Mourners visit the memorial outside the Tree of Life Synagogue on October 31, 2018 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Eleven people were killed in a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood on October 27 Image by Getty Images

By Marcella White Campbell November 1, 2018

This piece originally appeared on the Be’chol Lashon Jewish& blog and was shared with us by My Jewish Learning, a sister site of JTA.

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — On Saturday, I received a text:

“why do they hate us so much?”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

It was from my daughter, a first-year student at college who is thousands of miles away from home but, at that moment, was reaching out for comfort, wishing she was curled up on the couch beside me.

Which “they” did she mean? So many acts of hate had been directed at people like us that week — bombs turning up in mailboxes across the country, black people killed while shopping in a supermarket — that I actually needed clarification.

This time, this act of hate was an attack on Jewish people praying. This time, they had come for us in a synagogue.

Usually I try to reply calmly to my children’s questions — saving my venting and inner turmoil for my husband. That Shabbat afternoon, however, my fury boiled over. Instead of sending my daughter words of comfort, I typed the angry words that had been building inside me all day.

I texted back that throughout history, the act of Jews gathering together has been a revolutionary act. We keep doing it and they literally cannot stop us — and they have literally tried everything.

Even before I was Jewish, I understood this viscerally. To be black and Jewish is to stand with two peoples whose very existence is an act of defiance spanning hundreds, even thousands of years.

To be black and Jewish is to identify with two peoples for whom a racist, violent attack on one of us is felt by all of us. These attacks, these invasions — in our sacred spaces, in our very homes — black people, Jewish people, black and Jewish people, we feel them personally, viscerally. Even learning the details of these events causes us trauma. We collectively live our pain.

But that is why we survive. The “we” is why we survive.

As I wrote these words to my daughter, I imagined my congregation humming_”hine ma tov u’manayim, shevet achim gam yachad”_ how good and pleasant it is for brothers and sisters to come together — and that’s when my tears of rage spilled over.

An attack on a synagogue is an attack against the entire Jewish people. There, we share our compassion and strength as members of the community rise and say the Mourner’s Kaddish.

There, we share our joy as newborn babies are welcomed by the congregation; we shine with pride as young women and men are called before the Torah as b’nai mitzvah.

Looking around us, we see that we are many, and yet we remind ourselves, with the Shema, that we are one. We welcome one another, shaking hands and hugging and wishing hearty “Shabbat Shaloms” at the end of services.

The doors of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, as many have said, stood open, welcoming the “we” that is the Jewish people. That is what was attacked on Saturday: the openness that is our strength. Maintaining that openness is an act of defiance, too.

For that’s exactly what we’re going to do; that is what we always do. We will do this together. We will gather together, as we have done through history. They keep trying, but they never stop us. In the end, we always win.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount