Faith Gives Hope a Chance

by Rabbi Nancy Kasten

Last week I was waiting in line to order lunch when I heard two women in conversation behind me.

“I’m so upset. My housekeeper texted me this morning to say she can’t work for me anymore because she’s afraid to leave her apartment. I don’t know what she’s worried about. She has worked for me for years, and she’s the best housekeeper I’ve ever had.” 

Her friend asked her if she had heard about the detentions and deportations that the Trump administration has ordered. 

“Yes,” she replied. “But those people are criminals. My housekeeper is a good person. She has nothing to worry about.”

Tragically, this woman is wrong. Her housekeeper knows that people just like her have been arrested without warrant, detained, and deported. People who were born here, or who have been in this country for decades. People who have babies or elderly parents to care for. Bakers and construction workers and meatpackers. People. Not “criminals.” Not “illegals.” Human beings who came to this country seeking asylum lawfully, have complied with immigration statutes, and are trying to live their lives in safety.

In March I participated in a journey with the organization “Witness at the Border.” We started off in Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, then drove to El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, and continued on to Ajo, Arizona and Sonoyta, Mexico. Both sides of the border were quiet, with no encampments or long lines entering or exiting the U.S. In every location, and on the roads we took between them, border patrol agents and members of the National Guard were ubiquitous. Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, a 47-acre park, was deserted and desolate, dotted with military outposts. The cities in all three areas were also quiet, many shops and restaurants shuttered due to lack of business. Residents were losing their jobs in hospitality or social services and being recruited to work for the Department of Homeland Security or private detention facilities, the only jobs available to them.

The Trump administration has militarized the border and terrorized immigrants under the pretext of making Americans safer. But one has to wonder which Americans they have in mind, as they simultaneously scale down or eliminate vast swaths of the public sector, lay off hundreds of thousands of federal employees and workers in sectors that depended on federal funding, and decimate our country’s capabilities, talent, infrastructure and alliances in a manner that will take decades to rebuild. The savings gained through these cuts are not reducing our national debt. In addition to financing tax cuts for the wealthy, they are being used to strengthen government military and surveillance capabilities, ostensibly to better track and deport immigrants. But of course, these capabilities can be deployed against anyone the government determines to be a threat to national security because of their speech, their ideas, their faith, their gender, the nature of their work, or any other aspect of their personhood deemed offensive or dangerous. 

Housekeepers and immigrants are not the only people who are afraid. These days many of us are thinking of the words of Martin Niemöller, the German theologian who was sent to a concentration camp because he opposed the Nazis:

“First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak up because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak up.”

The natural human response to a threat is a “fight, flight, or freeze” response. With regard to the fear engendered by the Trump Administration, we see the fight happening in a variety of ways, through legal challenges to Executive Orders, rallies, vigils and protests, community organizing, and lobbying of elected officials. Flight is also occurring, with many U.S. citizens exploring emigration options. Three quarters of the scientists surveyed in a poll conducted by the journal Nature said they were considering leaving the U.S. People are also fleeing psychologically by convincing themselves there is nothing to worry about, like the woman who lost her housekeeper. Others are freezing, feeling too overwhelmed and impotent to resist or respond to their concern for themselves or others. 

But human beings have a fourth way to respond to threat, one that can coexist with any of the other three – faith. Faith is not just a way of coping with conditions; it is a way of imagining alternative futures.

Our survival has always depended on our ability to leave behind old paradigms and find innovative solutions to existential crises. As we wonder what will become of us, we can also imagine what could become of us. Could we become a country that cherishes what we have instead of always chasing after more? Could we start paying all workers in all sectors a living wage? Could we eliminate food insecurity and make housing affordable for everyone? Could our education and healthcare outcomes start to improve, reversing the current precipitous decline? 

There are countless visionaries who are proposing new models for how we might live together more sustainably and securely in the future. They realize that our immigration issues here in the U.S. are part of global evolution and cannot be addressed without a global vision. Too often their ideas are dismissed as being impractical or iconoclastic. But to achieve any meaningful transformation, we have to take risks. If we have the courage and temerity to sacrifice our previously held assumptions about the way the world should be for us, there is a chance that we will live to see a new reality that better serves us, our fellow human beings, and future generations. 

This is where faith comes in. Belief in something greater than ourselves does not give us permission to leave everything up to a higher power. Rather, it gives us permission to face our fears that we might live to see a better day. We can do better to protect creation. We can do better to love our neighbor as ourselves. We can do better to protect the orphan, the widow and the stranger. We must never lose sight of this call as we navigate these dark and perilous days.