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Last Sunday, our congregation held an afternoon on the theme of ‘Refugees and Asylum Seekers’, with a panel of three speakers: Lucy Bryson, the Policy and Development Co-ordinator for Asylum seekers and Refugees at Brighton and Hove City Council, Shanti Hast, a member of the Brighton & Hove Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers, and Sue Shaw, the Asylum Seeker/Refugee worker at Hove YMCA’s Youth Advice Centre. Let me share with you some information provided by Lucy Bryson. Contrary to popular opinion and tabloid media hype, the UK hosts less than 2% of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers. In 2003, 61,050 people (including dependents) arrived in the UK as asylum seekers, but, contrary to popular opinion and tabloid media hype, only 5% of asylum seekers are recognised as genuine refugees each year. Despite the scare stories, the UK is not a ‘soft touch’ – on the contrary: So many deserving cases are turned down, 20% of applicants are later given leave to remain, following appeals which demonstrate the validity of their claim for asylum.
Again, contrary to popular opinion and tabloid media hype, most asylum seekers live outside the mainstream benefits, housing and support systems. The Home Office’s National Asylum Support Service, set up in 2000, provides housing – mostly in the Midlands and the North of England – on a no-choice basis and pays subsistence to asylum seekers at 70% of income support levels – which amounts to £39 per week.
An asylum seeker is a person who wants to be recognised as a refugee from persecution. The 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention defines a refugee as a person who, ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country…’ In other words, a refugee, as we know only too well from our own experience as a people, is a person in dire need.
So, why do they receive so little sympathy? Why isn’t every one of us eager to help and support them? Why is it that rather than acknowledging asylum seekers as victims of persecution, many people see them as a threat and feel persecuted by their presence? Rather than respond to these questions directly, let’s go on a little excursion: The Torah includes some very hair-raising tales about brothers: Cain kills Abel; Ishmael is kicked out of his home, together with his mother, Hagar, allegedly, for playing a little too energetically with his younger brother, Isaac; Jacob tricks his elder twin, Esau, out of his birthright, and later steals the blessing Esau was entitled to as the first-born son, by deceiving their father; Joseph’s elder brothers, take revenge against their father Jacob’s favourite by selling him to a band of merchants travelling to Egypt.
Familiar stories – many of us could recite off by heart. The reality is that we still live with the consequences of these shocking tales in a variety of disturbing ways: We not only live with the on-going conflict, for example, between the descendants of Ishmael and the descendents of Isaac, on a more personal, intimate level, each one of us, has learnt to see the other people around us, the people who don’t appear to be like us or to live like us as a potential threat, even though we all belong to the same human family.
Of course, there are a host of historical, political and economic reasons for the conflicts that rage between peoples at different times – and in many ways, the Torah narratives only reflect divisions that have already taken place, for example, between the descendants of Jacob/Israel and the descendants of Esau/Edom, that is, between the Israelites and the Edomites. But the tales we find in the Torah suggest that one of the root causes of conflict between peoples is a system of inheritance that determines that first sons inherit their father’s estate – primogeniture. Why was Sarah so determined to get rid of Ishmael? – because he was Abraham’s first-born son. Doesn’t the whole problem between Rebecca and Isaac’s twin sons, revolve around the fact that Esau is born first? The Torah tales may upset our expectations by making the second-born sons the victors, but this only serves to underline the central issue: Only one son can win – and the winner takes all.
That’s not to say that the losers don’t receive their own inheritance – but crucially, once the severance between the two brothers concerned has been completed, the loser is no longer one of us: Abraham may be our people’s first male ancestor, and Ishmael may be Abraham’s first-born son, but Ishmael becomes the father of another people; Esau may be the first-born son of the second generation of our ancestors, Rebecca and Isaac, but Esau becomes the father of another people. And that’s not all: both the descendants of Ishmael and the descendants of Esau become our enemies. In the case of Ishmael, the Torah suggests that the reason for the original enmity lies in the disposition of the rejected son: When the pregnant Hagar flees from her mistress Sarah’s harsh treatment into the wilderness and meets with God, she learns not only that the son she will bear will be called Yishmael, because the Eternal One has ‘heard’ her affliction, and receive an inheritance, but that Ishmael ‘shall be a wild ass of a man: his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the face of his brethren.’ (Genesis 16:12).
