Welcoming the Stranger: Aligning Hospitality, Justice and Charity with Righteousness
This article explores hospitality, the theme of BIAPT’s 2023 annual conference to be held on 11th to 13th July 2023. If you want to explore these sort of themes further, please consider joining us for the conference. For details visit the conference website here.
In the Tanakh (the Bible) there are many instances where we are commanded to treat the stranger with charity, justice and righteousness. Why?
Perhaps it is based on the idea of reciprocity, a payback for having been guests, presumably quite good guests: “Because you were strangers in a strange land” (Exodus 22:20) This seems reasonable; the good guest becomes, hopefully, the good host. After all, every one of us are merely guests on this planet, some of us better guests than others. In reciprocity, we should also be good hosts.
We may think of hospitality as welcoming guests to our homes, the guest being a friend or neighbour. We are probably expecting it to be reciprocal, being invited back. Biblical hospitality is perhaps broader, seen as welcoming not only our neighbours and friends to our homes, but the stranger too, into our homes and our land treating all equally. These are acts of holiness through charity and are part of being righteous.[1]
Righteousness, charity and justice are closely linked etymologically in the Tanakh almost as interchangeable concepts lost in translation. Charity in Hebrew (Tzadakah) has the same root and meaning as Righteous (Tzadik). This idea of proper behaviour, is linked further to the idea of Justice as in: “Justice, Justice thou shalt pursue “(Tzedek Tzedek, Tirdef) (Deuteronomy 16:20). Partly how we demonstrate this complex behaviour is in how we treat each other and the ‘other,’ the stranger, the ethics of the encounter.[2]
Perhaps it is easier to understand that link by its opposite, the sin of Sodom. In Genesis, we come across the land of Sodom and Gomorrah as fertile lands that Lot, the nephew of Abraham, goes to live in. In Genesis 18, three strangers visit Abraham and, although in the previous Chapter 17, Abraham, an adult, has just circumcised himself and must be in pain, Abraham welcomes these strangers and offers to wash their feet and provides them with a wonderful meal. In fact, Abraham is seen as the ideal of hospitality.[3] According to legend, Abraham lives in a tent open on all sides, a welcome for all (ARN). While the story pauses to demonstrate the righteous behaviour of Abraham, two of the visitors are on their way to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Why? Because of their poor treatment of strangers and their lack of hospitality, charity and justice and therefore, righteousness.
There were four judges in Sodom and they were named for their actions: Shakrai (liar) and Shakrurai (habitual liar), Zayyafi (forger) and Matzle Dina (perverter of justice).
Talmud Sanhedrin 109a.
This section of the Talmud goes on to give many examples of cruel behaviour to visitors, to those offering charity and to those being victims of crimes using a mix of Biblical ideas and Greek mythology such as of Procrustes, who was a son of Poseidon and a very cruel host.
In the story of Sodom, lack of hospitality, injustice and inequality leads here to civil unrest and destruction; the destruction of a people and society. Few, if any, can survive. Lot and his family are the only ones to make it out alive from Sodom. The destruction is a warning to all of us for all time, living in a fertile land, having the gifts of life, while mistreating the other and being uncharitable.
Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquillity; yet she did not support the poor and the needy. In their haughtiness, they committed abomination before Me; and so I removed them, as you saw.
Ezekiel 16:49-50
In other words, their behaviour was a mix of a terrible lack of hospitality and gross injustice.
The juxtaposition of hospitality to the stranger, charity and justice is further seen in the many repetitions throughout the Torah commanding justice for all.
The same law shall apply to the native as to the stranger who sojourns among you.
Exodus 12:49
When a stranger dwells with you, a stranger in your land, do not cheat him. Like one of your [natural] citizens shall he be considered by you, that stranger who lives with you. You shall love him like yourself. I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 19:23-24
There shall be one standard for you; it shall be for the stranger as well as the native, for I am the LORD your God.
Leviticus 24:22
These commands are given to a people before they are formally a nation, in their own land in which to enact these laws. Until Joshua, after the tales of the Torah, the people are in exile from their land. These laws, further demonstrated by their repetition, must, therefore, be of utmost importance. Welcoming the stranger, offering equality under the law and being charitable are part of the same idea of justice and righteous behaviour.
