The Art of Being a Stranger in a Strange Land

Amid the Jewish people’s never-ending struggle for statehood and self-determination, it’s rather remarkable how they’ve been able to enter foreign, often unfriendly environments and not just adapt, but thrive. It’s a peculiar and impressive thread to the last four millennia of human civilization. 

Contrary to what you might think, however, Jews’ abundant intrepidity, in the face of endless xenophobia and palpable dislike, did not begin with the exile from Jerusalem. 

It’s a story that goes all the way back to Abraham, who, as a sojourner from Ur of the Chaldees somehow found an immediate audience with the Pharaoh himself. 

Joseph, despite not being Egyptian, used his cunning and prophecy to become Vizier to Pharaoh. Moses was, of course, an Egyptian royal. 

In Persia, Nehemiah was the cup-bearer to King Artaxerxes. 

Jews settled all over the Hellenistic world, from Antioch to Rhodes, cultivating communities and flowering in unknown environments. Indeed, the first translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, was done in Alexandria, several hundred years before the exile.

In the Roman period, Josephus engaged with the highest levels of the Roman Empire, as a historian and an advisor. 

Think of Benjamin of Tudela, the medieval Jewish chronicler who journeyed alone all the way across the known world in the unforgiving conditions of the 12th century. 

What this all means is that there can be dual readings of Jewish history. 

Yes, on the one hand, Jews have been a people in exile, moving from place to place in seek of any country that would give them shelter.  

On the other hand, Jews have always been a group of explorers — never driven by conquest or empire, but by the aboriginal human urge to voyage, to strive, to seek out new environs and adventures, girded with an innate ability to adapt to the harshest of circumstances. 

If we recall in Exodus, Abraham didn’t initially go to the land of Canaan because of a divine instruction. He had already left his home in search of somewhere new. 

It’s this same spark which has, for nearly a century, fueled the Chabad movement which, whatever your affiliation or observance or opinion, has inarguably been an exemplar of precisely this kind of Jewish virtue, from the heart of the Caribbean to Mumbai to Nepal.  

It was the same spark, the same force that drove Rabbi Zvi Kogan to a religious frontier in the United Arab Emirates. 

As we mourn the unspeakable tragedy in Dubai this week, it’s worth remembering, celebrating and continuing to advance — the timeless tradition that Kogan was carrying on, leading a tiny community where he was, as an Israeli and a Jew, a stranger in a strange land.