The latest episode of the Callings podcast features Erin VanLaningham and John Barton speaking with Rabbi Sarah Bassin. She serves as the director of clergy and congregations for the nonprofit HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), the world’s oldest refugee agency. Previously, she was the associate rabbi at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, focused on congregation-based justice work, as well as the founding executive director of NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change.
In the episode, Sarah affirms the need to bring both thoughtfulness and skepticism to bear on the national conversation about immigration. Most importantly, she says, we must “center human dignity.” For the Jewish community, she speaks about the power of reinvention, which allows the transformation of persecution into empathy: “Because we know what it has been to be the stranger,” she explains, “we do not want others to suffer in the same way we did.”
She also reflects on the paradoxes of leadership as part of the call to live for the sake of others. Effective leadership means leading through change and transformation, even if it brings discomfort. At the same time, growth can come through “holy envy,” by which she means seeing how others embody a value or address a situation differently and then discerning what it might mean for our own contexts and lives.
Click here to listen to the episode featuring Sarah Bassin titled “The North Star of Justice.”
Stephanie L. Johnson is the editor of Vocation Matters.