Passover began on sunset last night, and although I'm not a devout Jew, this is a holiday that always resonated with me because it is a tale of liberation.
But it's also a story of not forgetting one's origins. As Merlin said in the film Excalibur: "It is the doom of men that they forget."
And so my mind turns to the plight of the undocumented workers from Mexico who have come to America... and I think of my immigrant grandparents. And I remember the Exodus.
Not the Biblical flight from Egypt, but that of my grandparents who came from Bialystock and Germany, Russia and Poland. And my friends' grandparents who came from Ireland and Italy. Africa. Mexico and Viet Nam. Greece. Armenia. Romania. They came to America from every part of this globe.
And before that wave of immigration in the 19th-20th Century, there came the earliest European settlers: the flight of the Quakers and Puritans form England.
And long before that, those pressures that drove the migrations of those Asians who would become the Native Americans.
And as I think about my immigrant ancestors, I am acutely aware of how they were utterly despised in their day. They were hated and mocked for their foreign language and strange dress. Their dietary practices. Their lack of what Americans considered as basic social graces. And they had advantages that other immigrants did not: they were white Europeans. They were educated and literate.
But the thing is... even the Mayflower settlers... the Daughters of the American Revolution... they too came from people who were driven out by hatred from their land of origin for their renunciation of the state Church.
The passover story is an odd one. It isn't a celebration of any military victory. It isn't about a triumphal arrival into Judea. Just the opposite: Passover is about the flight from Egypt... a story of miraculous deliverance from bondage- not by any great merit of the Jewish people... but by the grace of God. But aside form the recounting of miracles, much of the observance of the holiday is to make vivid the suffering of slavery. To symbolically - but tangibly - evoke the taste of the bitterness of it. To taste the tears. And the sweetness of freedom. And with it all, remember the sacrifices and tribulations.
I don't have easy answers for the many logistical, legal and economic problems presented by immigration. It is forgotten that most of those same issues existed when my own ancestors came here.
But when I read angry, hostile letters to the editor and see the clearly etched look of condescension on those well-fed faces of TV pundits, I'm aware that they've lost something precious.
They are disconnected from the humble dignity of that particularly human struggle of those who are outcasts and are working at hard labor, for little, for the promise of an increasingly better life for their families.
They have forgotten where they themselves have come from. And in doing so, have cut themselves off from the common roots of our shared humanity.
Not all of those who are impoverished are lacking for food and water, or clothing and shelter. Some of our fellow Americans suffer from poverty of the spirit, a deficit in their compassion.
And there's no amount of charity, public assistance or vocational training that can help them.