I have been looking at the etymology of the word 'stranger'. The context is, I hope, obvious.
I started with this:
Then I looked at strange, and got this:
It is easy to see how the word is used to describe a foreigner, or migrant: the alien, the unfamiliar or alien.
But this ignores another interpretation, which comes from the term 'ger'.
The St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology has this to say on that issue:
The commandment to protect the ger, often translated as stranger, is asserted several times in the Torah. The book of Exodus requires the Israelites ‘not to do wrong to a ger or oppress them' (22:21). Leviticus teaches that a ger who resides with Israelites shall be treated as an Israelite citizen, and that the people of Israel should have ‘one standard for ger and citizen alike' (24:22). But what exactly is a ger?
The quote from Leviticus says this:
22 You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the Lord your God.
Other versions suggest stranger should be read as 'sojourner'.
Sojourner means:
A temporary resident, then. Or migrant, perhaps. Quote possible an economic migrant, for how else would;d they sustain themselves?
As the St Andrew's commentary concludes:
In conclusion, the concept of ger in the Hebrew Bible and its subsequent development within the Talmud and various interpretations throughout Jewish history reflect the evolving dynamics of inclusivity, identity, and justice. From its origins as a legal category to its symbolic resonance in addressing marginalized individuals and promoting social justice causes, the ger offers a lens through which to understand the values and complexities of the Jewish tradition. As contemporary debates continue to unfold, invoking the figure of the ger challenges us to navigate the intricate interplay between tradition and the evolving needs of a diverse and interconnected world. In striving to embody the Torah's injunctions of compassion, kindness, and respect for the ger, Jews today engage in an ongoing conversation that bridges ancient wisdom with the pursuit of justice and humanity in the present and future.
In other words, the ethical response to the stranger is to treat them as an equal, and with compassion and kindness. The obligation is to accommodate.
The exact opposite of what Starmer is doing, in other words, where he is using the word to divide, to fuel hate, and to discriminate.
And he lives in a Jewish family.
Thanks to Andrew Dickie for sending me down this route. I will return to it again later, as there is more to learn. This is a first take.
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As far as the Hebrew Scriptures go, you are bang on target.
I haven’t the energy for a lengthy theological discussion, distilling several years of academic study and a lifetime of practice, but you are correct.
When it comes to Jesus, a Jew after all, steeped in those scriptures, both in his practice and his teaching, what upset his opponents most was his attitude to the strangers, outcasts, “sinners”, and the marginalised, and even to the enemy occupier.
Religious and secular people may have different explanations for it, but because we are all human beings, I think we see the same phenomenon, whether we call it amorality, death of or selling of the soul, the absence of conscience, gross evil, immorality – I think we all know that some sort of moral boundary has been crossed – again.
Thanks
Again, more truth about humanity and that the ‘rational self interest’ model of the Neo-liberals is a totally testicular concept – commonly referred to as ‘bollocks’.
My partner travelled a lot before she settled down and tells me many a tale of being invited into people’s homes abroad as a stranger to share food with families – always it seems with families whose standard of living was not like our own.
Some of the kindest people I ever met were also some of the poorest. I visited Sri Lanka during the civil war there and my abiding memory is the kindness of the people.
Same when I volunteered at the Jungle refugee camp in Northern France in 2016. I will never forget the kindness and generosity I experienced there.
From “Advices & Queries” written by The Quakers.
“Are you alert to practices here and throughout the world which discriminate against people on the basis of who or what they are or because of their beliefs? Bear witness to the humanity of all people, including those who break society’s conventions or its laws. Try to discern new growing points in social and economic life. Seek to understand the causes of injustice, social unrest and fear. Are you working to bring about a just and compassionate society which allows everyone to develop their capacities and fosters the desire to serve?”
Thanks, Mark.
Wise words.
This also:
“For the Lord your God is God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in Egypt.”
(Deuteronomy 10:17-19).
Covers everything Starmer has done wrong, so far, perhaps.
Thanks
There are other similar words like a journeyer, wayfarer, a fahrener, a journeyman. These were also names from tradesman who moved on to the next village/town once their work was completed.
I’ve always found it interesting that the title of Camus’ novel ‘L’Etranger’ was translated as ‘The Outsider’ in English, but ‘The Stranger’ in American (and in fact neither quite captures the mixture of foreigner, stranger, outsider, etc, that the French ‘etranger’ connotes – but the translators were right not to choose the most common translation, which would be ‘foreigner’).
Being the “oblivious to everything not on MSNBC” Yank that I am, I had no idea the Starmer children were being raised in a Jewish household.
It explains much; I can now see said the blind man.
His wife is Jewish. The children are being raised in the Jewish faith.
Leviticus 19:34 has the injunction to “love the stranger as yourself”. That comes very shortly after the similar injunction in Leviticus 19:18, repeated in the Gospels, to “love your neighbour as yourself”.
