According to the Hebrew Old Testament, Yahweh promised the “land of milk and honey” to the descendants of Abraham. It was to be a place solely for
Yahweh’s faithful.
The reference to a “promised land” has long suggested a place of safety and prosperity for the faithful, an ideal place of refuge. Thus, for the Jewish faithful,
the land of Israel has consistently represented a physical manifestation of the trusting and protective relationship between them and their god.
For decades after the creation of the state of Israel by the United Nations after the Second World War, Jews from all over the world returned to what they believed to be their homeland, promised by God. It was an act of faith.
In the 1950s musical West Side Story a pair of unlikely lovers from murderously opposed gang cultures sing together of their dream future.
“There’s a place for us, somewhere a place for us, peace and quiet and open air, wait for us somewhere.”
It’s a hymn to hope, to the faith that loving one another is the formula for finding peace and prosperity.
But the song never identifies where this place is. It is simply an imagined somewhere. This expression of the singers’ belief is also an act of faith, like belief
in a promised land.
Three-quarters of a century later, desperate people from all over the globe are placing their hope and faith in immigration, abandoning their lives of facing
daily danger (religious bigotry, starvation, political terror, impossible poverty - you name it) and trying to get to somewhere safe, their promised land.
Sometimes these refugees place their hope in a clearly identified country or geographic region.
Many North Africans from unstable countries like Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya have been trying to make the dangerous Mediterranean
crossing to Europe. As early as 2015 more than a million migrants reached European countries. For nine years, more have been trying. But thousands suffer
various abuses along the way, and thousands drown or disappear, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
As of June, 2023, nearly 6 million Ukrainian refugees fled the Russian invasion of their homeland to find a place of greater safety elsewhere.
The American news continues to feature stories of thousands making their way north through Central America, hoping to reach the fabled “best country in the
world,” the United States. Once again, most of them are fleeing lives of hopeless poverty and violence to what they see as the promise of safety.
In many cases, though, they find themselves unwelcome. They have been characterized by ruthless politicians as murderers and rapists, vermin to be repelled
if not exterminated.
Hundreds that may escape detection at the border perish days later in the desert from heat and dehydration. Many women are raped. Vulnerable others may
be robbed at gunpoint, removing from them the last of their meagre fortunes.
As climate change continues to make formerly livable regions unfit for habitation, the numbers of refugees will rise, not diminish. They’re almost undoubtedly coming. Where will they go? They might wonder, “Is there a place for us?”
And how will we, still living in relative comfort, greet them when they arrive, especially when our own unequal society and environmental calamities
provide us with growing numbers of Canadians who need our generosity?
