As Jews, we are taught to welcome the stranger as Abraham did the angels and to remember that we, too, were strangers wandering the wilderness. We are taught many of our values in simplified words or phrases, like Tzedakah (Justice), G’milut Chasidim (Acts of Loving Kindness) and Tikkun Olam (Repairing the World). But we don’t always see these ideas in practice.
In my childhood, I witnessed these values in action.
Despite protests from community members, my childhood synagogue hosted a Tent City in Bellevue. While some congregants protested and even left the shul, certain of the impending bad outcomes, no catastrophes occurred. Instead, the decision to open our community gave me my first opportunity to meet and speak with people experiencing homelessness.
This experience defined my Judaism. I have never felt more Jewish than when I joined my congregation to live our values and let people in from the wilderness. Not at any Seder, Shabbat or other ceremony. It was in this act of compassion for others.
However, like many, my identity with the faith has changed over time. When I was 19, my father asked me to leave our home, and for the next month I slept on my manager’s couch until a room opened up that I started to rent. The Department of Housing and Urban Development defines this as homelessness.
While I survived on the kindness of others, I feared the moment when someone from my Jewish community — that same community that prides itself on bringing people inside — would find out. As much as I remembered the joy of growing up in an accepting congregation, I also remembered our congregants’ vocal opposition to hosting homeless people near the synagogue.
Their voices echoed in my head and created a fear of interaction with the Jewish community, even though I was not an addict or sleeping on the street. Even though I was one of them. I remembered the community outcry about serving people experiencing homelessness and was fearful of making my situation obvious. Because maybe I wasn’t one of them anymore.
Now, throughout our communities, I once again hear people speaking in fearful and derogatory language about homeless individuals. There’s a lot of fearmongering going on in Seattle. On the news, Facebook and websites such as Nextdoor, stories are sensationalized to show the homeless as drug-addicted threats. These are our neighbors. And people would know that if they knew what I know.
Two years ago, I started working to alleviate poverty in our region. One of my first roles was working directly with people experiencing barriers to employment, such as homelessness, addiction or criminal history. While my clients were struggling to overcome one, two, more or none of those barriers, each situation was different. Learning their stories — and what got them into that situation — was the job. I was working with them to overcome those barriers, when, sometimes, they could not, and to not criminalize them.
I’m not saying no one homeless has ever committed a crime. Some have, as have many housed people. But the reality is that our children are more likely to experience homelessness than they are to experience violence from members of our homeless community.
Many in the homeless community have given up and don’t believe in the system anymore. Responding to homelessness by locking people up will only cause more trauma, calcify the problem and drive us further from a world where all can access shelter.
Responding to homelessness by locking people up will only cause more trauma, calcify the problem and drive us further from a world where all can access shelter.
We have to be patient, compassionate and empathetic. We do this for our children. So they can know our community will always welcome them. So they don’t lose faith in our commitment to justice. Don’t forget, we were once strangers in a strange land.
Matt Kanter is a Jewish, formerly homeless, advocate who has worked in nonprofits and in the private sector. In addition to homelessness, he has a passion for disability justice, developing the current generation of leadership, using his culinary education to make new treats and saying hello to your dogs.
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