An immigration meditation
“Yes, my son,” the rabbi responds: “God bless and keep the Czar — far away from us!”
The exchange, part of the opening number in the beloved musical “Fiddler on the Roof” occurs in a tiny Yiddish village, a
But the Czar comes. A pogrom forces the entire
My wife and I saw “Fiddler” recently at the Museum of Jewish Heritage at the tip of Manhattan. We have seen it on stage and in film many times. But this production was entirely in Yiddish and thus especially authentic. One needn’t accept uncritically “Fiddler’s” celebration of Jewish tradition to be profoundly moved by it, as was I.
The musical fed my outrage at my country’s current anti-immigrant hostility. And it brought home the truth that the folks the actors portrayed were my ancestors — my people. The same people George Washington promised in a letter written to a small Hebrew congregation in Newport, R.I., that the United States of America “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Before the performance, Sheila and I had dinner at a nearby restaurant. We were seated outside. Not a half mile offshore in the Hudson — close enough, it seemed, to grasp — stood the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of our country’s welcome to immigrants.
I could almost hear the beautiful words of poet Emma Lazarus etched inside the statue’s pedestal: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
How perfect a beacon to my forebears who were driven from their “Anatevkas.”
How ironic that it should raise a welcoming torch in New York harbor while we build barriers and use tear gas along our southern border, leaving unheeded the warning of Ronald Reagan, the most revered Republican president since Lincoln: “If we ever closed the door to new Americans,” he said, “our leadership role in the world would soon be lost.”
Thanks to the midterms, Democrats command a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives. President Donald Trump, alas, is with us still. So, too, is his malevolent view of migrants, who seek only to live and work in our country and, perhaps, become our fellow citizens one day.
The evidence of his xenophobia grows daily. Mexican “rapists” bring drugs and crime, he says; build the wall; ban Muslims; abolish birthright citizenship; deport the “Dreamers”; separate migrant children from their families; dispatch troops to the border; shut down government to force Congress to fund the wall.
These policies are lawless, bigoted, ignorant and cruel.
Relentless media coverage of the administration’s immigration policy has a numbing effect. In my case, however, a couple of otherwise unremarkable phenomena — a trip to that theater in New York and a framed certificate on the wall of my study — keep alive my disgust at that policy and bring me closer to my immigrant roots.
All four of my grandparents came to America from Eastern Europe and the Baltic region. I don’t know if all of them became citizens, but I have proof that one did. A framed copy of the “Certificate of Naturalization” of my paternal grandfather, Louis Sachs, dated Oct. 7, 1890, hangs on the wall of my study, 10 feet away from where I sit, writing this.
It records that Louis Sachs renounces forever “all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign Prince, Potentate, State and Sovereignty whatever, and particularly all allegiance and fidelity to [the] Czar of Russia”
I have passed that certificate without pause countless times a day for many years. But it is only recently, as I witness the Trump administration’s hostile view of immigrants, that I pause to study it. It is a reminder of a day when our country was more welcoming. And of the fact that I am only two generations removed from Ellis Island.
I haven’t much hope that President Trump will back off his xenophobic prejudices and recognize that the welcoming policies of the past are what would make us great again. Let us hope that Congress and the courts have the fortitude to stay his hand.
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