After reading the news of late, a few questions have come to me. These are not of the “Why is this night different?” variety, but they do seem to tell something about what the real attitude is of the current leaders of this country:
- If the country is full, why the concern about abortions? If there is no room for more people, wouldn’t you want to stop unwanted births? Rather, the agenda appears to be pushing your religious views on when life begins and murder can occur on those with differing religious views.
- If we must close the borders, why only the southern one? If the country is full and we have to close the border, why is it full only for low-income brown people? This demonstrates that the issue is not the country being full, but a bias against brown and low-income immigrants.
- Why is there so much money for Notre Dame, and little for the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the Historically Black Churches in Louisiana? Could it be we are only in favor of supporting European White culture, and don’t care about black or Islamic culture.
- If we are concerned about the sanctity of life, why do we not care about people after they are born? There is so much energy waged on the battle against abortion, ostensibly due to a concern for the life of the unborn. But once the child is born, where is the care? Where are the programs to lift people to better lives, to move them out of the cycle of poverty and despair? Where is the concern for the refugee, for whom to return to their country of origin would be certain death? Why are you seemingly only appreciated if you are white and wealthy and Christian?
How we behave, what we do and what we say reflects who are are as a society. On Friday night, we remind ourselves about the battle to escape those who would oppress us for being a minority. We remind ourselves that we once were strangers, and so we should welcome the stranger into our homes. That is central to who we are and what we believe, and we remind ourselves of these values every year. This country’s leadership is behaving in a way that goes against those values: they reject those who are not white… they reject those who are not rich… they reject those who do not hold with their beliefs. Their values go against what America stands for, and deserve repudiation.
