As my young daughter and I climbed onto her bed to read before bedtime, she handed me a new book and was excited to have me read it to her. I hadn’t seen it before and honestly did not give it much thought. It was “The Suitcase,” written and illustrated by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros, and it had arrived through PJ Library, a wonderful program that sends Jewish-related books to families with young children.
The cover features a somewhat odd-looking little blue creature pulling a large suitcase while three other animals look on. It seemed charming, and I assumed we were about to read another sweet book about friendship or welcoming someone new.
A few pages later, I realized what was going on. I froze. This was a far sadder and nuanced story.
The story is simple: a stranger arrives in a new community pulling an old suitcase. He is dusty, tired and frightened, and the other animals want to know what he is carrying. He says the suitcase contains a teacup, then a table and chair, and finally a little wooden cabin where he makes his tea. Of course, the animals do not believe him. None of those things could possibly fit inside a suitcase.
The exhausted stranger lies down to sleep. The others open his suitcase and find a broken teacup and a torn black-and-white photograph of the little cabin he described.
That was when the book hit me. The stranger had not really been lying. In his bag was the teacup, but also the cabin, the table and chair, and the place where he made his tea. He had left his home behind and was carrying what remained of it with him. We know his journey took him over mountains and through deep water, but the book never tells us what forced him to leave.
A young child does not need to confront displacement and migration before bed to understand that something terrible happened and that this creature is very far from home.
2 religious communities with a history of displacement
But sitting there with my daughter, I could not read the story simply as a tale about a funny animal with a suitcase. I am Jewish, and I have been hearing some version of this story for most of my life.
What do we owe the human being — that person who we see now who has struggled — in front of us?
Wandering in search of a home is one of the oldest stories we as a Jewish community tell. We leave, often forcibly, and then we wander, search and hope. We remember places that are no longer ours and carry objects, photographs, prayers and stories from one place to another. Jewish history has contained an awful lot of suitcases — from the Babylonian exile in 586 BCE to England in 1290 and Spain in 1492 to Russia in 1881, Germany in 1933 and Poland in 1968.
Importantly, the Jewish tradition insists there is a moral consequence to remembering this history. The Book of Exodus commands, “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9)
What has always struck me about that line in Exodus is the reason given. The command is not simply “be nice to strangers.” You remember what it is to be vulnerable and dependent on people who already belong. Because you remember, something is required of you.
There is a deep Jewish lesson here. But I also thought “The Suitcase” would resonate with readers of the Deseret News.
Jewish and Latter-day Saint histories are certainly not the same, and I have been close with both communities. But home, displacement and rebuilding are hardly abstract ideas in either history.
The history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints includes being driven from homes in Missouri, trying again to find safety in Illinois and eventually building anew in the West. Converts also left homes elsewhere to gather with the saints in America.
Different histories, certainly. But both traditions know something about leaving a place behind and carrying memory forward.
King Benjamin puts it beautifully in the Book of Mormon: “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.” (Mosiah 2:17)
I thought about that line as I thought about “The Suitcase.” Exodus tells us that remembering what it means to be a stranger should shape how we treat one. King Benjamin tells his people that service to another person is itself service to God.
What we owe one another
The animals in “The Suitcase” are suspicious of the newcomer, and understandably so. His story comes out of nowhere, makes little sense, and they break into his suitcase while he sleeps. Then they see the photograph and broken cup, and something changes.
Of course, the animals cannot return him to his old house or undo whatever happened before he arrived. But they can take action; they repair what they broke and build a place for him among them.
Another human being can be carrying far more than we can see; we rarely know the full story or travels of others.
I found this work to be remarkable because the book is not offering children a solution to immigration, refugees, war or any of the enormous political questions adults might attach to it. The subtext is all there but the book asks a more basic question that children can and must understand: What do we owe the human being — that person who we see now who has struggled — in front of us?
I believe that the answer is this: There are things most of us simply cannot repair. We cannot end wars, return people to lost homes or undo suffering that occurred before someone crossed our path. That is just reality. But it does not mean there is nothing we can do. We can try not to add to what has already been broken and, when we can, repair what is ours to repair.
That message is profound and actionable and is something we should all teach our children. I spend much of my professional life thinking about education and what moral inheritance we are giving our children. There was something incredibly humbling, then, about having my 5-year-old daughter hand me a picture book that managed, in a few pages, to say something I have spent much of my adult life trying to understand.
My daughter understood and experienced “The Suitcase” differently. She saw a stranger, some animals, a broken cup and eventually an act of kindness. She does not know the long history I heard behind the story, and she certainly does not know the history of the Latter-day Saints or her own Jewish people. There will be time for all of that.
But I think — for now — there is incredible value in her encountering the lesson first: Another human being can be carrying far more than we can see; we rarely know the full story or travels of others. And even if we cannot fix everything, that does not mean we should do nothing. We can and must act and we must help our fellow man.
Jews have a long memory of being strangers. Latter-day Saints carry a different history of home, displacement and rebuilding — those histories are distinct. But perhaps part of the reason we collectively remember difficult history is so that we get a little better at seeing the person who needs us now.
That night I thought I was going to be reading my daughter a children’s book. Instead, she handed me a very old lesson about what we owe one another.