Love the Immigrant As Yourself: An Interfaith Service

More than 20 clergy and houses of worship from the Greater Burlington Area will come together on March 1 at 3 pm to call for the dignified, respectful and lawful treatment of immigrants, refugees and citizens. The interfaith service will take place at Temple Sinai in South Burlington, and will feature homilies by a broad range of local faith traditions including speakers Karen Johnson of the First Unitarian Universalist Society in Burlington, Bishop John McDermott of the Burlington Catholic Diocese, and Rabbi Ariel Ya’akov Dunat of Ohavi Zedek Synagogue in Burlington. 

Recent immigration tactics in Minnesota and across the country go against local faith traditions’ moral imperative to welcome and befriend the immigrant and the “stranger.” While they may differ in a sense of what is needed, they are united in the belief that humane and lawful treatment is possible and necessary and must be part of any policy.

The gathering was convened by Rabbi David Edleson of Temple Sinai and modeled after similar interfaith services across the country. The title of the service comes from the Biblical book of Deuteronomy which reads; “You must love the immigrant as yourself, for you were immigrants in the land of Egypt.” (Deut 10:19) and frames an idea common in many spiritual traditions that we learn to see the divine in those around us, particularly the vulnerable and immigrant.