Please listen to my podcast at wrestlinganddreaming.podbean.com for a more extensive version of this piece.

This week’s Torah portion of Beshalach begins with the statement that God did not lead the people out of Egypt along the route through the territory of the Philistines “lest the people see war and return to Egypt”

The word “see” is interesting. It could, of course, mean “experience” but, in and of itself, it carries great meaning.

God wish that the people not “see” war could be viewed as meaning that God didn’t want the people to see others at war in the territory where war was common or even to see the ramifications of war, either of which might frighten them for the future. So, God does what was appropriate for a people newly freed from the horrors of slavery: God restricts what the people see so as to avoid fear.

Later in the Torah, we read: “If you see the animal of your fellow lost, you must not hide your eyes, you must return it”.

Now having grown up, we are commanded to act on what we see. We can not hide our eyes.

There was a time when people could honestly say: “We did not know what was happening somewhere else because we did not see it happening”.

That time is long since past.

Through all of the different media available to us, we see what is happening around us, even if it far away.

And when we see, we can not ignore.

And when we see, we can not be convinced that we didn’t see what we know we saw.

We have seen, over and over again, the brutality, lack of compassion and unrestrained actions of ICE agents in Minneapolis. We have seen the completely unjustifiable murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. We have seen children being used as pawns. We have seen completely innocent US citizens taken into custody in insensitive, intrusive fashion.

We have seen what we have seen and it becomes our responsibility to raise our voices against these actions.

While our nation needs a sensible, effective immigration policy, this is not the way.

And we can not ignore what we have seen.