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DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

theJEWISHNEWS.com

Arthur M. Horwitz

Publisher / Executive Editor
ahorwitz@renmedia.us

guest column

E Kevin Browett

Chief Operating Officer
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Refugees, Migrants, Infiltrators

M

y four grandparents all loved
the United States of America.
They each came separately from
desperate parts of the Yiddish diaspora in
Eastern Europe. They each felt a tremendous
sense of gratitude to the country that allowed
them in when they needed to leave where
they were born.
They each came to the United States more
than a century ago. In 1924, though, the
United States came up with a new immigra-
tion law, which basically excluded immi-
grants from Eastern and Southern Europe.
When the situation in Eastern Europe got
worse, few Jews could flee to America. Most
of those who could not escape were mur-
dered.
You did not have to be an anti-Semite to
oppose immigration from Southern and
Eastern Europe in 1924. You just had to
feel that this country did not need immi-
grants. The country was founded by white
Protestants from England, Scotland and
Northern Europe; dark Catholics from Italy
and Jews from Russia just did not belong in
our white Protestant country.
It turned out that millions of Jews got
murdered in Europe, but those opposed
to immigration thought that was not an
American problem.
Immigrants from China worked to build
the railroads in America, but America had
"Asian exclusion" laws to try to get them to
go back where they belonged. The 1924 law
included a new Asian exclusion, as a State
Department historian says, "to preserve the
ideal of American homogeneity"
Most people I know have the decency to
feel ashamed by those ugly laws.

Editorial

Well, now desper-
ate people pour into
Europe from Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Sudan,
Eritrea and other places,
places where people
fear getting murdered.
Most of Europe responds
Louis
with panic and disarray.
Finkleman
Germany seems prepared
to take many refugees;
many other countries want none. These
exclusionary countries have the usual expla-
nations: Hungary is for Hungarians; these are
not our kind of people; they do have prob-
lems but those are not our problems; they
are not real refugees because they just seek
economic opportunity; and anyway, they
would take away our jobs.
You do not have to hate refugees to want
to keep them out. As long as you do not want
them to live with you, you can decide to keep
them out, and feel fine while they die some-
where else.
That's Europe.
And the United States?
We have a program to take a very small
number of Syrian refugees, but not for
another year. It will take a year to check each
one against our list of terrorists. What the
refugees do for that year is their problem.
Why do we think refugees are more likely
to be terrorists than any other people in the
world? Probably most of the refugees are
running away from terrorists, the people
who have killed their neighbors and rela-
tives. Probably the refugees dislike terrorists
more than you do and with better reason.
Maybe the refugees would love the United

States of America the way my grandparents
did, knowing that the country had accepted
them.
If the country accepts them.
It embarrasses me when I hear Jews advo-
cate keeping refugees out. A hundred years
ago, our grandparents were the refugees
and grateful for a country that accepted
them. Ninety years ago, out great-uncles
and aunts would have been refugees, but the
United States kept them out.
It embarrasses me when I hear Jews
advocate keeping refugees out Our prophets
seem to think that the most important mea-
sure of a person or a community appears in
how we treat widows, orphans and strangers.
In short, how we treat refugees.
It embarrasses me when I hear Jews advo-
cate keeping refugees out with cold-blooded
economic arguments that usually do not
make economic sense, such as "these folks
just want to go on welfare, and they will steal
our jobs"
Our ancestors' experience of escaping
genocidal slavery in Egypt and then traveling
through the desert qualifies them as refu-
gees, no?
According to our tradition, our ances-
tors survived exactly and only because God
cared for them. So much so that now we are
required to remember that experience, to
partially relive it by dwelling in huts on the
festival of Sukkot. We must never forget how
God cared for us when we were refugees.
So how should we treat refugees? It seems
pretty clear to me. *

Louis Finkelman (aka Eliezer) Finkelman is a rabbi,

scholar, teacher and freelance writer from Southfield.

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Dry Bones

continued from page 5

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Resolving The Problem
Of Weeds In Cemeteries

Kudos to the Jewish News and Barbara
Lewis for bringing up the cemetery weed
problem for public scrutiny ("Cemetery
Care Oct. 1, page 1)!
Families have paid thousands of dol-
lars to cemeteries to plant and maintain
the graves of their loved ones. It is the
fiduciary right of the cemetery to do so.
Annual flowers are now being replaced by
perennials as a cost savings.
I have a number of relatives buried
at Hebrew Memorial Park in Clinton
Township. I cannot physically pull the

weeds from 12 family members each time
I go. The physical condition of the cem-
etery does not improve.
The Jewish News article didn't have
an interview with David Tomalian, fore-
man at Hebrew Memorial Park, for the
outstanding job he does when issues are
brought to his attention. However, he is
only one person. How much can he pos-
sibly do?
There is nothing worse than going to a
loved one's grave that is unkempt. It is the
responsibility of the entire Detroit Jewish
community to try and resolve this problem
once and for all.

EUROPE
IGNORED THE
PITIFUL CALLS
FOR HELP
FROM THE
SYRIAN PUBLIC

AND IN
RETURN WHAT
EUROPE GOT
WAS THE
PITIFUL SYRIAN
PUBLIC.

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6 October 15 .2015

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