I hope your Thanksgiving was filled with warmth, laughter, and the comfort of friends and family.

As I reflect on the holiday, I think about the moments of connection and care Our welcoming community
That makes people feel at home.
It’s also a time to remember those whose tables are empty,
Those who are new to the area…
And those whose paths we only hear about in the news.

Last month, at the Detroit Jewish Book Fair,
I heard Rabbi Angela Buchdahl speak about
Her memoir, Heart of a Stranger.
Her presence was warm and sincere.
But more than her story, more than her milestones,
it was her understanding of what it means to be a stranger
that stayed with me.

Today, the word stranger feels heavy.
Fear rises faster than curiosity.
Suspicion comes before compassion.
Headlines, politics, and social media train us
to brace ourselves against one another.
The unknown feels risky.
The unfamiliar feels threatening.
We retreat behind digital social and ideological walls.
And inside them, “stranger” begins to sound less like a description and more like a warning.

And yet, every day, ordinary people step into moments
Where we are the stranger. A child walks into a classroom
where friendships were formed long before they arrived.
A resident moves into Jewish Senior Life leaving behind
routines, neighbors and a home they have known for years.

A caregiver begins a first shift,
learning rhythms that others already know.
A widower takes his first meal alone,
faces and voices around him unfamiliar.
And an advocate rises to speak for justice
in a room where antisemitism twists fear into anger,
where people condemn people they’ve never taken the time to get to know. The learned hatred, the kind that is taught from generation to generation because of history, because of holocaust…

We do it too. Every single day.
We glance at someone and decide we don’t want to know them.
Because of the way they look.
Because of the way they speak.
Because of the way they behave – bossy, angry, know-it-all, frail, weak.
Strangeness isn’t abstract.
It’s human.
It’s vulnerability.

Rabbi Buchdahl’s story shines a light on this truth.
Growing up in Spokane, Washington,
as a Korean American Jew,
she learned early what it felt like to be “not quite belonging.”
But instead of hardening her, it expanded her.
Being a stranger, she said, is not simply something to overcome.
It is a source of empathy.
A practice of noticing those on the edges.
She saw it in her mother, navigating English as a second language
in a community of strangers.

I think about our world today.
Quick to divide.
Slow to trust.
Blind, to humanity in those who seem different.
Fear of the stranger has become one of our culture’s most powerful and damaging forces.

But our tradition offers a counter-narrative.
You shall love the stranger.
Not because it’s easy.
Not because it’s comfortable.
But because we know what it feels like
to hope someone will welcome us.
Community isn’t inherited.
It’s created… one act at a time.

It begins in small moments.
An invitation to sit together.
A warm greeting in the hallway.
Asking questions and truly listening.
A gentle, “You’re new here? Let me show you around.”
Choosing to stop, to see someone,
to say something, rather than walk past them.

Rabbi Buchdahl’s journey teaches us
that those who have felt outside
often become the ones who know best
how to open the door.

In a world that tells us to fear the stranger,
may we have the courage to welcome them.
To see them.
To know them.
To love them.
And may we remember
that, at some point in our lives,
each of us hopes someone will do the same for us.

Shabbat Shalom