Shemos—Minority Report

“Even in Egypt, the Pharaohs

Had to import Hebrew braceros”

—Tom Lehrer

Themes and memes from Exodus have been circulating cyberspace throughout the current ostensible immigration crisis, and particularly since the Honduran caravan made its way north.

A closer look at how the Hebrews became Egypt’s most prominent minority and then Egypt’s most prominent victim of discrimination should give the lie to most if not all attempted analogs between the Biblical Exodus and the Honduran one in particular, and the entire ultimate open borders project more generally.

The Pharaoh of Yosef wasn’t Egyptian—he was Hykso, a northern minority that had conquered Egypt and was ruling the majority Egyptian population.  After Yosef’s revelation to his brothers, the royal court invited Yosef to bring his entire family, and he negotiated settling them in an area apart from the population—in Goshen.

On one hand, this might have presented an obstacle, as Yosef feared his brothers would have been drafted, but on the other, proved not to be when Yosef raised the specter of religious oppression vis a vis shepherding, so as a fellow minority, Pharaoh proved to be more than accommodating.  In a certain sense, Pharaoh might have been setting the Hebrews as a lightning rod, another minority to take pressure off of the Hyksos, as both he and Yosef were willing to give some credence to the racist and segregationist mentality in Egypt.  

(In fact, while as part of the repeated admonishment to love the get because we were strangers in Egypt, we are commended to not “hate the Egyptian” to the point that they are allowed in as gerim after a three-generation vet: the Torah almost seems to be giving credence to the notion that an attitude adjustment toward foreigners is a long, involved process that doesn’t happen overnight.)

Yet when Yosef executes his command economy, he takes steps to equalize the population (thought admittedly in a theoretically Hebrecentric manner—he legislates national circumcision).  Despite the fact that his radical socialist economy actually SAVES people (as opposed to what would happened in other socialist economies), the population isn’t all that grateful when push comes to shove and are able to reassert themselves as majority rulers and, having driven out the Hyksos, institute a “Blame the Jews” policy first.  

(Interestingly, as part of the justification for this policy—ועלה מן הארץ—the Egyptians never seem to consider actually expelling the Hebrews; they’d rather enslave them, kill the males, and take their women.  (The Egyptian tendency to doublespeak as delineated in Rashi ad loc was a cultural tendency: just as examples of how the Egyptians used “fake news” as official policy, one need only note the erasure of Hatshepsut from all public historical records, and the Merneptah stele, which may have been the first instance of Exodus denial.))

This, towards a population that: was already there, having been invited and vetted as legal immigrants; and  had literally saved the country and its entire population, as opposed to taking it over and forcing their way of life upon it; Goshen proved that.  One also should remember that Yosef was actually ASKED by the population to do everything he did before he put it into policy: he was offered even more draconian terms than he eventually imposed, and he avoided outright slavery; plus, his moves applied equally to everyone.  He has populations change neighborhoods, but he doesn’t deport anyone, and he doesn’t import anyone.

If one were to make an analog between the Exodus and the current migrant crisis, it wouldn’t be having populations moving to foreign lands en masse: it would, instead, be displaced populations returning to their own homelands.

“You were gerim in Egypt”: remember how you were invited and how you negotiated your interaction with the local culture, and respected it even as you distanced yourself from it as you found it in complete contradistinction to your way of life. The gerim you are going to vet are going to have submitted themselves to the same level of vetting and are actually going to adjust to YOUR way of life, not demand to impose theirs while maintain an equal or even favored status.   

And that's just on religious terms.  

The ultimate folly of the ger-as-immigrant analog is even simpler: just as one wouldn't expect that today's immigrants subject themselves to Torah laws regarding gerus in formulating immigration policy, one should certainly not expect that credence is given to the notion that open borders immigration has the force of Biblical imprimatur.

It doesn't.