Where it comes from
The Torah returns to the stranger again and again. “You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:20). “You know the heart of the stranger” (Exodus 23:9). “Love the stranger as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34). The Talmud (Bava Metzia 59b) counts the warnings and says the Torah repeats them more often than almost any other command.
What it means
The stranger is the outsider: the immigrant, the refugee, the newcomer with no family nearby and no one to speak for them. A people told to remember its own vulnerability is asked to turn that memory into protection for others, especially those unlike itself.
In every faith, and for none
Welcoming the stranger is a shared human instinct. The New Testament teaches “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Hospitality to travellers is honoured across Muslim, Hindu and many other cultures. Modern refugee law grew from the same conviction after the Second World War.
Lives that embody it
Many of the people on Jews Impact lived this value, in laboratories, courtrooms, classrooms and rescue work.
Emma LazarusNew York poet of old Sephardic stock who championed Jewish refugees and wrote ‘The New Colossus’, the sonnet that made the Statue of Liberty a ‘Mother of Exiles’.
Ruth GruberJournalist and photographer who escorted nearly 1,000 Holocaust refugees to America in 1944 and documented the Exodus 1947, Yemenite and Ethiopian Jewish rescues across six decades.
Henrietta SzoldFounder of Hadassah; through Youth Aliyah, rescued thousands of Jewish children from Nazi Europe.
Recha FreierBerlin rabbi’s wife who conceived Youth Aliyah, sending Jewish teenagers from Nazi Germany to Palestine, and fought for decades to be credited as its founder.
Albert EinsteinTheoretical physicist; relativity, the photoelectric effect, E=mc². Reshaped 20th-century physics and won the 1921 Nobel Prize.
Stories to read
- The New Colossus: how Emma Lazarus gave Liberty her words of welcome
- How Albert Einstein helped start the International Rescue Committee
- Operation Solomon: the 36 hours that flew 14,000 people home
- Youth Aliyah: how Henrietta Szold gave thousands of children a new home
Living it today
- Introduce yourself to a new neighbour, colleague or classmate.
- Support a group that helps refugees and immigrants settle in.
- Be patient with someone still learning your language.
This value is one thread of tikkun olam, the repair of the world, and it belongs to anyone who wants to take part.