We are liv­ing in an era when deep sus­pi­cion of migrants is nor­mal­ized, when peo­ple who have escaped their homes seek­ing refuge from war or pover­ty are char­ac­ter­ized as crim­i­nals. Oth­ers pur­su­ing bet­ter lives — lives of which they have only dreamed — are turned away as ene­mies. We wit­ness the over­heat­ed rhetoric of ​“they” will replace us, ​“they” will join our ene­mies; we, there­fore, are instruct­ed to pro­tect our­selves and our val­ues in the homes we so cher­ish, homes where we belong and they do not.

While all these emo­tions and the defen­sive pos­tures they gen­er­ate are read­i­ly under­stand­able, they fail to appre­ci­ate one of the fun­da­men­tal lessons of the reli­gious tra­di­tions of the West. Our com­mon bib­li­cal her­itage com­ments often — direct­ly and indi­rect­ly — on what it means to be a refugee, to be in exile. The sum of those com­ments leads to one unam­bigu­ous con­clu­sion: we are all refugees, and exile is the eter­nal human condition.

Con­sid­er the sto­ry with which the bib­li­cal tra­di­tion begins: Adam and Eve in the Gar­den of Eden. True, the Gar­den is osten­si­bly these humans’ first home. But it is a home that lasts bare­ly an instant (one rab­binic midrash claims that Adam and Eve were in the Gar­den for just a few short hours). Accord­ing to bib­li­cal tra­di­tion, human his­to­ry begins when the first woman and man were expelled from the Gar­den — they and their off­spring for­ev­er liv­ing in exile, wan­der­ing the face of the earth.

Adam and Eve hard­ly could have dreamed of a bet­ter life else­where. The dis­tinc­tion of the first ​“dream­ers” falls to the first fam­i­ly of bib­li­cal tra­di­tion, Abra­ham and Sarah. Cru­cial­ly, these indi­vid­u­als — the first to imag­ine a world unit­ed under one true God — were told by that God to leave their land, their birth­place, their ances­tral home; to begin a new, bet­ter life else­where. Ful­fill­ing this dream required leav­ing home.

These sce­nar­ios are famil­iar ones, hav­ing been reliv­ed again and again through human his­to­ry up to the present day. Humans have been expelled from their homes by war, famine, local envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, and more. They have left their homes to find new oppor­tu­ni­ties, rec­og­niz­ing that their lives could be more peace­ful or rich­er else­where. A ​“Gold­en Age” in one locale attract­ed dream­ers from anoth­er. In the scheme of his­to­ry, humans rarely sat still.

Our species today traces its roots to the first humans in Africa, though not all of us stayed there. Exam­ine our DNA today and you will dis­cov­er inputs from our mul­ti­ple homes over gen­er­a­tions and gen­er­a­tions. And yet, so often in our world today, we still con­sid­er our­selves to be at home, and oth­ers, whom we deem ​“for­eign­ers,” are thought to be encroach­ing on what belongs to us. 

If we take the les­son of the bib­li­cal foun­da­tion seri­ous­ly, we will rec­og­nize that we are all in exile. Our homes are our homes because this is where we land­ed. Per­haps if we recall that my grand­par­ents fled Ukraine and yours fled Italy or Ire­land — if we acknowl­edge that we were all forced from our homes in the past and like­ly will again be forced in the future — we will be able to respond in a kinder, more mer­ci­ful, and more wel­com­ing man­ner to those who find them­selves as refugees today. Fun­da­men­tal­ly, we are they, because as humans we all have the same expe­ri­ence. Our turn will come, and if we hope to find a wel­com­ing hand when we flee, it behooves us to offer that wel­com­ing hand now.