To be fully human is to recognise the other as equal, “The primary word I-Thou establishes the world of relation.”[4] For Emmanuel Levinas “Responsibility that begins in seeing the face of another human being is a primary philosophical category.”[5] It is echoed in the famous and often plagiarised Hebrew phrase “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19:17-18). This can also be understood in terms of physics, a human being “experiences himself and his feelings as separate from the rest, an optical illusion of his consciousness.”[6] The revelation of Torah is to demonstrate that we are all part of one whole and that whole is Divine.
The call to hospitality is repeated many times throughout the Torah. Versions of this command appear in Exodus 9 times, in Leviticus 18 times, in Numbers 9 times and in Deuteronomy 21 times as well as throughout the Tanakh. Through hospitality, we are demonstrating charity and justice for all. And while the first very few verses of Genesis tell how the Divine created a place for humans to live, a large amount of the books of Exodus tell us how to construct a Tabernacle for the Divine to visit us, to share our table. Sacrifice in Hebrew is from the root Korban, which means ‘to bring closer’, not as the English word is understood as giving something up.[7] With the destruction of the Temple housing the Tabernacle, the dining table has become not only the site of hospitality, but also our own alter (Talmud Babylonia, Hagigah 27a). If we behave with equity, justice, charity and hospitality our tables are blessed with the presence of the Divine, a fine dining experience!
We are all merely tenants in the Divine’s universe (Leviticus 25:23). Everything is temporary. “Every child who is born into this world is born an immigrant. Each and every human being comes into an unknown world whose culture will have to be learned. We begin life as immigrants, as boundary-crossers, as those who leave and who enter, who come and go through life’s doorways.”[8]
Hospitality and the welcome of the stranger also leads to responsibility, by the host and by the guest. The answer to “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9) must, therefore, be ‘Yes’!
The Divine made us in their image “And God said: ‘Let us make adam/humans in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26) and is responsible for us, as a loving entity. This is seen in the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy which describes characteristics we are meant to emulate (Exodus 34:6-7).
We should all be holy (righteous) because the Divine is holy (righteous) and being hospitable is an act of righteousness, justice, equity and charity, welcoming the stranger, the other as we are all others being welcomed by the Divine.
References
[1] Genesis 18; J. Derrida, Adieu a Emanuel Levinas, Editions Galiliee, translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Nass (Stanford University Press, 1998); SH Cedar, “Encountering the Stranger: A model of care enacted in modern multifaith hospital chaplaincy,” Religion and Spirituality in Society Imperial Conference. 2017. Available online: https://religioninsociety.com/about/history/2017-conference. Accessed 09/01/23.
[2] E. Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriosity, translated by Alphonse Lingis (Duquesne University Press, 1968).
[3] SH Cedar, “From ministry to hospitality: welcoming the stranger in Judaism as a practical model for contemporary healthcare chaplaincy,” Practical Theology 13, No. 5 (2020): 480-492.
[4] M. Buber, I and Thou, translated by Roger Gregor Smith (Continuum, 1958).
[5] Derrida Adieu a Emanuel Levinas.
[6] A. Einstein, “Letter to Robert A. Marcus,” in Albert Einstein Archives. Available online: https://albert-einstein.huji.ac.il/. Accessed 09/01/2023.
[7] Cedar “From ministry to hospitality.”
[8] D. Ingber, “Rabbi David Ingber on welcoming the stranger,” in Kol Aleph (2017). Available online: https://kolaleph.org/2017/02/10/rabbi-david-ingber-on-welcoming-the-stranger/. Accessed 09/01/2023.
Other noted texts:
ARN 14. Avot of Rabbi Natan, Schechter Edition (1887).
Jewish Publication Society (JPS). JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Jewish Publication Society, 2003).
Talmud. Sanhedrin 109a and Midrash.
© Harrie Cedar, 2023.
This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Cover Image: John Singer Sargent’s Bedouin Camp from WikiArt licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal.
Dr (SH) Harrie Cedar is a chaplain at both Guys & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust Hospital in London and at Kings College (KCL) London and was previously a research scientist and associate professor, publishing in scientific journals and producing a text book ‘Biology for Health (Applying the Activities of Daily Life)’ published by Palgrave Macmillan/Bloomsbury.
Recent publications have been in Practical Theology and in Health and Social Care Chaplaincy. Along with these publications, projects include End of Life Care, Caring for Carers, Scriptural Reasoning, a multifaith forum for discussion and a project on Three Questions (Hillel) in collaboration with Rev Mark Dean of UAL which attracted a large participation across faiths, beliefs and continents.
