The Torah portion read last Shabbat in synagogues the world over – Parashat Vayera – opens with a 99-year-old Abraham sitting in his tent in the plains of Mamre, on a hill overlooking Hebron. He is recovering from his circumcision, completed just three days prior, and as he convalesces he sees three men in the distance. Immediately, he runs toward them, prostrates himself at their feet and begs to feed and bathe them. He calls to Sarah to prepare a meal, then hastens to deliver milk and cream to the visitors.
From this passage, we learn the Jewish value of hakhnasat orchim, the mitzvah of hospitality. It’s the reason why so many synagogues station volunteer shomerim, or greeters, just inside the front entrance. The idea is to make everyone – whomever they are, wherever they come from – feel welcome and comfortable at shul. Like Abraham, the job of the shomerim is to insist that the synagogue is meant to serve the visitor, rather than the other way around.
At the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, David and Cecil Rosenthal were shomerim, two brothers devoted to their synagogue – and to each other. Now they are dead, along with nine of their co-congregants after the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history.
The Jewish community has been shaken to its core, our greatest fears having played out before our very eyes. The alleged killer, Robert Bowers, told investigators, “I just want to kill Jews.” It was as simple as that. But the environment of hate that surrounds this tragedy, that seemingly engulfs our neighbours to the south, is anything but simple. There is plenty of blame to go around, all sorts of reasons to be angry. And it’s OK to be angry. It’s OK to be scared, too.
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Security is naturally on all of our minds. As we learn more about this nightmare – and as another Shabbat approaches – it will be incumbent on Jewish community leaders, here in Canada as in the United States, to help us feel safe again. They will undoubtedly do so. Next Saturday you can expect to see a significantly increased security presence outside your shul; law enforcement agencies will be watching closely. It’s not ideal – it will make it hard to maintain that welcoming aura of our places of worship – but it’s the way it has to be, at least for now.
For some of us, there will be the temptation to play it safe and stay home from synagogue – if only for a week or two, until things quiet down. It is an understandable reaction, but that is precisely what people like Robert Bowers want. We give in to fear at our own peril. Instead, let this be the week when we make every effort to go to synagogue on Shabbat. If nothing else, we need to be together. We have to be each other’s shomerim.
Do it for David and Cecil Rosenthal, for Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Jerry Rabinowitz, Richard Gottfried, Joyce Fienberg, Rose Mallinger, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger. They’ll never get to wish a “Shabbat shalom” again. But we will.