Norwich unity service attendees urged to use love to combat hate

Rabbi Rabinowitz calls on participants to support a refugee family after synagogue rampage

Norwich — Seasoned politicians and clergy whose vocations require them to speak often and eloquently in tough situations readily admitted Thursday they couldn’t easily come up with the words to respond to last Saturday’s murderous rampage at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

Joel Etra of Norwich started off Thursday’s 90-minute Service of Remembrance and Unity by blowing several times on the traditional Jewish horn, the Shofar, to sound the words of love, grief and a call to action that could not otherwise be expressed.

More than 100 people of many faiths and political ideologies attended Thursday’s service at Beth Jacob Synagogue. They recited prayers and poems, sang traditional hymns and modern songs in remembrance of 11 people murdered at the Pittsburgh synagogue allegedly by Robert Bowers, who had railed against Jews and the HIAS organization that supports refugees.

Rabbi Julius Rabinowitz of Beth Jacob said words of prayer, remembrance and grief would not be enough. Nor would a call for retaliation or a response to hate with more hate. Rabinowitz said the only response that would have lasting impact would be to turn to the Jewish teachings of love and to the greatest of all commandments: “welcome the stranger.”

Rabinowitz said Bowers apparently targeted Tree of Life because the synagogue was involved with HIAS, which has worked for more than 100 years to help refugees whose lives were torn apart by war or persecution to find a safe place to live. He said the organization was founded in the 1890s to help Russian Jews settle in America, continued to work through the Holocaust of the mid-20th century and established posts worldwide wherever suffering was great.

Rabinowitz challenged participants in Thursday’s ceremony that to help offset the lives lost in Pittsburgh, they should play a part to help resettle a family already investigated and approved to come to the United States and “whose lives have been shattered” in their home country.

“We are commanded to help the stranger,” Rabinowitz said. “We are commanded to love the stranger, to welcome the stranger.”

At intervals of drumming by Mixed Blessings Percussion Group, several participants read brief biographies of the victims, including for a pair of brothers who had come to think of the Tree of Life Synagogue as their second home, a place where they always felt safe, the reader said.

Pepi Green brought the Squirrel Hill neighborhood to life. Green grew up there and told the audience how she and her friends and family would walk “up-street” to the commercial district and the Jewish community center, the center of her universe, she said. The Tree of Life was three blocks from her family’s home in the neighborhood where Fred Rogers also lived.

“Yes, I literally grew up in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood,” she said.

Green said media accounts have referred to Squirrel Hill as a Jewish neighborhood but she said it always was home to people of many faiths and racial backgrounds. The Tree of Life was founded during the Civil War and was the second oldest synagogue in Pittsburgh. The sense of peace neighbors derived from the synagogue was wronged last Saturday, she said.

“Eleven people were murdered last Saturday morning as they came together to pray,” Green said.

Rabinowitz and Jerry Fisher, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut, said they were warmed and comforted by the many messages of support and condolences they received from across the world in the hours and days that followed the shootings. Both said clergy of different faiths, friends, neighbors and strangers called to say they would support and protect them.

Fisher said it’s too easy to dismiss Bowers as a “crazy anti-Semite.” Anti-Semitism is “as old as Western civilization,” Fisher said, but Jews have thrived in America because Jewish values are ingrained in the founding of the country, a government in which bigotry is not to be tolerated.

“We shall not veer from our Jewish values,” Fisher said. “All humans are created by God. Love the stranger.”

Swaranjit Singh Khalsa, president of the Sikh Sewak Society in Connecticut, said he skipped the state’s first official remembrance day Thursday to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the Sikh Genocide in India, to attend the Norwich unity service. He said it was important for him to be “with my Jewish brothers” at the Norwich event.

“Real American values will not be suppressed with anyone’s hate speeches,” Khalsa said, “and we will use our goodness instead of hate to make America great.”