#ShowUpForShabbat

This has been an impossibly hard week. A week of funerals and vigils, of mourning and tears. A week in which community after community has memorialized the victims in Pittsburgh. It’s been a week in which Jews around the world felt their connection to other Jews more strongly. So many of us have felt the word of the Jewish prayer Acheinu kol Beit Yisrael – all Jews are brethren. When some of us hurt, all of us cry.

In response to the massacre, many Jews are planning to go to synagogue this Shabbat, to assert their Jewish pride, to show the world that Jews will not be intimidated, to come together with their fellow Jews.

“Normally we don’t go to Shabbat services,” one Chicago-area mom told me. “But this week my husband and I plan on attending. We feel the need for community and hopefully some positive messages.”

One friend told me she is planning a special Friday night dinner with friends. Even though her family doesn’t always make time for Shabbat dinner, this week they feel it’s important to be surrounded and supported by their Jewish community. “It just feels even more empowering being with community this week” a friend of mine messaged me as she made her plans.

For children, the importance of celebrating Shabbat this week may be even greater. Kids crave order and security. After hearing how so many of their fellow Jews were murdered in cold blood simply because they were Jewish, it’s crucial that our kids experience being Jewish positively too.

One of my strongest childhood memories is hearing about another synagogue massacre. On September 6, 1986, gunmen entered Istanbul’s largest synagogue, Neve Shalom, and opened fire, killing 22 Jews as they stood praying. I remember watching gory reports on the news, my eyes filling with tears as I saw the bloody pews and overturned prayer books. The scene looked a lot like the terrible carnage in the Tree of Life Synagogue last week.

My family wasn’t big synagogue-goers. Friday night dinners didn’t always feel like Shabbat. Yet in that moment, as I watched footage of the Istanbul synagogue attack, I so strongly wished that I’d been in my own synagogue that Shabbat, that while my fellow Jews were being harmed half a world away, I was standing with my own Jewish community. I wanted some way to stand up and say “I am a proud Jew” and to stand with my fellow Jews.

That experience changed me. I started doing more to mark Shabbat; I started connecting more with Jewish causes and going to synagogue. I felt that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

Robert Bowers said, “All Jews should die.” He didn’t differentiate between Jews. Now is the time to stop the in-fighting and for all of us to come together.

This Shabbat, a week after the unspeakable tragedy in Pittsburgh, I intend to stand with my fellow Jews all over the world. We will light the Shabbat candles together. We will enjoy Shabbat meals together. We will go to synagogue together. I hope you will join me, even if you don’t normally observe Shabbat. Together, let’s proclaim to the world: Am Yisrael Chai – the People of Israel continues to live.