(Originally published in February 2021)
The Torah understands the intimate connection between our internal and our external facings, between how we feel towards ourselves and how we feel towards others. The principle of loving your neighbor as yourself presumes such a connection between relation to self and relation to other. In this week’s parsha, amidst all the legal and social injunctions about how to treat others and create a just society, the principle of not hurting the ger, the stranger, refers us explicitly back to our own internal experience. We are not to harm the stranger because we have experienced similar pain; we have been strangers in Egypt. This rationale is repeated in many of the 36 times that the ger is mentioned in the Torah, as if to emphasize that this external facing — the way we treat others — is very much dependent on the quality of our internal facing — the way we treat ourselves and our own suffering, the way we treat the stranger inside us.
But what does it mean to say that we have experienced being strangers? Obviously, none of us today were in Egypt and most of us have not actually experienced living as a foreigner in a hostile environment. Nonetheless, we do all know the nefesh hager, “soul of the stranger” (Exodus 23:9). Every single one of us has experienced at some point the sense of being a stranger in a place of mitzrayim, a place of narrow boundaries of who is in and who is out, a place where we, for whatever reason, did not quite fit those boundaries, a place where we felt the sting of not being fully on the inside, of not being exactly like everyone else, perhaps even a sense of mattering less than others, of exclusion, of standing on the outside of a window looking in to a party. This “outsider” experience is basic to being human in a social world. And the part or parts of us that suffered that exclusion, the parts that did not seem acceptable in those situations — maybe they were deemed too wild or awkward or incompetent or just wierd and different in some way — those parts gradually came under fire inside our own system in order to escape that sense of outsiderness, in order to feel the essential feeling of belonging; those parts got criticized and shamed and banished, so that gradually they became strangers — on the outside looking in — even inside us. These are our own internal gerim, our own internal strangers, living within our systems as second class citizens.
Getting to know your inner stranger:
You may not know them very well — since they are mostly exiled inside us — but the Torah actually says to get to know them intimately — atem yedatem et nefesh hager (23:9) You know — you must know, if you are ever to treat others properly — what it feels like to be excluded; you must know in a deep, intimate way this piece of your own self. The verb yada, to know, implies not just knowledge, but intimate, often sexual knowledge. That’s how close you need to be to your own nefesh hager, “soul of the stranger” — to know it from the inside in a penetrating, connecting way. We usually try to escape our own vulnerabilities, to brush them under the carpet and move on, but in doing so, we are giving up a part of ourselves, and we are giving up also, a way of connecting to others; when you understand your own vulnerability, you are invited in to the intimacy of others’ vulnerability. Your own nefesh hager is the portal to the nefesh hager of every other human.
Not shaming your inner stranger:
We don’t just need to know these outsider parts inside us. When the Torah tells us how we should treat the outsider on the outside, it is also teaching us how to treat our own internal outsider. VeGer lo toneh velo tilhatzenu (22:20) — You shall not mistreat or oppress the stranger. Rashi explains the term toneh as referring to ona’at devarim, verbal abuse. The classic rabbinic example of such verbal abuse is shame — reminding a convert (the other, related, meaning of ger) of her previous life or a penitent of his previous sins, essentially reminding someone on the fringes of the group of her incomplete belonging, shaming her in some way, degrading her, making her feel badly about herself. We do this all the time to the strangers inside us, if anything probably more often than to the external stranger. Most of us have a voice inside our heads that attacks mercilessly these parts of us, the parts that are vulnerable to exclusion by the world for whatever reason, perhaps out of weakness or incompetence or just difference. This voice shames those parts, reminding them of their exclusion and incomplete belonging, keeping them in exile with verbal abuse. The Torah’s prohibition against doing such shaming to others should surely apply to the outsiders inside of us as well. Do not shame your own ger!
Loving your inner stranger:
It’s bigger than that. How do you get out of the habit of ona’at devarim, of shame and criticism, inside? How do you shift the internal climate away from judgment and condemnation? The only answer is love. Devarim says it this way: “[God] . . . loves the stranger [ohev ger], . . .. You, too, must love the stranger [ve’ahavtem et ha’ger], for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (10:18-19). It’s not just about not shaming the stranger inside you. You actually have to love and embrace those parts of you, to “know” them in the biblical sense, intimately and with great love, to welcome them into your heart as full members of yourself in all their vulnerability and inadequacy and with all the qualities that make them unacceptable in the wider world. In your own heart, they need to be welcomed and loved. The world may have excluded or devalued them, but for you they are precious.
The hidden value of rejected parts:
As it turns out, it is often precisely these rejected parts and traits of us that are most valuable. Moshe stuttered; he was a terribly awkward speaker. And yet precisely in this area of speaking, he achieved greatness, becoming the greatest orator of all time, funneling through him the word of God for all ages. In normal society, surely his awkwardness would have been scorned and reviled, but somehow, in God’s estimation, this part of him was an asset. Perhaps it was precisely because of his speech impediment that God chose him; he would be a true vessel, not adding his own flourishes, but genuine and true. As we say in Hallel, even ma’asu habonim hayeta lerosh pinah. The rock that was rejected by the builders becomes the cornerstone. Precisely what is rejected and shunned by the builders — by normal society — turns out to be the key, the foundation for everything else, our most valuable asset.
These, too, are from God:
What is shunned and pushed outside turns out to have value because in God’s eyes there is nothing in or out of the circle; it is all from God; it is all of God — both the stranger and the insider; both the parts that are socially acceptable and successful and praiseworthy as well as those that are shamed and ostracized. Eyn od milvado. There is nothing in the world other than God. Nothing. We can’t welcome one group and not another in God’s world. They all have a place. They all belong.
This understanding of the divine underpinning of including the stranger is implied by the peculiar juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated commandments in our parsha — the prohibition against worship of foreign gods and the injunction against mistreating the foreigner. 22:19 reads: “Whoever sacrifices to a god other than the Lord alone shall be proscribed.”. That verse ends with: Bilti lashem levado, “only for the Lord alone,” and the following one (22:20) begins with the connector letter vav, “and”, “And you shall not mistreat or oppress the stranger.” Of course you shouldn’t mistreat a stranger; this is just another aspect of believing in only one God and sacrificing only to this God. If you believe in only this God, then no one is outside of God’s circle, not even the stranger. All are welcome and included, and the society that we create, whether inside us or outside us, must reflect this understanding, this inclusiveness, this open-hearted divine embrace of all.
Vulnerability as a portal to the divine:
It may even be the case, as is implied by the rejected rock verse and the Moshe example, that God actually feels in some way closer to the stranger, to the vulnerable, to the rejected and exiled ones. If the disadvantaged cry out, the Torah says, then God hears it right away and responds. The door for these cries is always open above. Or to think of it another way, God finds such people and such parts within us to be particularly suitable and open instruments for the divine flow. They are holes, like the wide open mouth of the cry, holes of vulnerability inside us, and these holes open us — if we are brave enough to be with them and love them and not reject them — to the divine; they are portals of sacredness. Because of their sense of inadequacy and exclusion, they are always reaching, wanting something, yearning for God. When we welcome them in, when we welcome the holes, they shift from being outsiders in this world to insiders in another world; if we welcome and love them, they lead us to God; they help us see the pathway to redemption, to a world of inclusion, a great big circle with no one outside.
