The Lilith Blog

October 4, 2018 by Rabbi Phyllis Berman

Pharaoh’s Family Separation Policy: A Midrash

This midrash was written in a wonderful class taught by Sabrina Sojourner at the National Havurah Institute in July 2018.  We had just gotten home from a trip, organized by the American Federation of Teachers to include religious leaders, teachers, and activists to Tornillo, Texas, on the border between El Paso and Mexico, where children, separated from their parents after crossing the border, were being held by our government.

From “locals” who live in El Paso, we were told that in Tornillo, where our government has just shipped thousands of migrant children to tent cities in the dark of night along with the detention center that has housed “kidnapped” children for months now, the drinking water is tainted, much like the water in Flint, MI. As Michael Moore said in his movie Fahrenheit 11/9, that’s one way to get rid of people you don’t want in your country…