Carrying the stranger within: An American Jewish social worker’s reflection on diaspora,otherness,and the weight of moral responsibility

Abstract

As immigrants are disappeared from American streets, I explore what it means to carry a diasporic history of persecution and a legacy of immigration into a social work practice defined by moral responsibility. Writing in the spirit of evocative autoethnography, I explore how my own experiences of otherness within the Jewish community have shaped my ethical commitments as a social worker amid contemporary immigration crackdowns and state-sponsored violence against the immigrant community in the United States of America (USA). Grounded in the Jewish principle of tikkun olam and situated within a tradition of Jewish social workers motivated by a commitment to social justice, I interrogate questions of complicity and the use of self in a time of political repression. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil, I examine who we become when confronted with state-sponsored violence. I argue that Jewish diasporic identity and history can function as a compass connecting experiences of otherness across immigrant communities and grounding a commitment to human rights in social work practice.