Shabbat Chol Ha-Mo'ed Pesach/Seventh Day Pesach
26 April 2024
Dear Members and Friends,
How did we get here? In a moment of cruel irony on the eve of Pesach, this country passed the ‘Rwanda Bill’, giving the green light to send ‘illegal’ asylum seekers to Rwanda. The bill is deemed to be a deterrent to the individuals who take their lives, and the lives of their little ones, into their hands, by coming to the UK on small boats. This, says the government, will disincentivise people from coming here, knowing that they will be deported to Rwanda.
But I wonder if the Prime Minister was at all aware of the words he used when the Bill was passed: ‘We introduced the Rwanda Bill to deter vulnerable migrants from making perilous crossings…. The passing of this legislation will…make it very clear that if you come here illegally, you will not be able to stay.’
I am imagining one family leaving their home on the night of Passover – a woman pregnant with her second child, a young child by her side, a father desperate to leave a country where his life and the life of his family are constantly in danger. They take little with them, just enough for a simple meal of flat bread during the first few days. Perhaps a few belongings. There are others fleeing a tyrannical regime in a nation where armed groups rampage through the countryside, causing violent clashes; where there are grotesque humanitarian violations, devastating incidents of gender violence, abduction of children and displacement of millions of people. What kind of environment is this to raise a child, with little or no education, no possibility of meaningful work, where women and children are at risk of rape and other desecrations?
This escape is no simple journey. There is a perilous sea between the country of their birth and freedom. They know it will be hard – finding somewhere to live, learning a new language, trying to cope with a foreign culture. And they know they are vulnerable as wanderers, especially if they have been subjected to persecution or torture.
Others have made equally perilous and lonely journeys – children who arrived in this country on the Kindertransport, not knowing when or if they would see their parents again; Ugandan Asians who arrived by plane, and Vietnamese refugees by boat. More recently, I think of an Iraqi Jew, his father murdered, his mother dead, stripped of his statehood and threatened with deportation. After several years in limbo, unable to work, dispersed from one side of the country to the other, with little money, he was given Leave to Remain and a measure of his dignity and pride slowly began to return as he found work and was able to contribute to the life of this country. I often think of this young man and the too many years of his life, wasted, unable to find ‘resting-places calm and deep’ (Wordsworth, Song for the Wandering Jew), and pray that he has found a measure of contentment in the country he now calls home.
It is a source of shame that this country now provides no safe or legal routes for refugees to apply for asylum – there are too few resettlement places and family reunification laws are severely limited.
Like the Israelites crossing the Sea of Reeds, for whom a miracle occurred, asylum seekers put misplaced faith in criminal people smugglers; they pray that the boats will be robust and the sea tranquil during their crossing, that a benevolent people will welcome them as willing workers in this country, that education and health care for their children will create a safer environment.
It is precisely because we are the children of people who escaped from Egypt and crossed the sea into the desert, who struggled to achieve freedom for ourselves, that we are pained when we hear the words - oppression, persecution, exile and deportation. The ‘Rwanda Bill’ makes us smart with shame; we ache for a society that is kinder, fairer, that restores dignity to all human beings, that takes the lessons of Pesach – emerging from servitude and embracing freedom – with the responsibility and seriousness they demand.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach for the Seventh Day of Pesach on Monday.
Alexandra Wright
Please join us on Sunday evening, 28 April for Erev Seventh Day Pesach at 4.30pm to hear Lord Dubs speak about ‘Refugees: Past and Present and Looking to the Future.’ Click here for further information.
And on Monday 29 April at 11.00am, please help us make up a minyan for the Seventh Day of Pesach, the day on which the Israelites left Egypt and crossed the Sea of Reeds.
