Words of Peace From Jewish Sages, 2

Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch on Loving The Stranger

“You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Here it says simply and absolutely, “for you were strangers”, your whole misfortune in Egypt was that you were strangers there. As such, according to the views of other nations, you had no right to be there, having no claim to rights of settlement, home, or property. Accordingly, you had no rights in appeal against unfair or unjust treatment. As aliens you were without any rights in Egypt, out of that grew all of your bondage and oppression, your slavery and wretchedness. Therefore beware…from making rights in your own State conditional on anything other than on that simple humanity which every human being as such bears within. With any limitation in these human rights the gate is opened to the whole horror of such mishandling of human beings.

Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch (1808–1888) on Exod 22:20