8 June 27 • 2019
jn

views

I 

have a Ukrainian housekeeper named 
Nadia, a Mexican landscaper named 
Louis, a Russian housepainter named 
Red and a Haitian man named Camelot 
who sometimes drives me to the airport. 
Each speaks with a thick accent, and 
sometimes I’
m not even 
sure we’
re communicat-
ing all that well. But still 
I smile, make curt, polite 
conversation and wish 
them a good day.
I genuinely like and 
respect Nadia, Louis, 
Red and Camelot, more 
than they could possibly 
know. They are kind, conscientious, pro-
fessional and pleasant. They take pride 
in doing a good job, and they’
re always 
willing to take on more work to make an 
honest living. I marvel at their extraor-
dinary work ethic, and I genuinely hope 
they are happy with their lives.
But in truth, I don’
t really know them. 
I don’
t know where they live or how they 
live. I don’
t know if they own a home 
or rent or stay with other family mem-
bers. I wonder if they struggle to make 
ends meet. Do they send money to their 
families in their home country? Do they 
worry about health care for their families 
or having enough money for insurance 
or car repairs or new clothing or even 
groceries? Do they see the silly amount 
of material possessions I have and secret-
ly resent me? 
We hear a lot about immigration 
these days. A recent Gallup poll found 
that 49 percent of Americans believe 

that immigration is one of the top five 
problems in the country (more so than 
climate change), compared to 27 percent 
who felt that way two years ago. The 
issue is already a major wedge issue in 
the upcoming presidential election, and 
it will surely be a topic of much attention 
and controversy in the coming months.
I fail to see how immigrants cannot 
hold a special place in the heart of an 
American Jew. To me, today’
s immi-
grants are the modern version of the 
wave of Jews who arrived in America 
about 100 years ago. The vast majori-
ty of those folks — who included my 
grandparents — arrived broke, alone, 
uneducated, mostly non-conversant 
in English, and surely frightened and 
intimidated by this new country. Yet they 
shared a dream to make a better life for 
their children, and they weren’
t afraid of 
hard or demeaning work to accomplish 
their goals. 
My grandfather worked as a waiter 
at a fancy restaurant in Downtown 
Detroit. I’
m sure the hours were long, the 
pay pathetic, the benefits non-existent, 
and there was zero job security. But he 
persevered, and two generations later 
his progeny enjoy wonderful lives in 
America. His sacrifices surely paid off. 

JEWISH FEELINGS TOWARD IMMIGRANTS
Today’
s immigrants are no different. 
A recent speaker at the AIPAC Policy 
Conference in Washington, D.C., 
addressed the issue of xenophobia and 
explained how misguided and inex-
plicable it is for Jews to oppose mod-

ern-day immigrants. He eloquently 
drove his point home in a simple and 
powerful way:
“In about two hours from now,
” 
he said, “it’
s likely that an immigrant 
woman, making minimum wage, is 
going to come into this room to clean it. 
That woman is essentially your grand-
mother. Remember that.
”
But sadly, there are Jews who choose 
to not make that connection. Last Rosh 
Hashanah, Rabbi Neal Comess-Daniels 
of Santa Monica, Calif., felt compelled 
to address the topic of Jewish values and 
the immigration issue in his annual ser-
mon. His former student, White House 
Senior Adviser Stephen Miller, had just 
authored a family separation policy for 
the Trump administration, and Rabbi 
Comess-Daniels could no longer contain 
himself.
“I can assure you,
” he stated, “that 
what I taught [Miller] is a Judaism 
that cherishes wisdom, values an even 
wider embrace. [Separating families] 
is completely antithetical to everything 
I know about Judaism, Jewish law and 
Jewish values … The actions that you 
now encourage President Trump to take 
make it obvious to me that you didn’
t get 
my, or our, Jewish message.
” 
Miller’
s views are those of an immigra-
tion hardliner, and while this attitude is 
not uncommon among those on the far 
right, they are wildly out of sync with the 
traditional viewpoint of American Jews. 
As Jewish writer Brett Stephens recently 
noted, immigrants actually “make better 
citizens than native-born Americans.
” 

They are, he points out, more entrepre-
neurial, more church-going, less likely 
to have kids out of wedlock and far less 
likely to commit crimes. 
“If anti-Semitism is the socialism of 
fools,
” Stephens wrote, “then opposition 
to immigration is the conservatism of 
morons.
”
But yet the rise in xenophobia is spik-
ing and hardly softened by a president 
who recently asked a Florida crowd what 
could be done to “stop these people” and 
then grinned when a rallygoer shouted, 
“Shoot them!” as the crowd went into 
hysterics. 
How can a Jew remain silent on this? 
Have we callously forgotten who we are 
and where we came from? Aren’
t we 
instructed, in the book of Exodus, that 
we “shall not wrong a stranger or oppress 
him, for [we] were a stranger in the land 
of Egypt”? Isn’
t that a lesson we have 
repeated at Passover seders for centuries?
Today’
s immigrants need advocates. 
They need our community’
s smarts, 
influence and commitment to be their 
protector, just as our grandparents and 
great-grandparents needed other good 
people to step up and help them. 
They deserve our support and respect. 
I know that the immigrants around me 
— Nadia, Louis, Red and Camelot — 
have earned that. ■

Mark Jacobs is the AIPAC Michigan chair for 
African American Outreach, a co-director of the 
Coalition for Black and Jewish Unity, a board 
member of the Jewish Community Relations 
Council-AJC and the director of Jewish Family 
Service’
s Legal Referral Committee.

Mark Jacobs

commentary
The Immigrants Among Us

neighbor’
s sister … and her shoes 
came from the same clearance sale as 
yours to boot!
Anything can happen when you 
bagel; you never know where it will 
lead. My personal tweak: When you 
try to bagel someone and it turns out 
he’
s not Jewish, and you start a fran-
tic backpedaling — it’
s called digging 
yourself out of the bagel hole! 
Tip for beginners: Just do it. Be 
creative, be nosy, have fun! No need 
to be shy … those who are bageled 
will usually bite! ■

“bageling” continued from page 5
statement continued from page 6

Analogies Are Dangerous,
” written by 
Dr. Edna Friedberg (on page 6).
In the highly charged political climate 
of today, we call upon the public to 
unite in condemnation of inflammatory 
rhetoric, to find common ground, and 
to promote civil discourse and mutual 
understanding. Again, we stress that the 
Holocaust is the paradigm of state-spon-
sored genocide in the modern era and 
should never be used for political gain or 
leverage. This must stop. ■

Eli Mayerfeld is the chief executive officer of the 
Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills.

