INSIDE: Jewish communities in Bay Area shaken after attack on Pennsylvania synagogue.
Jewish communities are left shaken, wondering if their own places of worship are safe amid political tensions
Jewish communities and organizations across the Bay Area were left shaken Saturday after a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue left 11 dead and several wounded.
Many wondered if their own synagogues and places of worship are safe amid escalating racial and political tensions that have deeply divided the country.
“This is a reflection of the kind of poisonous and untruthful and hateful environment that has been created in the past two years in this country,” said Avi Rose, executive director of Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay in Berkeley, which focuses on a variety of issues, from refugee resettlement to counseling and childhood mental health.
“People feel that they have license to go into a synagogue and shoot people and to send bombs in the mail to people they disagree with.”
Police arrested Robert Bowers, a 46-year-old man with a history of making virulently anti-Semitic statements online. He was taken into custody after a gunbattle with police and is expected to face federal hate-crime charges.
Bowers also posted white supremacist symbols on at least one of his social media accounts, according to authorities.
Rose noted that other religious institutions — such as mosques and black churches — also are vulnerable to hate crimes but that “today we as American Jews are feeling it in a particular way.”
Susan Lubeck from Bend the Arc, a nationwide Jewish organization with deep ties to the
Bay Area, said she knows people in Squirrel Hill, the Pittsburgh neighborhood in which the Tree of Life Synagogue is located.
“Having to look through the list of (victim) names to see if anyone we know was on there was devastating,” she said. “We are just beside ourselves with anguish.”
Lubeck said white supremacist and anti-Semitic views and “political violence” against minority groups have been normalized
by conservatives and by President Donald Trump.
“We cannot allow this against Jews, immigrants, Muslim people, people of color, LGBT people,” she said. “We see these trends crystallizing in today’s murders.”
Zack Bodner, CEO of the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto, expressed sadness and anger at the “vicious attack on the Jewish community.”
“We stand in grief and solidarity
with the community and the families of the victims of this violence,” Bodner said in a statement.
He said that the JCC is in touch with Palo Alto police and other law enforcement agencies but that “they are giving us no reason to believe that the safety of our own community is in question.”