In this week’s Torah portion, the titular Yitro – father-in-law of Moshe – tells Moshe he’s doing his job wrong. Moshe is trying to hear and adjudicate every Israelite community dispute by himself, and Yitro rightly points out: that way lies burn-out. Entrain others to help you, Yitro urges. No leader was ever meant to carry the burdens of a community alone.

One of the things I love about Judaism is its deep communitarianism. The mitzvot ask us all to care for each other. Mitzvot like visiting the sick or the mourner, or feeding the hungry, are incumbent on all of us. So is the mitzvah of standing up for “the widow, the orphan, and the stranger” – Torah’s way of saying, those who have little power and are vulnerable to oppression.

Torah tells us 36 times that we must “love the stranger, for we were strangers in the land of Mitzrayim.” We have been in narrow straits before, and because of our people’s suffering both historical and present we must stand up for those who are oppressed today. Not “may,” not “might decide to” – if we take Torah values seriously, caring for the stranger is an obligation.

Seeing others as made in the image of the divine, with fundamental rights and human dignity, is not optional for us as Jews. Welcoming the immigrant and standing up for the refugee: not optional. Opposing cruelty, especially toward those who are vulnerable: not optional. This has been politicized, but I don’t believe it’s political. This is a core Jewish value.

I know that some of us come to religious community in search of peace. Me too, I desperately feel the need for Shabbat wholeness and for a thread of hope and joy to carry me. I hope so much that our time together in song and prayer today is nourishing for y’all, as it always is for me. (So are the Shabbat mornings when we engage in SoulSpa Torah study / learning.)

I also know that some of us come to religious community in search of ethical guidelines for living justly. Me too. As we’ve been reading the early parshiyot in Exodus, the story of Pharaoh’s oppressions, Torah’s been making it easy to find a moral message that speaks to where we are now. Living justly demands that we oppose cruelty and stand up for the stranger.

And we can’t outsource that to our leaders – even though I am glad and grateful to hear that Gov. Healy is doing what she can to make it once again safe for immigrants to attend worship services without fear of arrest. The moral call of this moment asks all of us to lead, and we lead by standing together for the basic human dignity of every human being, including immigrants.

Maybe you saw this week that Jewish senior citizens at a retirement community in Florida asked if they could hide their Haitian caregivers to protect them from deportation as their temporary protected refugee status was almost taken away. Here’s how it was described by Rachel Bloomberg, CEO of one particular Jewish nursing home / senior residence:

“It reminds me of Anne Frank… [residents, including many Holocaust survivors] can relate to not being wanted, to being kicked out and coming to America for salvage and freedom and safety and shelter. And they want to be able to protect the Haitians.”

Rachel Bloomberg isn’t the only one who “went there.” My son also told me this week that reading about families torn apart and immigrants afraid to leave home reminds him of Anne Frank. I noted that some Jews don’t like that comparison because this is not the same as what happened to us. His reply? “Ok, but it’s still hurting people! It still shouldn’t be happening!”

It isn’t “the same,” but what we’re seeing now does rhyme with some of our history. Even if it didn’t evoke our people’s 20th century history, it would evoke our ancient spiritual history. We know the heart of the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. That’s our “master narrative,” the one that frames how Jews experience ourselves and our world.

Thank God, a last-minute court order this week protected the Haitian community from deportation – at least for now. But other immigrant communities are very much at risk. I will not forget five year old Liam Conejo Ramos, detained and shipped to Texas. My teen said to me, “His little hat – did you know, if you pull the strings, the ears come up?” I said I did know that.

“The thing is, I remember being five,” my son said. “I can’t imagine how he got through that.” I can’t either. I can’t imagine how any of these kids get through without massive trauma… and that’s without the new horror of learning that there are now measles outbreaks in the family detention centers, because people in power have also decided they mistrust vaccines.

So much has been broken. Minnesota will take years if not decades to repair. (Cuts to science research will take even longer). But that doesn’t give us a pass on doing what we can. And there are things we can do. For instance, the Reform movement is organizing phone calls to legislators in MA to support the “Dignity, Not Deportations” Act. (The ACLU is also involved.)

Recently in Virginia there was so much public outcry against DHS plans to build a detention and processing site there that the sale of the site was canceled. Immigration advocate Lia Parada reports that she “met with organizers in NJ where a town council of all Republicans stood up and said that they were opposing a warehouse being opened up there.”

If you want to learn more about how to support our immigrant and refugee neighbors, contact the Immigrant Support Action Team at Greylock Together. Learn about why calling people “illegal” is harmful and inaccurate. Learn best practices for bystanders in the event of an ICE visit, courtesy of the Berkshire Alliance to Support the Immigrant Community.

Whatever we each choose to do to care for the vulnerable and combat cruelty, may we remember Yitro’s advice: the work of caring for a community is too heavy for anyone to bear alone. We accomplish more when we do it together. And together we can treat everyone as though they were made in God’s image, with innate worth and human dignity.

It’s like our tradition’s instruction to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8) – simple, but not easy. May we all be blessed as we live our way into these most fundamental of Torah’s demands.