Shooting stirs fresh fear for some, familiar heartbreak for others
Community ‘not defined by those who hate us’ as 2,000 pack local vigil to grieve victims
The moment the Jewish Sabbath ended Saturday at sunset, Rabbi Gideon Estes began planning a vigil for Houston to grieve the 11 congregants killed at a Pittsburgh synagogue, one of many tributes held across the country.
Twenty-four hours later, the parking lot at the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center in southwest Houston started filling with an estimated 2,000 people who gathered Sunday night to pay their respects to the mass shooting victims at the Tree of Life synagogue, sing a chorus of “We Shall Overcome” and denounce hatred.
“As for the thousand-plus people who were gathered here, that shows me that we are not defined by those who hate us,” Estes said. “Instead, we are a community of love, of respect.”
The vigil featured speeches from Harris County Judge Ed Emmett and Mayor Sylvester Turner, who stepped up to the makeshift stage and urged Houstonians to support each other.
“As one of the diverse cities in the country, we must stand up and say that we value that diversity. Hate against any group is hate against us all,” Turner said. “We must call it for what it is, and we have to stop it and stop it
Faith leaders of all denominations who attended the candlelight vigil said they watched the news of the shooting unfold Saturday with horror. It was especially harrowing for Joel Dinkin, who was born and raised in Pittsburgh and once called the Tree of Life his religious home.
Now in Houston, where he runs the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center where the vigil was held, Dinkin said he urgently dialed his 95-year-old father — a retired leader at the targeted synagogue — and sister after the shooting Saturday to make sure they were safe.
“They told me they were fine. They were just watching the news and in disbelief,” Dinkin said before Sunday’s candlelight vigil.
For 25 years, Dinkin’s father, David, served as executive director of the Pittsburgh synagogue. Many of the victims in the attack were “contemporaries and friends of the synagogue in his (father’s) time,” Dinkin said. “He was pretty shaken when we spoke on the phone.”
Dinkin recognized two names on the list of slain congregants from his time attending the synagogue. He went to school with the son of Rose Mallinger, the attack’s eldest victim at 97. He also knew Cecil Rosenthal, 59, who was killed alongside his brother David Rosenthal, 54, both of whom were intellectually disabled.
Seeing the aftermath unfold in news reports brought a flood of memories back to Dinkin, of the synagogue, located in one of the nation’s most vital Jewish communities and a short jaunt from his childhood home.
“You had a sense of the … magnitude of the travesty. I could see and feel it just by watching the TV,” Dinkin said.
Ahead of Sunday’s vigil, Dinkin said, he spent his day taking a second look at how to boost security at his community center.
“I don’t want to do that,” Dinkin said. “It’s just what’s happening in the world around us.”
Dozens of police officers from the Houston Police Department and the Harris County Constable’s Office Precinct One provided security at the candlelight vigil.
Earlier Sunday evening, Housnow.” ton police patrolled the First Christian Church on Sunset Boulevard near Rice University as leaders of many faiths, including Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, joined for an Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston dinner dialogue on religious youth. The event was scheduled to take place before the shooting in Pennsylvania, organizers said.
The police presence at the dinners has become the new norm due to the “unfortunate reality of the world,” said Jodi Bernstein, the vice president of Interfaith Ministries’ relations and community partnerships.
The shooting changed the tone of the meal, said the Rev. Gregory Han, director of Interfaith relations. For decades, the dialogue dinner has taken place to help bring understanding to different religions. The shooter responsible for the Pittsburgh massacre, Han said, was the antithesis of the meals.
“That kind of violence has its roots in fear and misunderstanding,” Han said.