Reflections Two Years after Pittsburgh

Today is the second anniversary of the terrorist murder of 11 Jewish people at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

At that point, apart from High Holiday services, I was only attending synagogue by livestreaming - and I did watch the service that morning from Central Synagogue. I was horrified by what happened, and made a small donation to Tree of Life.

A couple of months afterward, I visited Central Synagogue in person while in New York, and it was wonderful - and I decided to seek out more in-person synagogue experiences, so I started attending fairly regularly. No long after I began attending, the Poway Chabad murder happened. In October or so, at Simchat Torah, I attended Society Hill Synagogue for the first time and soon became a regular - and was in attendance on a Friday night after the brutal terrorist attack and murders on the Jewish community in Jersey City - I don't think there was a dry eye in the house as the rabbi read the names of those murdered. Since the pandemic started, in addition to continuing to participate very actively at Society Hill Synagogue, I have also started participating in learning and services at South Philadelphia Shtiebel - some of which are in-person (outdoors, masked, socially distanced).

I participate in synagogue life, even though I am not Jewish, because I find it spiritually nourishing, because I find it helps me to be a better person, because it is fun, and because I have made a number of new friendships with some really awesome people. I especially love the soulful music and the wrestling with Jewish texts (the Tanach being familiar to me already from my Christian background, but which I have learned a lot about in Jewish contexts).

I don't specifically attend as a response to anti-Semitism, but if there is any way that my synagogue participation can be seen as a gesture of deep contempt toward those people who have repudiated the image of God in which they were made to show hatred toward the Jewish people and faith even to the extent of engaging in violence and murder, good - I am delighted to express deep contempt for this ideology and its adherents.