When Your World Is Turned Upside Down: Reflections for Purim & Refugee Shabbat

Everything turned completely upside down.

The stability that they had come to expect, the acceptance that they experienced—in an instant it was gone, despite the fact that they had been in this country for so long, descendants of immigrants who had fled war and destruction in their homeland at least 100 years earlier.

This is the story of the Jews of Persia during the time of King Achashverosh, which we read on Purim. And it is also a story that feels familiar to Jews from so many periods of our history. This story also resonates now, as we have been experiencing a scary, pervasive, and sometimes deadly increase in anti-Semitism in this country and throughout the world.

V’nahafoch hu. It all turned upside down. This is the phrase used to refer to the reversal of security and status which the Jews of Persia felt when Haman (boo!) received royal approval from Achashverosh to exterminate them. And it is also the phrase used at the end of our story to describe their experience when another decree allowed them to fight back. At the heart of Purim, a holiday of revelry and costumes, is the unsettling awareness that we are vulnerable.

As we reflect on the story of Esther and the Jews of Persia, we must also remember our imperative to protect the fundamental right to safety and dignity of others, especially the immigrant, the ger. They are most often the members of society who are least protected, and at this moment, they are the people in our country whose lives are being most significantly upended and destabilized.

Consider a woman who seeks refugee status in the United States because there is war in her country. Her husband is being threatened due to his political alliances. With the increase in conflict comes an increase in sexual violence, and her daughter stays home for fear of being raped or murdered. She does not want to leave her home, but they cannot stay. The family undergoes years of extensive and rigorous vetting, more than any other immigrant to this country. Finally, blessedly, they are granted refugee status, and she sells their belongings to prepare for travel. Then, a U.S. federal policy changes, and they are stuck in limbo. V’nahafoch hu.

Or perhaps the family has made it to the United States but learns that ICE is nearby, detaining people who look like immigrants or refugees. Her family is terrified that this will be the day she is arrested while dropping her child at school. V’nahafoch hu.

Or a memo is released that all refugees who have arrived in the past year will have their cases re-reviewed. If there is a “t” left uncrossed or an “i” undotted, they might be deported. V’nahafoch hu.

On March 13-14, we will mark HIAS’ Eighth Annual Refugee Shabbat. HIAS, like JFS, was originally founded to support Jewish immigrants and refugees as they created a new home in this country. We hold on to this purpose, as we do the story of Purim and our foundational story as strangers in Egypt, so that we understand and honor our history. These stories are also intended to instill within us greater empathy toward those who are the stranger and the immigrant today, regardless of our beliefs regarding immigration policy and politics.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote the following:

“Trustful does he [the stranger] enter your country, your city, your community, confident of finding people who will respect him as their fellow-man and not begrudge him a place among themselves where he can live, and live like a human being … God says: ‘He is like you, may he do as you do – grant him equal rights – he is My child, My earth is his home … do not curtail that right of his, do not spoil his joy of life, do not abuse his helplessness; show that you feel that your soil is God’s soil, and that man is God’s child.”

This Purim, as we recall our vulnerability and fear in a society in which we were the immigrant, let us commit to being a source of stability and dignity for the refugees and immigrants in our country. Let us live up to the trust that they place in us and remember how our collective history calls us to even greater levels of compassion and care.

Learn how to stand with refugees and immigrants.

Purim Sameach,

Rabbi Ronit