The Five Books of Moses address the subject of the ger (the stranger) in dozens of passages. One passage among them is unusual: Deuteronomy 10:18 provides:
“You (plural) shall love the stranger (singular) because you (plural) were strangers (plural) in the land of Egypt.”
In this passage the injunction is love of the stranger, or the ger (spelled gimmel resh in Hebrew) This is and the one from Leviticus cited below are the only passages that associate the stranger with the idea of love.
This passage parallels that found at Leviticus 19:18. The typical quotation is only a part of the verse itself. For context, let’s look at the entire verse:
“You (singular) shall not take vengeance and you (singular) shall not bear a grudge against the children of your people but (or and) you (singular) shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am Adonai.”
In this passage the injunction is love of the neighbor, or the re’ah (spelled resh ayin in Hebrew, with the second person singular form in this verse)
Note that the translation “neighbor” is not the most common for this word. The Brown Driver Briggs Lexicon gives “friend”, “companion” and “fellow” as the best translations. Clearly these are different ideas of relationship from that of the stranger.
A few verses further on in Leviticus: Chapter 19:33-34, this injunction is restated:
“And if a stranger that sojourns with you (singular) in your (plural) land, you (plural) shall not do him wrong. The stranger that sojourns with you (plural) shall be unto you (plural) as the homeborn among you (singular) and you (singular) shall love him as yourself (singular), because you (plural) were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am Adonai.”
Note also that the Deuteronomy injunction regarding love of neighbor is addressed to the community. It is given in the plural.
The Leviticus injunction to love the neighbor, friend or companion, is given in the singular. But the context within which it is found is equally a plural one.
There are those who argue that these verses universalize the (apparent) commandments to love, extending them by implication to all mankind.
I think that is an unwarranted expansion of responsibility.
The term ger is used as a noun in the Hebrew not to refer to all of mankind, but rather to a specific class of persons. The ger is a stranger living among the Hebrew or Israelite community. The term does not refer to an unknown, theoretical stranger in a far-off land or to a generic human being who is not a part of the community.
As Abraham said to the children of Het when he sought a burial site for Sarah: “ger v‘toshav anochi ima’chem”, or “I am a stranger residing with you”.
And, indeed, all of the dozens of references to the ger that are found in the Five Books of Moses, use the term ger in this sense i.e. a person residing among the Israelites who was not born into the community.
And, almost all of those references have a single theme.
The ger is to be treated justly. He is afforded the same civil rights as the homeborn. He is subject to the same (civil) restrictions as the homeborn. But, interestingly, he is to be shown the same deference in many instances as those in the protected classes of the Levites, the widows and the orphans; presumably because he is assumed to be at an economic disadvantage.
The ger is not to work on Shabbat. He is to participate in the rejoicing on festivals and in the affliction on Yom Kippur. He is included in the prohibition against consuming blood but he can eat at least some of the foods that are prohibited to the Israelites. The ger can apparently offer certain sacrifices but, if he does, he is subject to the same laws as the homeborn. The ger is prohibited from offering child sacrifices — an abhorrent practice to the Israelites — in the same way the homeborn is prohibited.
The Hebrew word ger, when used as a verb, refers to an implicitly temporary residence.
In later texts and contexts, the term ger is used as a proselyte or convert, but that is not the sense of the term in earlier Biblical usage.
In several passages the injunction to treat the ger in a specific manner is coupled with the explanation that it is appropriate because “you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. We tend to think of the treatment of the Hebrews’ experience in Egypt at the end of its duration when they were oppressed. And, indeed, that memory should lead to avoidance of oppression.
But we shouldn’t forget that the treatment of the Hebrews in their initial experience in Egypt was quite different. There is a positive example found in the Egypt experience as well as a negative one.
When Joseph brought Jacob and the Hebrews down to Egypt to escape the famine they were settled in Goshen, which was rich pasture land for their sheep. They were provided with all that they needed to establish themselves and to thrive and prosper. The fact that the community expanded so dramatically over time as to be considered by some Egyptians a threat is testimony to the favorable conditions of their life in Egypt.
So, the memory of their sojourning in Egypt had its very good period, a transitional period, and a very difficult period. It is the entire range of memory that should and did inform the later Israelites attitude toward the ger.
There has been controversy among scholars over the years about the meaning of the word re’akha and about the meaning of the idea of love of neighbor and love of stranger.
Some Christian scholars, wanting to see in the words of Jesus, which quote the Hebrew Bible, more than is actually expressed in the original source. There have been reflexive and defensive protests by Jewish scholars that the Jewish sense of the texts was always as universalistic as the Christians adopt as their own. The comment of Rabbi J.H Hertz to the “love your neighbor” injunction seems to avoid both the defensiveness and tendency toward “me-too ism”. He writes:
“Let the honour and property of thy fellowman be as dear to you as thine own. These three Hebrew words (v’ahavta l’reah’cha ca’mocha) were early recognized as the most comprehensive code of conduct, as containing the essence of religion and applicable in every human relation and towards all men.”
Note here that Hertz’s view of this injunction is as a “code of conduct”. It is about behavior, not emotion.
Hertz’s comment was to the passage in Leviticus regarding love of neighbor. We have a more expansive and more Christian-like view presented by Maimonides in his comment on the Deuteronomy verse regarding love of stranger. He writes:
“Our parents we are commanded to honor and fear; to the prophets we are ordered to hearken. A man may honor and fear and obey without loving. But in the case of ‘strangers’ we are bidden to love them with the whole force of our heart’s affection”.
Here Maimonides, however, is expressly addressing the treatment of the ger. We should remember that Maimonides spent his entire adult life essentially as a ger; first in Morocco after leaving Spain as a child, and then in Egypt where he served as physician to the Islamic ruler.
There is no real ambiguity, given the number of references we have, about the character of the ger. The ger is a person resident within the Israelite community who was not born into it. The ger is one who shares in the communal life of the Israelites. He is generally held to the same standards of civil conduct and entitled to the protections of the community.
The ger, for the Israelite, is not a theoretical construct. The ger is the person walking next to him on the street, gleaning his fields, resting on Shabbat and rejoicing at the Festivals.
The Israelite community and the Israelite individual have specific enumerated duties and responsibilities to the ger. Those responsibilities are expressed in terms of required, permitted and prohibited behaviors.
But those responsibilities are specific to the ger; the person who is resident in the community. In that respect the ger and the neighbor, friend, or fellow share the same characteristic: particular not universal.
©Charles R. Lightner