“…You shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
— Leviticus 19:34.

On this day in 1892, the Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York opened its doors, providing a waypoint for more than 12 million immigrants, including millions of mostly eastern European Jews, who came to the United States in search of a better life. Like many before them, Jews who immigrated to the United States discovered a mixed welcome.

Though America offered unparalleled freedoms and economic opportunities, those opportunities were not always readily available to migrants, who often faced substandard living conditions that threatened their health, expectations of rapid assimilation that curtailed their job prospects, and a lack of essential services to help them get started on their American journeys.

To make matters worse, many Eastern European Jews, rife with the habits and customs of shtetl life, received a cool greeting from their fellow Jews who had arrived in America a generation earlier. These settled Jews suspected that the arrival of less-assimilated Jews threatened their own acceptance into mainstream American society.

However, such suspicions did not prevent “Americanized” Jews from helping their Eastern European counterparts. Countless Jewish professionals and volunteers lent their time, energy, money, and intellect to the task of clearing paths into American society for Jewish immigrants, resulting in local and national efforts to meet their needs, including organizations such as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the nascent Jewish Federations—which merged diverse local, charitable efforts, ranging from hospitals to education and immigrant aid.

As the influx of Jewish immigration dwindled, many Jews turned their attention toward bolstering American Jewish communal life, but some looked upon the challenges of the American Jewish immigrant experience as a call for American Jews to observe our tradition’s teachings by improving the immigrant experience across America. By partnering with immigrant communities, fighting for immigration reform, and continuing to clear paths into American society for immigrants and refugees, we not only observe our tradition’s edict to love the stranger, we continue the work of our forebears, who paved the way for so many of us to achieve stability in America.

— Rabbi Josh

Rabbi Josh Knobel can be reached via email at [email protected].