When it comes to Esau, the Torah’s account is more complex: The Torah devotes the last 43 verses of this week’s portion, the parashah, Vayishlach, to what it describes as ‘the generations of Esau – that is Edom’ (Genesis 36:1), meaning the descendants of Esau and his Canaanite wives, ‘Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, Oholivamah, the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Tzivon the Hivite, and Basemat, the daughter of Ishmael, the sister of Nevayot’ (:2-3). As soon as we note that Esau married Canaanite women and begin to read the long list of descendants, which includes people like Amalek, we realise that we are being introduced to Israel’s enemies, whom we later encounter in the Exodus and wilderness narratives. According to the last verse of the story relating the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, Hagar took a wife for her son ‘out of the land of Egypt’ (Genesis 21:21) not Canaan – but no matter: both Egypt and Canaan represent the other peoples with whom the descendants of Jacob/Israel do battle. The point is, that Esau may have started off his life at the first-born son of Isaac – the son who inherited the covenant of Abraham and Sarah – but he ends up, not only as the father of another people, the Edomites, but as an enemy of Israel.
If that wasn’t problematic enough, the Sages, who commented on the Torah, took it a stage further: Reading Rabbinic literature it is clear that just as Jacob is Israel, Esau represents the Gentile – indeed, survivors of the Roman onslaught, the first rabbis saw Rome as Edom – and this identification of Esau as the antithesis of Israel continued: According to the 11th century commentator, Rashi, Rabbi Shelomoh Yitzchaki, born in France in 1040, the unknown man with whom Jacob struggles during the night prior to his reunion with Esau, related in this week’s portion (Genesis 32:25-30), was none other than the guardian angel of Esau, which makes the message very clear: Israel is up against Edom and must prevail.
So, this is our legacy – and this week’s portion exposes the central issue: Jacob was afraid of meeting Esau again because he knew he had wronged his elder brother. To justify our fear and to smother our guilt, how easy it is to transform the person we have hurt into an enemy – especially, when confronted by their pain and anger. For the cruder apologists of the Isaac versus Ishmael and Jacob versus Esau narratives, the extrapolations are very simple: Jews versus Arabs/Muslims; Jews versus Christians. We’re caught in an eternal conflict, sanctioned, indeed, by the Eternal, what can we do about it? Well, quite a lot, actually: We can challenge this splitting between ourselves and others – this spitting between brother and brother; we can claim Ishmael and Esau as our kin. We can find out more about the real sources of the conflicts between our people and other peoples – the religious and political reasons for the divisions between us. How ironic that Israeli Jews and Palestinians should be pitted against each other: Not only are both peoples descendants of Abraham, but, in all likelihood, those Palestinians who can trace their lineage in the land way back down the centuries, may even have been Jews before their ancestors converted to Christianity or became Muslims in the advent of the rise of Islam in the 7th century – part of the remnant of the Jewish people who never left the land.
Let me return now to the questions I asked
before I took us on this little excursion: Why do asylum seekers and refugees
receive so little sympathy? Why isn’t every one of us eager to help and
support them? Why is it that rather than acknowledging asylum seekers as victims
of persecution, many people see them as a threat and feel persecuted by their
presence? Of course, there are many different reasons – but, perhaps, one of
the reasons is a twisted product of the terrible legacy of the splitting between
siblings. If we can stop recognising our kinship with our kin, what hope is
there that we will respond compassionately to those who appear to be complete
strangers and from other places? Liberal, rational logic dictates that all we
have to do is educate people about the predicament of asylum seekers and
refugees and we will all welcome them with open arms. I began this sermon with
the liberal, rational approach – by supplying facts and figures, but it takes
more than facts and figures to persuade people to support asylum seekers and
refugees: it takes a change of heart – and that can only happen if we begin to
see ourselves in the faces of others and allow ourselves to feel moved by their
plight. Perhaps then, we will be moved to take action on their behalf. May this
be our will – And let us say: Amen. |
