The Little Minyan Kehilah has been affiliated with the Reconstructionist Movement since 2009 and, even earlier, selected Kol HaNeshamah , the Reconstructionist siddur (prayerbook) for our services. We are affiliated with both Jewish Renewal and Reconstructing Judaism because these streams of Judaism reflect and support our communal values, including inclusivity and welcome (values that were attacked in Pittsburgh last Shabbat). We will continue to live our values and act in ways that bring more love, wisdom, and compassion into our troubled world. All of us at the Little Minyan Kehilah are grateful to our neighbors and friends and the faith communities that we work with regularly to be the change we wish to see in the world. What follows is the Statement of the Reconstructionist movement on Tuesday, October 30th, 2018 (21st Cheshvan 5779)
Reconstructing Judaism and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association mourn the devastating losses that a white nationalist domestic terrorist inflicted upon the Jewish community this past Shabbat morning at Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh. Included among the dead and wounded are members of our affiliate, Congregation Dor Hadash , which meets there.
Within the Reconstructionist community, we are heartbroken over the death of Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, a widely loved Dor Hadash member and a physician with a warm heart and caring practice . Jerry and his wife, Miri, served Dor Hadash as co-presidents. We offer our deepest condolences to Miri, to Jerry’s mother, Sally, to his siblings and his other loved ones. We also send condolences to Rabbi Sandra Berliner (RRC ‘85), whose cousins, Cecil and David Rosenthal, were among the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha members who were killed. And to the loved ones of all who were murdered in the synagogue, we offer our profound condolences and our solidarity.
We ask that everyone add the name of Dan Leger to your healing prayer lists. Dan, a longtime lay leader at Dor Hadash, was shot multiple times and is in serious condition after undergoing several surgeries. His Hebrew name, for the purposes of prayers for healing, is Daniel ben Sarah Miriam . We are holding in our hearts all of Dan’s family and loved ones. Two of his close friends, Rabbi Yitzhak Husbands-Hankin, Rabbi Emeritus of our affiliate in Eugene, Oregon, and Shonna Husbands-Hankin, were visiting the synagogue over the weekend, and they have been staying nearby and praying for Dan’s recovery.
Please also pray for the healing of the four police officers who were wounded as they responded to the calls for help from Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation. SWAT Officer Tim Matson and three other Pittsburgh police officers were injured in the attack. If the names of the other officers are released, we will pass them along to our affiliated congregations.
We offer gratitude to Rabbi Doris Dyen (RRC ‘13), a Dor Hadash member who has been providing crisis pastoral counseling on the scene, and to all who have taken on the crucial work of providing emotional, spiritual, and practical support to those in need. Rabbi Doris and her husband, Prof. Deane L. Root, were on their way to the synagogue when the attack took place. We wish them strength and serenity of spirit.
We are also extremely grateful to the first responders who, with great bravery and professionalism, rushed to the aid of a synagogue under attack.
We pray for strength and courage for Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, and for all of the staff, lay leaders, and community members at Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha who are devoting their energies to supporting one another at this time.
Dor Hadash, National Refugee Shabbat, and our Jewish Values
Dor Hadash, along with more than 300 other congregations nationwide (including about 30 from our movement), took part on October 20 in National Refugee Shabbat , an initiative organized by HIAS . HIAS is a Jewish-American non-profit organization that provides support and advocacy on behalf of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in need. HIAS began as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and from the 1880s onward, HIAS helped thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms and later, Nazism, as they sought refuge in the U.S. Today, HIAS advocates primarily for non-Jewish refugees and asylum seekers, and they are a target of hate from white nationalists. The shooter, Robert Bowers, attacked HIAS repeatedly on social media, and in a message he posted shortly before the shooting, he “thanked” HIAS for providing a list of synagogues that took part in National Refugee Shabbat. Dor Hadash was listed as a participant in the HIAS initiative .
As a movement, we stand firmly with HIAS, and we believe in the Jewish values that undergird their work on behalf of refugees today, the vast majority of whom are not Jewish. As HIAS’s CEO, Mark Hetfield, often puts it, “At HIAS we used to help refugees because they were Jews. Now, we help refugees because we are Jews.” Amen.
We will not be deterred from our commitment to remember the stranger, to empathize with refugees, and to pursue immigration policies of generosity and compassion towards those who come to our borders seeking asylum or refuge. Our spiritual and moral roots in the journey of Abraham and Sarah, our migrant ancestors, compel us to take this stand. Our formation as a people fleeing the furnace of slavery in Egypt commands us to care for those who seek to escape hellish places today. Our history of forced expulsions, pogroms and genocide gives shape to the empathy in our hearts. We are proud of Dor Hadash’s participation in National Refugee Shabbat, and we will continue to advocate as a movement for our vision of a shared society in which diversity is celebrated and white supremacy defeated.
Of course, regardless of what may have drawn Robert Bowers to Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation on this past Shabbat, in the end he did not ask for each victim’s views about immigration before he opened fire at them. His reported statements made it very clear that he attacked them because they were Jews.