That is essentially the Great Commandment, and more generally the Golden Rule common to most ethical systems. Pope Leo quite rightly reproved the idea advanced by the US vice-president that there is a hierarchy of love.
Agreed
And he was right to take on Vance.
He is deeply unpopulatr in the US for doing so, and his reluctance to talk in English. There are doubts as to whether he is committed to MAGA, apparently.
Imagine if we had a progressive Government that hadn’t decided to live in fear. Could its Policies look something like this?
1. Reframing Immigration as a Moral Obligation and Economic Opportunity
Policy Approach: Reframe immigration as a source of national enrichment, both economically and culturally, rather than a burden.
Implementation:
Launch public awareness campaigns highlighting the positive contributions of immigrants, including healthcare workers, educators, and small business owners.
Establish a National Day of Welcome to celebrate the contributions of migrants and encourage local communities to participate in integration activities.
2. Establishing Humane Asylum and Refugee Policies
Policy Approach: Create a more compassionate asylum process that prioritizes protection over deterrence.
Implementation:
Ensure that asylum seekers have access to adequate housing, healthcare, and legal representation.
Expand community sponsorship programs, allowing local groups (e.g., churches, charities) to sponsor refugee families, integrating them more effectively and building social connections.
3. Implementing Community Integration and Support Programs
Policy Approach: Foster community-based integration rather than isolated, top-down initiatives.
Implementation:
Develop “Welcoming Cities” programs that provide funding and resources to municipalities that actively promote migrant inclusion, language training, and employment support.
Create incentives for local businesses to employ refugees and migrants, offering training programs and tax credits for those who provide apprenticeships and mentorships.
4. Establishing Pathways to Regularization and Citizenship
Policy Approach: Provide clear, accessible pathways to citizenship for undocumented migrants and long-term residents.
Implementation:
Introduce a one-time amnesty for undocumented workers who have lived in the UK for over five years, contingent upon criminal background checks and economic self-sufficiency.
Expand the points-based immigration system to include points for community service, language proficiency, and local employment to encourage integration.
5. Establishing a Humanitarian Visa System
Policy Approach: Create specific visa categories for people fleeing climate change, conflict, or severe economic hardship, recognizing emerging global challenges.
Implementation:
Develop “Compassionate Entry” visas that prioritize vulnerable populations, such as unaccompanied minors, victims of trafficking, and persecuted minorities.
Ensure access to mental health services and community support for those entering under humanitarian grounds.
6. Promoting Global Solidarity and Development
Policy Approach: Address root causes of migration by investing in international development and conflict prevention.
Implementation:
Increase aid to countries facing economic instability, environmental degradation, or conflict, targeting projects that foster local job creation and education.
Work with international organizations to establish safe migration corridors, reducing reliance on dangerous and exploitative smuggling routes.
7. Creating a Faith-Based Advisory Council on Migration
Policy Approach: Establish a council comprising representatives from various faith communities to advise the government on compassionate, ethical approaches to migration.
Implementation:
The council could provide guidance on policy proposals, ensuring they align with principles of compassion, dignity, and justice.
It could also serve as a liaison between the government and faith-based organizations that provide services to migrants.
Cliff
That is very good.
I have copied it. I hope you will forgive me.
Richard
Here are precedents for each category. So it’s achievable. It just takes the will, and deciding not to be afraid.
1. Reframing Immigration as a Moral Obligation and Economic Opportunity
Canada’s pro-immigration messaging that frames immigration as vital to economic growth (Government of Canada, 2019).
Refugee sponsorship programs in Canada and Germany that involve community groups in welcoming and integrating migrants.
2. Humane Asylum and Refugee Policies
Community sponsorship initiatives like the UK’s Community Sponsorship Scheme for refugees.
Sweden’s refugee integration programs, which emphasise housing, employment, and language training.
New Zealand’s “Manaaki” community-based support program for refugees, emphasising dignity and partnership.
3. Community Integration and Support Programs
“Welcoming Cities” initiatives in Australia and the United States that promote migrant inclusion at the local level.
German community centres that foster cultural exchange between migrants and host communities.
4. Pathways to Regularisation and Citizenship
Spain’s 2005 regularisation program for undocumented migrants, based on employment status and community ties.
Portugal’s recent regularisation of migrant workers, framed as a public health and economic measure post-pandemic.
5. Humanitarian Visa System
Australia’s humanitarian visa categories for refugees and people fleeing conflict zones.
Canada’s climate refugee policy discussions, considering protection for those displaced by climate change.
6. Global Solidarity and Development
The EU’s approach to migration partnerships with African countries, aimed at creating economic opportunities and reducing push factors.
The UK’s former Department for International Development (DFID) programs that addressed conflict prevention and economic development.
