The woman who is the cover

Sitting on a dining chair in the apartment, seemingly serene, is the woman who made this happen. She wears a gold Star of David pendant and earrings inscribed in Hebrew. One reads, “I am nothing but ashes.” The other says, “The whole world was made for me.”

“The earrings remind me to take up the right amount of space in this world,” says the Jewish woman. “Not too much, but not too little.”

Just to be clear, that “take up the right amount of space in this world” is not a Jewish virtue.

In this little apartment, the Jewish woman is taking her space in the world and making her mark on a family with her defiance of US immigration policy. She signed the apartment lease and is the cover for the family who lives here, in a suburban California middle-class neighborhood, dotted with strip malls. Like the family she shelters, she asked for anonymity to avoid drawing the attention of the authorities.

This woman is a criminal.

Her own home has “much privilege,” she says plainly, and she, her husband and her children have the contentment of a life being well lived.

She is a far Left Progressive.  She left real Judaism long ago.  What is a Jewish virtue is giving your children better than you have.  Working hard and sacrificing to give them opportunities you didn’t.

If you want to know why Jews that came here as penniless refugees from Europe had grand children that were wealthy and successful, that is it.  It is a cultural value to improve your lot over every generation.

The idea of condemning is a direct affront to this Jewish virtue.  A proud Jew says “my parents worked hard to put me in private school and give me every chance of success and I will do the same for my children.”   A progressive says “we’re full of privilege.”  Horseshit, it’s not privilege, it’s the sacrifice made by the generations that came before you and calling it privilege spits in their faces.

“We, as a temple, we talk about it’s our job to go out and do good in the world, to help the other,” she remembers. “Here was something put in our laps, a really concrete way to make the world a better place.”

This is why I have such a hard time finding a Synagogue to go to.  They are often full of the worst fucking Leftism.

The network began after the election of President Trump and the fears — and then reality — that undocumented immigrants would face stricter enforcement action.

For the woman, the link from the present to the history of World War II is strong.

“I grew up in the time where the Holocaust was not so far behind me,” says the woman. “There was always that awareness, as a Jew, that it’s possible to be kicked out of a country where people thought they were home. And many of those people didn’t make it.”

She says there is a strong feeling in the Jewish community. “We cannot let this happen. It’s our responsibility. What was done to us cannot happen to other people.”

God-fucking-dammit, they went there.  ICE is not exterminating people.  There are no gas chambers or work camps.  Nobody is being targeted because of their religion or a national belief inter genetic inferiority.

A nation has the right to defend and protect its people, and part of that is the right to determine under what conditions people may enter and live in this country.

Sending someone who entered the US in violation of our laws back to their home country is not anything like deporting or murdering Jews who had lived in Germany, Poland, Austria, France, or anywhere else in Europe for generations and millennia.  If you thing being sent back to the nation of their birth is the equivalent of being sent to Dachau your moral compass is fucked.

“We can’t talk to anyone. We can’t tell anyone,” says one of the daughters, a 17-year-old senior in high school. “Fear? You can’t get rid of it. My mom’s status isn’t legal.”

Her sister is a year older but they’re both seniors – one had a birthday late in the school year, the other, an early one. They were both born in the United States and until Donald Trump was elected President, the girls say, they felt like any middle-class family.

Their father had just bought a car. Their mother had just got new furniture for their rented house. They were planning where they’d be going to college. They knew they’d go; their parents had made that clear from when they were little. 

“It was about a year ago,” says one of the girls. “It was a regular day. My dad dropped us off at school like usual.” They wished him good luck, because on that day, he was heading to a residency appointment with ICE.

An immigrant from Mexico, he was in the process of normalizing his status, having been undocumented for years. They weren’t nervous, though, because he was on his way to fixing everything, they believed.

So the girls said farewell to their father, expecting he’d pick them up after school.

They haven’t seen him since.

He was detained and deported that day, says his family, for entering the country illegally multiple times, decades ago.

So he broke the law MULTIPLE TIMES.  Consider my well of sympathy dry.  This isn’t some family of Jews who lost their home during kristallnacht, hiding in an attic from the SS.  Dad, and presumably mom, are repeat offenders of Federal Law.

“ICE destroyed my home,” their mother recalls. But she had little time to grieve the loss of her husband or her possessions. Also originally from Mexico, she had overstayed a tourist visa many years ago and had no legal documents. If she was next, who would care for her children?

How fucking hard is it to obey the law?

Hoover, a youthful, slight, optimistic minister seems an unlikely organizer for a network directly sticking its thumb in the eye of the federal government on moral grounds. But then the ordained American Baptist minister, who is fluent in Spanish, begins to speak.

“My particular call in the gospel is to be in partnership and stand beside people who are most attacked, who are most at risk, who are most suffering,” he says.

“It’s been amazing and inspiring to see folks step up and take risks for both members of their own community as well as people they’ve never met before because they believe what’s happening is wrong and they have a moral obligation to do something about it.”

Hoover helped organize a rapid response network of synagogues, mosques and churches. They can offer legal assistance, accompaniment to ICE check-ins, financial help, or in the case of the safe house network, direct sanctuary.

I bet this priest thinks he’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  He’s not.  He’s aiding and abetting violators of Federal law.

And while he is certain he is following God’s law, he knows he could be seen as violating man’s law.

In a statement, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said, “Knowingly harboring an alien is a federal crime.”

Again, we’re not talking about people facing racial extermination.

“We’re going to be someone in the future,” says the younger sister. “We’re going to show my parents that they raised two good daughters who are going to prove to them that we’re going to be someone in life.”

The Jewish woman and the undocumented mother hold hands. It’s striking how similar their hands are.

“We’re not going away,” says the Jewish woman. “We’re going to stand together. We’re more unified than ever.”

The daughters are citizens.  Mom isn’t.  She’s been here at least 17 years, in all that time she never thought to try and become a legal resident?  These are the people that these people want to hide.

I’m tried of hearing “like the Nazis” when it comes to ICE.

There is no moral, legal, or historical equivalency here.  This is a broken moral compass claiming that repeat offenders of Federal law are the same as Jews who lived under centuries of oppression.

All this shit does is make me less sympathetic to their plight.

Repeat offenders who couldn’t be bothered to fill out the right paperwork in two decades time being sent back to the nations of their birth are not the same as my ancestors sent to their deaths because as assumed genetic inferiority.

Fuck everyone who makes this comparison.