Shelach L’cha: No Strangers Among Us

        The Israelites stand poised to enter the promised land.  Moses appoints representatives from each tribe to scout the land and assess the situation.   

Forty days later the spies return with a discouraging report.  Ten of the twelve describe fortified towns inhabited by powerful giants.  Their famous conclusion is one of fear- “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves and so we must have looked to them.”  (Number 13:33)

 The morale of the entire community is negatively impacted, and the people are ready to flee back to Egypt.  Only Joshua and Caleb offer a different perspective- “Have no fear; God is with us.”  (Numbers 14:9)

        God is ready to destroy this people who have done nothing but whine, complain, and moan since the exodus, but Moses intervenes to save the day.  As a compromise, the generation that knew slavery will wander for forty years, while a new generation is raised to inherit freedom and the responsibilities freedom entails.

        You might think that the experience of slavery and the threat of enemies would lead the Israelites to become fearful or hostile to outsiders.   And perhaps it did.  Perhaps that is why this week’s parsha contains one of the 36 Torah references to, “There shall be one law for you and for the resident stranger, it shall be a law throughout the ages.  You and the stranger shall be alike in God’s presence.”  (Numbers 15:15)  In a world often divided between insiders and outsiders, the Torah demands a single standard of dignity and responsibility.

The Hebrew word for stranger is ger. In biblical literature, the ger is the vulnerable outsider — the person living among the community without inherited land, clan protection, or social standing. The Torah frequently places the stranger alongside the widow and the orphan as needing special care. 

The commandment is grounded not merely in abstract ethics, but in Jewish historical memory. Again and again, the Torah reminds Israel:

“You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, having been strangers in the land of Egypt.”
— Exodus 23:9

Jewish morality begins with memory. The Torah does not simply say that oppression is wrong.  It says, You know what this feels like.   Your own experience must make you sensitive to the suffering of others.

The medieval commentator Sforno explained that “one law” means that justice must not bend according to social standing. Courts cannot favor the citizen over the outsider. All human beings deserve equal accountability and equal protection because we are all created in the image of God.

Maimonides expanded the idea further. In his Mishneh Torah, he teaches not only that the stranger must be treated fairly, but that Jews are commanded to love the stranger. He writes, “The Holy One loves the stranger… therefore we are commanded to love the stranger.” (Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot 6:4)

This is extraordinary. Judaism does not stop at tolerance. It moves us toward covenantal responsibility and even love. The stranger is not merely to be left unharmed; the stranger is to be embraced within the community.

At the same time, the Torah’s insistence on “one law” also establishes mutual obligation. Equality before the law means that everyone shares responsibility for the ethical life of the community. The stranger is protected by the law, but is also accountable to it. The covenantal society envisioned by the Torah depends upon common standards of justice.

Modern Jewish thinkers have continued to draw powerful lessons from this commandment. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote that “The supreme religious challenge is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image.” For Rabbi Sacks, the Torah’s teaching pushes human beings beyond natural instinct. It is easy to care for those who are like us. The deeper religious challenge is to extend dignity across boundaries of difference.

        Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel likewise understood the biblical concern for the stranger as central to prophetic religion. Heschel taught that the prophets measured a society not by its wealth or military power, but by how it treated its most vulnerable members. Religion divorced from human compassion becomes empty ritual.

This teaching remains profoundly relevant today. Modern societies continue to wrestle with questions of immigration, refugees, minority rights, and social inclusion. Jewish tradition does not erase the complexity of political or legal debates. Nations must maintain laws and boundaries. Yet the Torah insists that however societies structure themselves, the humanity of the outsider must never be forgotten.

I just finished reading Rabbi Angela Buchdahl’s remarkable book, The Heart of a Stranger, and I highly recommend it.  Rabbi Buchdahl is uniquely exceptional- a Korean born woman ordained as both a rabbi and a cantor, she leads Central Synagogue in NYC.  She writes of her own experience as an outsider, and describes Judaism as “a religion of the Other”  (p. 310), founded, as it was, by Abraham and Sarah, who, themselves, had to leave home and become immigrants.  “Feeling like the stranger,” she concludes, “might be the most Jewish thing about me.”  (p. 127)

The phrase “one law for the native and the stranger” challenges double standards. It condemns systems in which one group receives protection while another receives suspicion or exclusion. The Torah envisions a society in which human dignity does not depend upon ancestry or privilege.

The Jewish experience through history reinforced the importance of this teaching. For centuries, the Jewish people lived as strangers in many lands, sometimes welcome, too often persecuted.   The memory of vulnerability became inseparable from Jewish ethical consciousness.

Ultimately, “one law for the native and the stranger” expresses one of Judaism’s boldest moral claims: that justice belongs equally to every human being. The Torah urges us to build societies grounded not in fear of the outsider, but in memory, compassion, and shared dignity.

I’ll conclude with these words from Rabbi Buchdahl,  “We are mandated by our tradition to remember, protect, and, yes, love the stranger, because that’s who we are.”  (p. 311)