 - 2010