7. Faith-Based Advisory Council on Migration
Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Advisory Committee, which includes community and faith-based leaders.
Germany’s Council for Migration, which includes representatives from various civil society groups, including faith organisations.
Thank you
In order to collapse the potential for Reform “grievance voting” then there need to be added to that excellent programme, proposals that provide answers to the very real problems facing my neighbours in left-behind communities, relating to housing health, social care employment, disability support, child-care costs and punitive levels of marginal effective “taxation” at low income levels. Their problems are not caused by immigration, but extremists BLAME immigration, and can continue to do do very effectively, unless things on the ground, change, dramaticslly and soon.
Each of these issues requires gov’t investment and action, which respects local needs and viewpoints about effective locally applied solutions. Any progressive agenda must not, yet again, ignore these structural issues thar devastating local communities.
If we leave people behind again, then their distress and despair will be exploited by very evil people.
How to disempower Reform?
Deal with the grievances they so cynically exploit, but haven’t a clue how to “fix” (nor do they want to).
Obviously easier said than done, though.
Your thoughts on how to do that?
Replying to myself as there wasn’t a reply button on Richard’s question…
“Obviously easier said than done, though. Your thoughts on how to do that?”
(THAT, being:- “housing health, social care employment, disability support, child-care costs and punitive levels of marginal effective “taxation” at low income levels” – the things that cause anger and frustration amongst my neighbours because they are the most harshly affected by these things and have been for a LONG time, whereas the slightly better off are only now beginning to hear the wolf approaching the door).
In one sense, the answers to “how to do that?” are all over this blog in posts and responses from people at the sharp end, including yourself. We are not short of policies on how to deal with “housing health, social care employment, disability support, child-care costs and punitive levels of marginal effective “taxation” at low income levels”, and to give a long answer here would be to dilute the topic of “strangers”/immigration/racism that is producing so many good contributions. The short answer is of course, “it’s the economy, stupid” which is the whole point of your life’s work. But a moral economy, an economy with a humanitarian vision, a just economy. You are working your socks off to promote that and I applaud you.
Let me be clear right away – I disagree with nothing that you have said here nor do I object to the excellent proposals for a humane relevant immigration and asylum policy (and a clear differentiation between the two). But I fear we may be falling into a Reform campaigning trap.
The trap is – to either focus excessively on immigration, or on the other hand, to ignore it.
My concern, from a neighbourhood such as mine, is with the lies and agenda setting of Reform, and the immediate needs of my neighbours.
An important point that I think we are agreed on, is that, despite what Reform say, IMMIGRATION IS NOT THE MAIN PROBLEM affecting my neighbours, nor causing the many ills of our country. It is ONE of the problems, and the main people mainly affected by it, are, immigrants themselves, and some communities that it impacts upon disproportionately, because of unwise government decisions.
I think we would also agree that the message (such as it is), of Reform and the extreme right, is “IMMIGRATION IS THE MAIN PROBLEM” – or perhaps more accurately, “Whatever you perceive your main problem to be, WE CAN FIX IT BY TAKING BACK CONTROL OF OUR BORDERS”.
They have some other vulnerable people groups they keep in reserve when “immigration” doesn’t quite fit the bill, so sometimes the answer changes to something like:
“Whatever you perceive your main problem to be, WE CAN FIX IT BY TAKING BACK CONTROL OF OUR TOILETS”
or
“Whatever you perceive your main problem to be, WE CAN FIX IT BY TAKING BACK CONTROL OF OUR WELFARE SYSTEM AND FORCING PEOPLE INTO TO WORK”
or
“Whatever you perceive your main problem to be, WE CAN FIX IT BY TAKING BACK CONTROL OF OUR OVERSTAFFED COUNCILS”
or
“Whatever you perceive your main problem to be, WE CAN FIX IT BY TAKING BACK CONTROL OF OUR YOUNG PEOPLE’S MENTAL HEALTH DIAGNOSES”
and so on. But you get the gist – find a scapegoat, amplify and distort reality, pretend to listen to people no one else bothers to listen to (my neighbours), then tell them you can “fix it” – and the one everyone remembers is “IMMIGRATION” and in particular, “STOP THE SMALL BOATS”.
(They could stop most of the small boats by processing visa applications before they board any small boats, but that is FAR too simple for Reform – or LINO)
Reform are very successful at turning this into electoral success, and adapting it to whatever situation they find themselves in. Fa***e in particular – he achieved his key goals each time he saddled up.
UKIP/Fa***E got the referendum result he wanted and took out David Cameron.
Brexit/Fa***e got the Brexit deal done (very badly) and took out Theresa May and gave us Johnson.
Reform/Fa***e got IMMIGRATION turned into over 600 council seats swiped mostly from the Tories.
