A Fence Around Compassion

A Florida rabbi gets it. We should, too.

Rabbi Ammos Chorny, who serves at Beth Tikvah in Naples, Florida responded to the opening of a migrant detention facility in the Everglades ("Alligator Alcatraz") with his latest sermon.

It is a message so important that I wanted to share it here …

There are moments in a rabbi’s life - indeed, in any person’s life - when the news does not merely disturb us; it shakes us. When we do not merely read a headline, but feel it reverberate in our bones. This week brought such a moment!

A facility, let us name it plainly: A camp, has opened for the detention of undocumented immigrants. It stands here, in the shadow of our own community, amid the sawgrass and swamplands of the Everglades. It is not a prison, but it is not freedom. It is a place where human beings: men, women, and children; will be confined, silenced, and uprooted from any semblance of stability or dignity.

This is not merely a political story.

It is a moral story.

It is a Jewish story.

Let me be clear. Although this is not Auschwitz, nor Bergen-Belsen, we must not disrespect history by making false equivalencies; but we would be dangerously blind not to hear the echoes of history in our midst. We know how it begins, always: with camps for those labeled “outsiders,” “illegals,” “undesirables.” We know how even democratic societies can, little by little, begin to unravel the threads of human dignity, rendering people invisible.

It begins, too often, with silence. With the normalization of what should never, ever be normal.

Our Torah speaks with a clarity that is both ancient and urgently modern:

“You shall not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Not once. Not twice. But no fewer than thirty-six times does the Torah command us to remember the stranger - more than any other commandment.

Why so many times? Because God knows us. God knows how quickly the heart forgets. How easily we rationalize. How willingly we draw fences around our compassion.

I was not born in this country. But like so many, perhaps like you, I was raised on the sacred promise that America holds: a nation that welcomes “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” That line, engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty, was not written by accident. It was written by a Jewish woman. A daughter of our people, Emma Lazarus, who knew deeply what it meant to be othered and to still dream.

America is not perfect. It never has been. But it has aspired, gloriously and imperfectly, to the ideals of liberty, justice, and equality.

What happens to us?

Who do we become?

When that aspiration dies?

What does it mean when we now build camps to hold those whose only crime is crossing a border in search of life, safety, or hope?

What does it say about us when the words on Lady Liberty are treated as poetry instead of policy?

Let me say it as plainly as I can:

This is not politics. This is conscience.

This is not about left or right.

This is about right and wrong.

Rabbi Ammos Chorny

Judaism does not call us to partisanship. It calls us to moral clarity. And that clarity is rooted in the sacred truth that every human being is created b’Tzelem Elohim: in the image of God.

Yes, every nation has the right and the responsibility to maintain secure borders. But how we uphold those borders matters. Law does not require cruelty. Security does not require inhumanity. There are lines that must never be crossed, lines that once crossed, are not easily uncrossed.

The Talmud teaches us: “Whoever can protest against wrongdoing and does not is held accountable for that wrongdoing.”

It doesn’t say: “If it’s convenient.”

It doesn’t say: “If your donors will understand.”

It doesn’t say: “If the polls are in your favor.”

It says: if you can speak, and you don’t, you bear responsibility.

Our grandparents, our great-grandparents, came to this country as strangers. Now, a test has been placed before us: Will we stand idly by while others are caged for seeking the very hope we once pursued? Or will we remember who we are?

And this is not happening in some far-off place. It is not abstract.

It is here.

It is down the road.

It is in the Everglades, not a world away, but a highway away.

The words of Deuteronomy echo like thunder:

“Tzedek, tzedek tirdof… Justice, justice shall you pursue…”

Not wait for.

Not hope for.

Pursue … Actively. Relentlessly. Faithfully.

So What Can We Do?

First, we do not look away. We witness.

Second, we act, by supporting legal aid organizations, volunteering, writing to our elected officials, showing up when needed, and refusing to allow this to be normalized.

Third, we teach. We teach our children that Judaism is not just about ritual, but about righteousness. That memory is not only about where we came from, but about where we stand now.

And yes, we pray. Not as a retreat from responsibility, but as a cry for courage. We pray not for God to fix the world, but to give us the strength to help fix it. We pray that our compassion might grow louder than our fear. That our memory might be sharper than our comfort.

May the God of compassion open our eyes to the suffering of others.

May the God of justice stir our hearts to reject indifference.

May the God of our ancestors remind us that we, too, were once strangers, and that remembering is not optional: It is sacred!

Shabbat Shalom.