Pittsburgh Vigil Remarks- Rabbi Joe Wolfson
Yesterday morning we sent four students and two of our colleagues to Pittsburgh to provide whatever support they could. I would like to share some of their stories.
They first went to the Hillel at Carnegie Mellon. And there they told me about meeting Sam — the French graduate student at Carnegie Mellon. Sam had left Europe to study in America because Europe is engulfed in a spasm of anti-semitism. He remembered the attack on the Hypercache supermarket in 2016 where Jews were murdered while shopping for kosher food. He remembered the torture murder of Sarah Halimi in 2017, a 65-year-old woman in Paris. He had come to America to study, because America is the safest place in the world for Jews, right?
But Sam learned, and we’ve learned, that anti-semitism is alive and well in America today, that the oldest hatred in the world is still thriving in the New World, as it is in so many places over the world.
Then students told me of Rabbi Jeffrey Meyers, the rabbi of Tree of Life Synagogue — that when it came to Shabbat afternoon where traditionally the song from Psalms is sung, מזמור לדוד ה’ רועי לא אחסר The Lord is my shepherd I shall not lack for anything, he choked. Because how could he say that he was not lacking, when 11 members of his congregation had been murdered in front of him?
But that as the day went on he considered the final line. טוב וחסד ירדפוני כל ימי חיי that goodness and kindness shall accompany me all the days of my life — and that seeing the outpouring of love and kindness, from the community, from the other faith groups and neighbors in Pittsburgh, from first responders, from our students and from the 1000s of people around the world sending support — he knew that had never been surrounded by kindness and goodness more than he was now
And Rabbi Meyers learned and we learned that in the darkest times, the stars of kindness and light burn brightest.
I was told too of a woman in the community whose daughter is a nurse in the ICU unit at the hospital where the shooter is being treated. And of course it should happen that her daughter Ayla was in charge of the unit for the last two nights. And Ayla’s mother had said to Ayla, that you must wear your magen david, your star of david necklace, out, so that this hateful murderer will know that the person who is saving his life is a proud Jew.
And Ayla’s mother knows, as we know, that when we are confronted with hate, we lose neither our humanity nor our pride in our Jewish identity.
The final story is my own one. At the conclusion of Shabbat, on Saturday night, we heard the news. And i went with my three year old daughter and students to an impromptu vigil in Union Square. There were too many people and no microphones. And so I stood at the back. A Muslim couple were there standing next to me. And I thanked them for coming out, to be there with us in our pain. And the lady said to me — of course, we have to be here. And then she turned to Mika, my little daughter, who was in my arms, not understanding anything, and said to her ‘I promise you little one, that by the time you grow up, the world will be a bit of a better place than it is now’.
And that’s what I’m praying for. That’s what I’m asking God for. Thank you all for coming.
