In the autumn of 2018, eleven people were brutally massacred during Shabbat services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, shattering our collective sense of safety. The trauma reverberated far beyond Pennsylvania, reaching directly into the Jewish souls of Morgan Hill, Gilroy and Hollister, and into our local temple, Congregation Emeth.
Just one week after the attack, Congregation Emeth gathered to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah. It should have been a day of pure joy, marking a young boy’s transition into Jewish adulthood. Instead, a heavy blanket of anxiety hung over us. During the week before, as Rabbi, I kept reassuring the parents and the celebrant that everyone would be safe, but they saw on my face my own concerns.
As we approached the temple, on the Saturday morning of the Bar Mitzvah, exactly one week after the Pittsburgh antisemitic murders, the fear dissolved into awe.
Standing in a protective line along the sidewalk was a human shield of local clergy, Buddhist monks and representatives of the Islamic and Christian communities. They were holding signs of love, linking arms and guarding our temple so we could pray in peace. They did not share our faith, but they shared our humanity.
As we approach the Jewish High Holidays—Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement—I often think of the interfaith community standing on the asphalt.
We need that solidarity today more than ever. The fear we felt in 2018 has not faded; it has intensified.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tracked 6,274 antisemitic incidents across the United States in its most recent annual audit, marking one of the highest years on record since tracking began in 1979. Even more sobering, recent FBI hate crime statistics reveal that Jewish people—who make up just 2% of the U.S. population—were targeted in a staggering 63% of all reported religion-based hate crimes nationwide.
The High Holidays are a solemn season of intense self-reflection. At the heart of these days is the concept of teshuvah, a Hebrew word often translated as “repentance,” but which literally means “returning” or “repairing.”
Judaism teaches that when a wrong is committed, repair requires action. We must name the injustice, stand up to fix the breach and change the environment that allowed the harm to happen.
Too often, the burden of fighting antisemitism is left entirely to Jewish communities. We are expected to increase our security budgets, comfort our children and explain our trauma to the world. But the lesson of that Bar Mitzvah morning is that true teshuvah—the active repair of a fractured world—is a collective responsibility.
The interfaith community who guarded our doors did not wait for a perfect world to materialize. They actively built one on our sidewalk. They understood that an attack on one house of worship is an attack on the freedom of all people to live without fear.
During Rosh Hashanah, we blow the shofar, a hollowed-out ram’s horn. Its sharp, piercing blast is meant to serve as a spiritual wake-up call, shaking us out of our complacency. Our interfaith community answered that wake-up call before the horn even sounded.
As the Jewish New Year begins, their example remains our blueprint. We fight hate not by retreating behind higher walls, but by standing together outside them.
Rabbi Debbie Israel is Interim Rabbi/Rabbi Emerita of Congregation Emeth, serving South Santa Clara and San Benito counties. She is a founding member of the Interfaith Clergy Alliance of South County and its liaison to the Interfaith CommUNITY of South County (ICSC). She can be reached at ra***@***th.net.
