Finding Hope
Recently, I was having a hard time feeling hope, especially after the horrific massacre of the eleven Jews praying on a Saturday morning a few months ago at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh, by an angry lone individual (or would you prefer to say something like “madman”?). I couldn’t get over the bitter irony of death invading the Tree of Life, the name Jews give the Torah, and that Christians call Jesus.
I learned of the massacre while I was at home, Saturday October 27, taking care of my husband who struggles with Parkinson’s Disease. I was watching Shabbat morning services of my synagogue, B’nai Jeshurun, as it was being live streamed, when towards the end the rabbi announced that the increasingly familiar phenomenon of mass murders had just come to the Jewish community. Feeling sickened and scared, I turned on the news. How could anyone have such hatred for people they didn’t know, had never met, but thought of as the dangerous “other,” the enemy, someone they hated with all their heart, defying the teachings of both Jesus and the Hebrew Bible to “love thy neighbor as thyself?”
The following Saturday I went to services at my synagogue. It was packed as were so many places of worship around the country. Towards the end of the service, Rabbi Roly Matalon gave a brave sermon saying that he could no longer avoid politics. Anti-Semitism had to be called out as the fuel—not the root--of white supremacy as well as its companion in arms, a strident white nationalism. I felt even more despairing when I left because I knew he was right.
But soon I saw things that gave me hope, that made me begin to accept that maybe love can triumph over hate. There were vigils mourning the victims where Christian and Muslim students joined with Jews. Overwhelming support came the Muslim American community, for they too had been the object of hatred. NBC News reported, “A Muslim American group has raised more than $200,000 through an online crowdfunding campaign to help families affected by the Oct. 27 mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, which killed at least 11. Celebrate Mercy, one of the organizers of the campaign, told NBC that the money will assist families with medical bills, funeral expenses and other immediate needs. Tarek El-Messidi, the group’s founding director, says his hope through the fundraiser is "to respond to evil with good.” Some of the money may go to foster Muslim-Jewish dialogue and collaboration.
Only if we talk to each other, when we truly meet face to face, can there be hope of change. I saw this in practice on Saturday November 10th, when I returned to services at my synagogue to find several members of the Michigan Corrections Organization who had come to express their outrage at the massacre, their support for Jews, and to witness the profound transformation they had each experienced as the result of dialogue.