La justicia siempre se impondrá a la mera legalidad.
Como algunos antiguos profetas judíos bien supieron expresar, “muchas injusticias se fraguaron mediante decreto” para así ‘legalmente’ perseguir a los inocentes.
As some ancient Jewish prophets had it, ‘many injustices were forged by decree’ in order to ‘legally’ persecute the innocent.
Attempting to characterize a crowd of Latinos demonstrating during “A Day Without an Immigrant” on Independence Mall last 14 February 2006, and again this year in South Philadelphia, a columnist, Stu Bykofsky, referred to them as staging a “dazzling chutzpah”.
Meaning gall, presumption plus arrogance, this Hebrew-Yiddish word “chutzpah” was applied to “illegal aliens and criminals by definition” according to the disgruntled Bykofsky, because they had the nerve to assert their “non-existing” rights.
Perhaps those “criminals by definition” or “chutzpadik” Latinos also deserve, on the same xenophobic note, to be placed on concentration camps and have them wear a “blue triangle”, the Nazi contraption to class emigrants.
Last week our dear columnist was thundering once more against ‘illegal’ immigrants and demanded to know whether there existed a Spanish word for chutzpah. Stu, here it is: “Agallas”.
Audacity is not always shameless or impudent; not when someone stands up for what is right, whether legal or not.
In the annals of Hebrew history the Jewish Midwives are a source of great pride for their people, including the Hispanic Sephardic Jews and also some gentiles (goi). The Jewish midwives chose to ignore a law that would force them to kill every newborn Jew.
Under the name of legality many atrocities have been perpetrated.
Immigrants audacious enough to express their plight and assert their dreams are neither arrogant nor criminal.