We recognize and condemn the white nationalist ideology that the perpetrator embraced – a toxic belief system that demonizes non-white immigrants, hates Muslims, hates people of color, and promotes the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of a Jewish cabal running things behind the scenes. We call on the Trump Administration to emphatically condemn white supremacy and the white nationalist movement, and to stop, once and for all, demonizing immigrants and using dog whistles to generate hatred towards religious and racial minorities. The white nationalist movement has found encouragement in the language and messages that have been coming from the White House, and as the rabbinic tradition teaches very clearly, words are weapons and they have the power to destroy. We ask people of all political parties to call upon the Trump Administration to stop modeling the language of Otherizing people, the language of “us vs. them,” the language of ridicule and mob anger. One can hold conservative, moderate or progressive views without engaging in any of these damaging and inciting uses of language in the public square. Indeed, the future of America’s viability as a healthy democracy depends upon it.
While raising our voices in prayer and condolences for the victims this latest mass-shooting, we also raise our voices to call for the enactment and enforcement of reasonable gun laws throughout this country that would help prevent such tragedies. There have been almost 300 mass shootings in the United States in 2018 .
own bed each night of the past year. How I wish that her children and husband had been able to live with their mother/wife this year. Each day this family (and SO many families in our country) awakes with the threat of deportation hanging over their heads.
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This year, in honor of entering our “b’nei mitzvah year” (our 13th year as a Kehilah Kedoshah/holy community) and the rabbinic smicha/ordination of our founding spiritual leader, Rabbi Jessica K. Shimberg, this past January, we will begin our new year’s celebration with a
based quartet,
for you are about to cross the Yarden/Jordan.”
This journey is a descent for the sake of a crossing that must be engaged in consciously if we are to live into our promise as human beings and as a People.
provides us an opportunity to realize our potential. He states, “A blessing is placed before you, often in the disguise of a challenge. Through your own work, the latent light is brought out and the depth of good is revealed, hidden in the challenge. We meet God half-way, becoming a partner in creation and feel we own and have earned the good we have brought out on the other side.”
see ourselves and others more clearly and compassionately. And may we cross over the rivers of longing, expectation, disappointment, and fear which keep us from reaching places of promise, compassion, love, peace, and justice in all forms.
of Lamentations – Eicha/אֵיכָה/”how?” in Hebrew). Our sages teach that the destruction of the Temple may have happened at the hands of our enemies, however, the underlying cause of destruction was sinat chinam/baseless hatred of one Jew for another – antipathy between groups of Jews. So when we cry, “Eicha? How?” we are already aware that our own actions have contributed to our misery. On the 9th of Av (Tisha b’Av), the saddest date on the Hebrew calendar, Jews commemorate a collection of cataclysmic events, including:
results of tyranny, oppression, marginalization, and abuse of power that we are seeing in 2018, I do find hope and strength in the words on the sticker on my Coalition of Immokalee Workers water bottle and the well-worn poster I carry to rallies and that traveled with my to Kallah. “Resisting Tyrants Since Pharaoh” it states. Indeed, we will …
rest and restoration and a Tisha b’Av that allows you to feel deeply into despair and choose hope. And may we all find the strength we need to do the work that must be done to repair the many broken places within our Jewish tent, the greater human community, and our mother Earth.
everywhere but I won’t let it be… Four flowers in my Asian vase is not
words of inspiration when each day erodes our faith in the ethical foundation of our governmental structure?
hear something different – something more gentle. I heard the voice of my friend speaking her heart, and then the sound of crickets in the humid night. I heard my breath and music and birds. And today, in a most unexpected place and way, I heard hope. Hope sounded, in that moment, like the vibrant voices of young women sharing how they were claiming their power and living their values – sewing clothing, sourcing fabric, and supporting small businesses. Their top priorities: the treatment of those whose labor is utilized, the environmental impacts of the fibers and fabrics and processes, and the way each article of clothing supported and energized the body inhabiting it. We talked about what makes us feel powerful and what we can do to empower others. We spoke and listened to one another with compassion and interest and curiosity and love.
and hope that is louder and stronger and more resilient than fear and hate. And, because I was listening with a renewed heart, a refreshed spirit, and new ears, I heard
from this Torah story that we receive the beautiful words that open our morning tefilah (prayer) each day ~
Mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov miskenotecha Yisrael ~ How good/lovely are your tents, how fine your encampments!
When we bring love and harmony into our homes and create sanctuary in our communities with kindness and compassion, and when we GO OUT and speak THIS into our encounters and meetings and streets and assemblies and halls of government, LOVE is what will ripple out into the world. May it be SO!
utterances”**
revelation
deep compassion and discerning wisdom to transform violence into meaningful and lasting peace even in places where competing just causes make conflict inevitable. May this be so, bim’hera v’yameinu ~ soon and in our time!
