As a rabbi who has spent his life gleaning wisdom from sacred writ, I am troubled to see the Department of Homeland Security put biblical verses at the heart of a massive recruitment effort for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Given the Bible-thumping tendencies of the Trump administration, I suppose this development should come as no surprise. The DHS had already used Bible verses in its social media campaign to argue that its use of racial profiling, arbitrary arrest and “disappearing” of Hispanic immigrants, including those with U.S. citizenship, is precisely what God is going for.

Americans have long shown themselves to be vulnerable to believing that the Bible sanctions morally dubious projects. For centuries, the so-called curse of Ham , taken from a passage in t

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