The Truth About Jews And Immigration

Leftist Jews may have tried a little too hard to ‘repair the world.’

August Harriman | November 4, 2026

The defining value of many American Jews is “Tikkun Olam.”

That it is the purpose of Jews to “repair the world” is taken from a once obscure passage in the Talmud.

Our role, as found in the Torah, is only superficially similar.  In the Book of Isaiah 49:6, we are to be “a light unto the nations.”

In a key sense, these are 180 degrees opposite.  “A light onto the nations” is leading by example.  “Repair the world” is fixing the world — by litigation, by legislation, by force.

The kibbutz and communism are fundamentally identical other than for the above distinction.

The Torah is remarkably careful in its choice of words and use of language.  The Talmud not always.  Many think Tikkun Olam our greatest virtue.  A few think it our greatest flaw.

It can be noble, of course, to repair the world.  Wilberforce, for instance — the British ended slavery in 1833.

With a moral certitude similar to that of Wilberforce, over the past hundred years, organized American Jewry has been involved in Tikkun Olam.  Prime among these was the push to liberalize immigration policy.  The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 established the national origins quota system, placing severe limitations on immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.

In August 1953, Congressman Emmanuel Celler and Senator Herbert Lehman simultaneously introduced bills to repeal the policy.  By this point, however, repeal would be of nil practical benefit to the Jewish community.  It was at once too little and too late.  Most of European Jewry were lost in the Holocaust; the remainder were trapped behind the iron curtain.  Language in the bills revealed a purpose more ambitious than the parochial.  It would replace the national origins quotas with a system that would have put immigration from all parts of the world under a unified non-discriminatory basis.  The bills would remove the stigma of racism........

© American Thinker