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On the First Shabbat After Pittsburgh Attack, ‘We’re Here to Be Jewish Together’ | On the First Shabbat After Pittsburgh Attack, ‘We’re Here to Be Jewish Together’ |
(35 minutes later) | |
PITTSBURGH — As the sun went down on Friday, they walked into synagogues across the country in solidarity and in grief. Some carried prayer books. Some carried their children. Others carried the memories of friends who had been slaughtered nearly a week earlier in a gunman’s hate-filled rampage at the Tree of Life synagogue. | PITTSBURGH — As the sun went down on Friday, they walked into synagogues across the country in solidarity and in grief. Some carried prayer books. Some carried their children. Others carried the memories of friends who had been slaughtered nearly a week earlier in a gunman’s hate-filled rampage at the Tree of Life synagogue. |
Some were Jews with a strict practice of religious observance. Others set foot inside a synagogue only once or twice a year. There were Christians and Muslims, political dignitaries and Hollywood stars, greeting one another with a “Shabbat Shalom” that on this first Sabbath since the killings felt less like the usual friendly greeting than a plea for a shattered peace. | |
“We are all grieving,” Dr. Mitchell Antin, a regular congregant at Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh, which was holding regular services as well as private services for two of the congregations at the Tree of Life, where 11 people were killed. | |
So it went: Candles were lit, songs were sung, and rabbis and congregants spoke about finding healing in community, about finding hope in grief and about the fears that now loom over the simple practice of faith. These are scenes from their Shabbats. | |
At the Rodef Shalom congregation in Pittsburgh, where three funerals were held over the past week, people fell into weary hugs in the lobby and greeted newcomers. | At the Rodef Shalom congregation in Pittsburgh, where three funerals were held over the past week, people fell into weary hugs in the lobby and greeted newcomers. |
“Have you been to a Jewish service before?” an older woman asked one of the many women at the service who were wearing hijabs. | “Have you been to a Jewish service before?” an older woman asked one of the many women at the service who were wearing hijabs. |
The leader of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh received a standing ovation, as did Joanne Rogers, the widow of the children’s television host Fred Rogers, whose neighborhood, after all, was Squirrel Hill. | |
“It’s been confusing for me; I’ve been frightened,” Mrs. Rogers told the congregation. “I have had trouble dealing with the fact that this happened, but I don’t want to give credit to the fact that it happened. | “It’s been confusing for me; I’ve been frightened,” Mrs. Rogers told the congregation. “I have had trouble dealing with the fact that this happened, but I don’t want to give credit to the fact that it happened. |
“I want to tell you how wonderful you are,” she said. “How beautiful you are. I love you.” | “I want to tell you how wonderful you are,” she said. “How beautiful you are. I love you.” |
As the cantor sang, a smaller, private service was taking place nearby in Levy Hall for members of the Tree of Life congregation, whose synagogue was now a crime scene and whose membership was now seven fewer. It was holding its first Shabbat service since last Saturday. | As the cantor sang, a smaller, private service was taking place nearby in Levy Hall for members of the Tree of Life congregation, whose synagogue was now a crime scene and whose membership was now seven fewer. It was holding its first Shabbat service since last Saturday. |
“I do not ordinarily go to Friday night services,” said Marcia Stewart, 87, a member of Tree of Life for four decades. When she goes to Saturday service, she usually shows up late. That’s what happened last Saturday, and it probably saved her life. That is in part why she felt obligated to go tonight. | |
“They were there Saturday,” she said of the dead. “And I was not.” | |
She had spent this past week at funerals for people she had been having lunch with not a month ago. Irv Younger. Bernice Simon. Rose Mallinger, whose funeral she had attended earlier on Friday at Rodef Shalom. | |
At that funeral the rabbi had talked of still being here, “not ready to disappear yet,” she said. | |
That is another reason she felt she needed be there on Friday. “Tree of Life needs to be there together again,” she said, “or we will lose our identity.” — Campbell Robertson | |
At Temple Emanuel in Newton, Mass., a conservative synagogue in a leafy suburb of Boston, congregants arrived under a drizzling rain, awash in sadness, fear and anger. | |
“We just weren’t the ones who happened to be shot, but we feel like it happened to everyone here,” said Sheldon Rowdan, 45, who came with his wife and two children. He described Newton as a family-centered community that felt similar to Squirrel Hill. | |
He said that he had been thinking about his grandparents, who were Holocaust survivors. “They had always said, ‘It’s going to happen again — don’t ever feel complacent,’” he said. “I think in the United States people did get complacent. They did kind of feel like it wouldn’t happen here.” | |
Linda Gelda, 64, said she had come to services on Friday full of emotions. | |
“I’m partly here out of outrage,” she said. “I feel like it’s one thing I can do. It protects against a feeling of despair and helplessness.” | |
Several people who were not Jewish said they had come to show solidarity with Jewish friends. Heather Neal, 39, said she had heard about the #ShowUpforShabbat campaign organized by the American Jewish Committee to encourage Jews and non-Jews alike to attend services on Friday. She decided to bring her daughter, Victoria, 4. | |
By 6:30, when the service for families started, there were several hundred people in the sanctuary, greeting one another with hugs and kisses. The rabbi, Michelle S. Robinson, made only brief allusions to the tragedy in Pittsburgh; the synagogue’s main Shabbat service is Saturday morning, and Senator Elizabeth Warren was set to come and deliver a prayer. | |
“Each of you who made the choice to come here tonight, to stand together, to pray together, are angels of peace,” Rabbi Robinson said. “Let us raise our voices against the darkness.” — Kate Taylor | |
At the Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan, a new poster on the table that announces coming events offered a quiet signal of a changed world. It showed pictures of the 11 Pittsburgh victims. | |
“It’s unspeakably terrible and sad,” said Gideon Schor, who has been a member of Lincoln Square, a modern Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side, for more than 20 years. | |
But as people gathered, many said the events in Pittsburgh would not disrupt their Sabbath. | |
“Nothing will prevent me from coming,” said Mr. Schor, 54, who attends synagogue daily. | |
He added: “Our strength comes from daily unity. We draw additional strength from each other in challenging times.” | |
Rabbi Shaul Robinson, the senior rabbi, said he spent much of this week in conversations about how to enhance security. Though he would not divulge what additional preparations the temple had made, he said he had heard from many Jews who were even more committed to “to show up for Shabbat.” | |
“It is absolutely a sign that we will not be cowed or intimated or too frightened to walk into a Jewish building,” Rabbi Robinson said. — Tyler Pager | |