As Jews and people in Jewish community, we have become far too accustomed to headlines, and a history, marked by the experience of Jews being targeted for our religious expression, for our heritage, for simply being different. It is deeply painful.
It shouldn’t be that we have to expend our physical, emotional, and spiritual energy worrying about whether the sheer act of showing up to a quiet, peaceful service on a Saturday morning is one where we are putting ourselves in harm’s way. And yet I know that for so many of us, after the events of last Saturday, and the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, that is the reality that we experience. I feel comfortable showing up to Shabbat services every Friday night and Saturday morning. Experiencing the rhythms of sacred time, in a manner that has been done for generations now, in community, is precious to me, and I never want to give that up. But I recognize that in order for our community to feel safe, it is important to invest in measures—active shooter response trainings, locked doors and video cameras—that should be, but are not, unthinkable in a religious environment. I am proud of the way Society Hill Synagogue has invested in this community’s safety and security while balancing the Jewish values of hachnasat orchim (Genesis 18), welcoming guests, v’ahavta l[a’ger] kamoha (Leviticus 19:34), showing love to strangers, and v’ahavta lereiacha kamoha (Lev. 19:18), showing love to our neighbors.
I have been similarly buoyed by the way in which our own neighbors have reached out to us in this fraught time. Though we’ve never met, Reverend Claire Nevin-Field, Rector of neighboring St. Peter’s Church wrote to me this week, writing, “in an era in which antisemitism and violent action against Jews is rising, I, we, stand with you.”
In the same spirit of reaching out to express support to communities under duress, a congregant of ours, in consultation with our President, Jeremey Newberg and me, drafted a letter for us to send to the Colleyville Beth Israel congregation, expressing our admiration and awe at the bravery and fortitude they demonstrated under the most terrifying of circumstances.
In my experience, these words of comfort, affirmation, and support, sent or received, can touch the soul in ways we can’t even see. Even when we feel powerless in a moment, words of love can have profound effects.
Speaking of words, sometimes the only way to truly express the experience of a moment is not prose but poetry. Hila Ritzabi, poet and Editorial Associate at Ritualwell, an initiative of Reconstructing Judaism that curates Jewish rituals and content, composed the following piece for Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and the people of Colleyville, Texas, entitled When the Captives Were Set Free, God Spilled Her Light:
When the rabbi opened the synagogue door
To a man in need on a quiet Shabbat morning
In January, he held out one gleaming shard
Of this broken world to another
With a welcome and an open heart.
He attempted to fit one piece to another,
But the man’s soul was so shattered the pieces
Were too tiny to sift through.
The man saw his own reflection in the cracked glass
Of the rabbi’s kind eyes
And his misdirected rage bounced round
And round inside him in confusion,
He could not look directly
At the light of another’s face.
He let his sharp edge through the door.
Voices, shouts, phone calls, comments,
Hours of fear, prayers, held
Breath. God did not answer
Our prayers. She kept busy
With her regular, heavy labor,
Sowing light in the hearts
Of those praying or worrying or checking
The news, checking on friends.
She remained a steadfast presence
In that cold room where the rabbi
And three companions gathered
Her light close as the man twisted
And turned in his own darkness.
She kept weaving her light
Through the doors of the Catholic church nearby
Where the pastor, imam, and rabbi held space
For those needing it.
When the captives were finally
Set free, God sighed in relief,
Letting all her carefully held
Light spill. We tweeted prayers
Of gratitude, not knowing who
To tag. She read them
With so much regret and love,
Tucking each one in her starry pocket,
Then placed her hand on the soft globe
Of the earth as though smoothing
The hair on a child’s head.
She looked this way and that,
Picking up one shard and then another,
Not knowing where to begin.
***
This poem reflects on God’s role in this terrifying event. “Where is God?” we may wonder. A longstanding strain of Jewish tradition imagines God differently than the savior depicted in other notes of the tradition, instead imagining God heartbroken at the experience of God’s children in exile, heartbroken at being boxed out of the human experience, everpresent to the spaces where we let God in.
I don’t know of a perfect spiritual answer to how we deal with heartbreak, how we deal with tragedy, how we deal with the broken parts of the human experience.
But in poetry, in song, in togetherness, in community, as it says in Psalm 97 to which Hila alludes: or zarua—light is sown.
Shalom,
Rabbi K.