Let’s unite against hatred today
In the Jewish tradition, news of someone’s passing triggers this saying: “May his/her memory be for a blessing.” It means what it sounds like. “It expresses the hope,” explains Rabbi Howard Jaffe of Lexington’s Temple Isaiah, “that the memory of the deceased will inspire thoughts that will lead us to act in ways that bring blessing to the world.”
When the 11 gentle souls who were slaughtered in a paroxysm of hate at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue rose early two Saturdays ago to dress for a worship service, they had no idea that it would be the last time they would do so. They likewise could not have imagined that their deaths, just hours away, would inspire tens of thousands of acts of goodness all over America, and beyond.
This past Friday night, synagogues all over the world were packed to overflowing with people of all faiths, who wanted to make a point of being present at what has been called “Solidarity Shabbat.” Their purwill pose was to demonstrate support for the Jewish people, who find themselves under a surreal kind of siege as anti-Semitism from both the far right and the far left, long hidden under a rock, has exploded into open view.
No aspect of the outpouring of human decency has been more moving than that from the Muslim community, whose generosity has been in overdrive in the aftermath of the targeting of Jews — the very kind of targeting with which America’s Muslims are all too familiar. Within days of the Tree of Life killings, the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the families of the victims.
Wasi Mohamed, the center’s executive director, captured the best of America, which he and the Muslim community have well-illustrated. “It’s amazing to see that in a terrible situation there’s some ray of hope — the fact that all of these communities can come together supporting the Jewish community,” he said. At an interfaith vigil held in Providence, Mufti Ikram Ul-Haq was fervent in his embrace of the Jewish community in its grief. “I would like to say to my Jewish brothers and sisters, when someone attacks you it is an attack on all of us,” said Ul-Haq. “We always stand by you, in good times and bad.”
In Massachusetts, Muslim organizations and individuals have been quick, warm and unreserved in their support. “As Muslims, we have the Jewish community’s back,” said Yusufi Vali, the executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, whose imam delivered rousing remarks to a gathering of mourners on Boston Common. “We are there for you. We know that hate is a common enemy. This is a part of what we have to do for one another.”
There are, of course, obvious reasons why an alliance between the Muslim and Jewish communities is a natural one. The Pittsburgh murders and Muslims’ response to them illustrates them. “There are common threads that bind us together,” says Robert Leikind, the head of the American Jewish Committee’s New England office.
“It’s comforting to have the support of the Muslim community in fighting the oldest form of hate,” adds Robert Trestan of the AntiDefamation League, which has tracked the rise in antiSemitism. Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston, hails the growing “relationship of trust and partnership” between Boston-area Muslims and Jews. “We need way more of that if we’re going to pull out of this toxic morass,” says Burton.
Today, all across America, we will line up in schools and firehouses to choose those who will represent us. Those choices may determine whether the memory of those murdered at prayer in Pittsburgh, and the goodness of those who have acted in solidarity with them, are what will guide our nation going forward, or whether we are headed down a different, and more somber, path.