Rabbi Norman Lamm once preached a remarkable observation about the Ushpizin - the seven biblical "guests" we "invite" to our Succot over the course of the festival. They were all refugees or experienced alienation. THREAD https://archives.yu.edu/gsdl/collect/lammserm/index/assoc/HASH01cd/cfa2c5e8.dir/doc.pdf

1) Abraham left his homeland behind
2) Isaac never knew his own family
3) Jacob spent decades in Laban's house
4) Joseph, enough said

5) Moses had to flee Pharaoh's court
6) Aaron faced the pressure to construct a Golden Calf
7) David had to flee from Saul, and then from his own children

I riffed on this observation this morning

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote often about the value of existential loneliness for individuals of faith. In his writing, loneliness is a source of courage, independence, and development. Social integration, in contrast, leads to compromise and conformity.

For Soloveitchik, overcoming loneliness and joining with someone else is even, to a degree, a form of self-sacrifice (similar to how God self-contracts, in Kabbalistic thought, to "make room" for the universe)

Soloveitchik clearly spoke from experience. Born to an aristocratic Rabbinic family in Lithuania, he studied philosophy in Berlin, led a community in Boston, and taught American-born yeshiva students in NYC. He was an outsider everywhere he went, a refugee from a world destroyed.

He was able to articulately point to the loneliness that sharpened his creativity and drove him to greater heights and accomplishments. He probably also recognized that energy in the largely immigrant and refugee American Jewish community more broadly.

Think of the energy that waves of Jewish immigrants/refugees brought with them to America from the 1880s through the 1950s. The drive to succeed. The courage to protest and make change. The desperation and tension that warded off complacency.

It's a Jewish story, because Jews have a long history of being refugees or alien - going back to the first sukkot the Israelites built in the wilderness after leaving the familiar confines of Egypt..

But it's also an American story - because America was and continues to be built by waves of immigrants and refugees, each bringing that fresh energy, creativity, and gritty drive that has propelled us forward.

Trump can warn Minnesotans their city is on the verge of becoming a (Somali) refugee camp, but the truth is that AMERICA has always been a large refugee camp - and that is to our credit and benefit.

The tradition of Ushpizin reminds us:
1) to recapture that feeling of being in unfamiliar territory
2) to welcome in those who are displaced and alienated, not just because we pity them, but because of what we can gain from them

This works in Jewish & American terms.

This is why @MarkJHetfield can tell our synagogue that @HIASrefugees used to do its work because THEY (the refugees) were Jewish but now we do that work because WE are Jewish

On the flip side, it's why the Tree of Life synagogue shooter specifically targeted the weekend they dedicated to supporting the work of HIAS.