Bible abhors child separation
The “zero tolerance” policy implemented at the U.S.-Mexican border separates children from their parents. The parents are detained and arrested, and the children are sent to child immigrant shelters and foster homes.
Over 2,000 children are now being held in separate facilities from their parents. The photographs and audio recordings of these separations attest to the tormented wails of terrified children.
We can imagine that their parents are left in agony to wrestle with the horrific irony that in seeking a better life for their children, they have risked being permanently separated from them.
On June 14, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions invoked Romans 13 to justify this stringent application of the law. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders supported him by saying, “It’s very biblical to enforce the law.”
While Sessions’ chosen text has been used to justify slavery in the past and is therefore an offensive example, it is undeniable that the Bible has a high regard for the sanctity of laws to govern the way we live with one another.
But to focus on the legalistic biblical voice to the exclusion of all other voices in our sacred scripture is an incomplete reflection of this glorious inheritance of ours.
The cries of families being torn apart and devastated abound in our biblical texts: the cries of the inconsolable Jacob whose son Joseph is taken from him, the cries of the Israelites who have been compelled to throw their children into the Nile, the cries of an exiled Hagar who is forced to listen to the moans of her starving son Ishmael.
These cries are calls to action in the Bible, both for human beings and for God. As people who seek to be guided by Holy Scripture, we must admit that we are not only inheritors of a system of justice, but also a script for mercy.
When we are witnesses to the cries of the suffering, we must, like our Biblical ancestors and our Creator, let those cries seep into our souls and animate our responses to this inhumane policy being enforced in our name.
In the Bible, Jacob’s pain upon losing Joseph motivates his remaining sons to shift their moral compass and to love one another more deeply, knowing they had a hand in causing his anguish.
The cries of the Israelite mothers motivate the midwives Shifrah and Puah and even Pharaoh’s daughter to engage in civil disobedience for the sake of saving the children.
The tears of Hagar summon God, the most powerful Presence of all, to reassure her and encourage her in her most desperate hour.
These examples teach us not about law but about humanity. They beseech us to recognize that the cries of parents and children have a unique sound that must not be ignored.
A community that roots itself in the Bible must clearly identify the separation of children from their parents as being morally unacceptable.
We must take whatever steps are within our power to reunite families and to let the cruelty of this moment testify to the character of those who created the policy in the first place.
Whether the pain of the families on our border has been inflicted by our own action or inaction, whether we have limited means or tremendous influence, all faithful people must respond to their cries with compassion and companionship.
It is a response that is every bit as rooted in the Bible as legal enforcement and compliance.
For more commentary, go to commercialappeal.com/opinion/
Rabbis Katie Bauman, Micah Greenstein, Feivel Strauss and Bess Wohlner serve Temple Israel in Memphis.