But Fa***e isn’t stupid. He knows he can’t crowd-surf the wave of “anti-immigration” all the way to Westminster, and his Brexit train has run out of steam. He needs other wheels for his wagon (or grease for his surfboard, the metaphors are getting mixed up here!) and he has begun to branch out into economic stuff, dabbling in QE, lower tax thresholds, nationalisation of utilities, cutting foreign aid, business rates, VAT thresholds, opposing LTNs and wind farms, sacking council staff (I won’t call it “policy” because it is so incoherent – but that doesn’t mean it might not be popular on the campaign trail, if not in actual practice. See the latest list from The Daily Torygraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/reform-uk-manifesto-richard-tice-key-policies-glance/#nhs-and-social-care ).
LINO aren’t muttering a word about economics except to scream Rachel’s growth mantra, and tell us she “can’t afford it” because of the “black hole left by the Tories”.
What my neighbours effectively hear from LINO is “more of the same” (the same, being austerity, cuts, rising cost of living, lousy local services, waiting lists for treatment, housing, social care – because there allegedly isn’t any more money and we mustn’t increase taxes except on the poor.
The point I tried to make above is – don’t let Fa***e trap us into HIS agenda of focussing excessively on IMMIGRATION, while at the same time, forgetting the urgent needs of my neighbours – left-behind communities, low income neighbourhoods in working class areas, already on their knees after 40 years of Thatcherite neoliberalism, jobs destroyed (it was “W D & H O Wills cigarette factories around here along with seaports, Bristol itself then Avonmouth, aviation – now BAE, cars, omnibuses, and coal mining), followed from 2010 onwards by austerity, austerity and then more austerity.
Because of a computer problem I’ve been visiting a phone repair shop in town and chatting at length to two Kashmiri young men about the world and our problems. We’ve covered faith, tolerance, peace, war, economics, student fees, overseas students, immigration, visas, corruption, China, tariffs, tech monopolies, the right to repair – the shop was quiet and we just talked and talked – it was an intimate and deeply rewarding time. They made the point that the way to disempower Fa***e and Reform was to make life better for ordinary British people. I agree entirely. If my neighbours could see the government delivering CHANGE (ie: improvement), in “housing health, social care employment, disability support, child-care costs and punitive levels of marginal effective “taxation”, then Fa***e would be irrelevant, and racism would be a matter for isolated ugly street protests from EDL, which could be dealt with. Immigration wouldn’t be perceived as a problem, it would just return to being a part of life.
So yes, we DO need to develop sane, workable, humane flexible immigration and asylum policies. Politicians need to have the guts to do that, and they CAN do that safely if they ALSO reassure my neighbours that they are being listened to about their own urgent needs. So my plea is – from my neighbourhood – whenever you talk about immigration, please remember us, remember the urgent horrors of austerity, remember those who feel they are ignored, year after year, government after government. Because immigration is not THE problem (although Fa***e SAYS it is), it is A problem, and the main people affected, are the migrants themselves. And of course, it is a 2 way traffic so everyone has an interest in it working well.
I am utterly disgusted with LINO because they pretend to listen – but all they give us is the same dog-whistle as Reform blows. They don’t care about my neighbours, they just want the loan of their votes, then it’s more pain, more austerity, more cuts, more profits for oligarchs, more corruption, more lost social cohesion, more riots, more pain.
Thanks!
An especially engaging post. Etymology always interesting, lots of interesting comments and quotations from scripture (not something I know much of), with Cliff’s very moving and practical manifesto to finish (at time of writing). Thank you.
Here in Spain, we are known as “extranjeros” (legally, on our paperwork) which obviously looks a lot like “strangers”. But in this context it means people who do not have Spanish citizenship, ie: foreigners. It can also mean alien, outlandish (weird), outsider or unknown. Context is everything.
We’ve been here for decades now and never felt like we’re in a hostile environment. Different, obviously, but not strangers. Even in a very rural area they just saw us as fellow EU citizens.
As an aside, bearing in mind your Irish connection, I recall trying to explain that the “English Woman” running the bar in the next village was actually Irish. They couldn’t get this at all – we are all “los ingleses” to them. There is a local place (even named on the map) known the English farm – even though it was a Scottish guy that owned it.
Anyway, thanks for your work and please keep it up.
Thanks
many years ago, Diane Abbott, despite not being my MP, helped me with contacts in re Lord Woolf’s ‘Access to Justice’ – she is speaking in Buxton in July, and I would love to hear her ‘take’ on this subject – yes – I have read her book.
Also, as others have stated on this site, when I was seriously ill 2 years ago, and not expected to survive, many of the surgeons, junior doctors, nurses and ward staff were not, originally, from the UK – I thanked each and every one of them – they were all, from wherever, kind and so very caring – and of course of high professional competence.
I’m glad you made it.