Remarks at the Gathering to Remember the Victims of the Tree of Life Massacre

On Monday evening, October 29 our congregation gathered in our sanctuary to honor and remember the eleven Jewish men and women slain at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Below are my remarks at that ceremony.

My Dear Friends,

We come together this evening, devastated, shaken, angry, and in disbelief over  the destruction perpetrated this  past Shabbat  during morning  services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There, eleven congregants, brought together on the Holy Shabbat for worship, were killed by a lone gunner, who, in his deranged mind, held Jews responsible for heaven knows what. We come together tonight because we need to be together, we need to mourn together, we need to pray together, we need to be angry together, to be afraid together, to be resolute and brave together, to comfort each other.  We Jews have always and will always meet tragedy and misfortune together.  We need to be here now because at times like this we need community to support one other, to be reminded to love and not to hate, to be reminded that goodness will overcome evil.  

The Jewish world is a small one. I am sure many of us may have personal connections to Squirrel Hill, the neighborhood where the shooting occurred.  Diane Rosenthal Hurt of Congregation Etz Chaim in Lombard lost two brothers, David and Cecil Rosenthal, who were in their fifties.  They were both intellectually disabled and lived in a group home, yet they never missed a Shabbat morning at the synagogue. "When it came time to take the Torahs out, Cecil always stepped forward to carry it, and David was right behind him. The rabbis knew: You've got to give them a Torah to carry," said Barton Schachter, a past president for Tree of Life.

I too have a personal connection to Squirrel Hill. I attended college at the University of Pittsburgh, and taught religious school – sixth graders  on Tuesday and ninth graders on Sunday morning – at a Reform synagogue in that neighborhood.   In addition, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, the Rabbi at one of the three congregations that met in the Tree of Life Synagogue, was a colleague of mine in Springfield, Massachusetts from 2004 to 2008.  On Shabbat, when the shooting broke out, Rabbi Perlman had just begun praying with a half dozen congregants in the basement. He closed the door to the chapel and pushed his congregants into a large supply closet. The gunman actually looked into the closet, but did not see them, and Rabbi Perlman and his congregants survived.

I don’t know from where Rabbi Perlman drew the strength to speak before thousands at a public vigil Sunday night in Pittsburgh. There, holding back tears, he said, “What happened yesterday will not break us. It will not ruin us. We will continue to thrive and sing and worship and learn together and continue our historic legacy in this city with the friendliest people that we know.”

Tonight is a night to remember and to mourn, to come together and to hug one another, either literally or figuratively. It is a time to pray. I read a passage in a book recently by Mohsin Hamed called Exit West. The book contained one of the most beautiful passages I have ever read about prayer. The chief protagonist, who is a refugee displaced by war, explains why he prays:

“When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched/ and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents/ all of us/ every man and woman and boy and girl/ and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us/ and this loss unites humanity/ unites every human being/ the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow/ the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another/ and out of this [he] felt it might be possible/ in the face of death/ to believe in humanity’s potential for building a better world/ and so he prayed/as a lament/as a consolation/ and as a hope ……….”

We too gather here tonight in the face of death, recognizing our common humanity, affirming our belief that we can build a better world, consoling one another in a time of uncertainty, and resolving to work toward a world, where, as the Prophet Micha says, “Each person can sit under their vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.”