A Prayer for Pittsburgh

A Prayer for Pittsburgh

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

October 27, 2018

Another active shooting scene. 

Sabbath peace broken, Sabbath holiness desecrated.  

There are no words, no words of consolation. There are no prayers, even God is mute tonight.

The Talmud teaches that we should not comfort the mourners at the time of their most intense grief. Indeed, there is no—there CAN be—no consolation tonight for an ongoing crime of hatred. Today’s terror attack may be over, but anti-Semitism is an ongoing crime; it’s been ongoing for thousands of years now. 

I do not call for revenge. Sometimes even justice seems impossible. We will need time to digest what happened today: an assault rifle—reportedly an AK 47—and three handguns used to spread death in the Tree of Life Synagogue. 

To bring mayhem, murder, and violence into a house of prayer chills us all, Jews and non-Jews alike. A house of prayer is a place we go to in order to find safety, sanctuary, peace; to find oneself; to find God.

We’ve seen other attacks on houses of worship and community centers in America: Sikh and Buddhist temples, African-American churches, Muslim mosques, Baptist churches. They are all crimes of heinous hate. As with all those others, so we here today will have to find a way to move on, to absorb our sorrow, to put it all in some sort of perspective.  But I’m afraid that tonight I just don’t know how to do that.

I don’t know how to quell the anger I feel within me as I witness yet again the hatred that still continues, the hatred that killed so many of my own family, along with six million other Jews just one generation ago, in the accursed Holocaust.

I don’t know what to do with the horror; the fear; with the memories, still so recent, still alive, of Jews being killed, tortured, burned alive in their synagogues, that today’s hate attack awakens in so many of us. 

I don’t know how to handle the grief I feel tonight, for the eleven men and women (so far “only” eleven, with at least two more still in surgery, still fighting for their lives tonight), whose lives were so cruelly cut short today, for the only crime that they were Jews. At this point we don’t know yet how many men, how many women; we only know there were—thank God—no children among the dead.

I would like to start some sort of healing process by feeling and expressing gratitude: for the first responders, Pittsburgh Police officers, FBI agents, and SWAT teams that acted heroically, rushing into the synagogue selflessly, heroically, despite the live fire that was directed against them.  I am grateful for the ER doctors and nurses who responded swiftly, showing up within minutes and beginning to treat the wounded where they lay, in the pews, on the floor. I am grateful to the surgeons and other medical workers who continued the caretaking of the injured in the area’s excellent hospitals.

I am grateful for the unity and community support I sense around me. We are all in this together. When our days of grief and mourning will be over, we will need to gather yet again, at homes, schools, at houses of worship; to discuss how we’ve come to this point. We’ll need to talk about the hatred, the radicalization, the incitement to violence that we see and hear around us today.

But at this point all we can do is sit in silence. We need to take a moment to reflect on the terrible events that transpired today at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, but whose implications will continue to reverberate in our society for a long time yet to come. In our silence, let us feel not anger, not vengeance, not even fear. Let us feel, rather, love, and pity. Love—for one another; for the community and families of the victims of today’s mass shooting. And pity—for our nation and the current state of our nation. Let us reflect.

My friends, during the next few days we will pray not only for God’s comfort and consolation, we will also pray to find within us the strength to end the hatred, to silence the hateful rhetoric we hear all around us; to put an end to the anti-Semitism, the racism, xenophobia, homophobia and misogyny that poison our nation.  May we all come to comprehend fully the power that words have on us—the power to move us to love, help and support; but also the power to provoke hatred, violence and bloodshed. May our thoughts and prayers tonight be accompanied by acts of loving-kindness and righteousness.

May God bless us all with safety, security and peace. 

May God comfort all mourners and console all the bereaved among us, to which we say, Amen.