Tree of Life Pittsburgh

I am the spouse of the rabbi here in Morgantown, West Virginia, Joseph Hample, "Rabbi Joe." Our congregation is called "Tree of Life"; we are eighty miles south, an hour and a half drive, from Tree of Life in Pittsburgh. The news tonight is that eleven people were murdered by a man at this morning's service in Pittsburgh.

I was at a meeting today with City Councilors and other local officials and the three men on the Monongalia County Commission. I am on Morgantown's City Council. Rabbi Joe has Torah study every Saturday, which I don't attend. I got the news from one of the Commissioners about the shooting.I stepped out of my meeting and called Joe to tell him the news. I tried to concentrate on the meeting, but I was too freaked, and left early to be home with my husband.

This wasn't the first time I was upset about an event in another Jewish community. Last summer, Nazis carrying swastika flags and guns demonstrated in front of the synagogue in Charlottesville, Virginia, about 230 miles from Morgantown, over the mountains. They have a small synagogue on a main street in the middle of a college town, just as we have. I was already on the City Council and suggested we have a plan in case something like what happened in Charlottesville happened in Morgantown. I couldn't get anyone excited about "doing something" including the rabbi.

Two bouquets of flowers were left at the door of our synagogue today and both Rabbi Joe and I have gotten notes of support on social media and concerns for our safety and well-being. I was in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, the neighborhood where the shooting occurred, just this past Wednesday, and posted about my trip on Facebook.

I've heard lots of cries of "How can this happen here?" People who go to Europe are always surprised that synagogues are often unmarked, that someone has to vouch for you to be allowed in. Here in the United States, synagogues sit boldly on main streets with little or no protection.

Of course, it has already happened here. People were murdered at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in South Carolina by a white supremacist in 2015. Someone with a grudge shot up a high school in Parkland, Florida last year. And in just the past week, pipe bombs were discovered mailed to figures in the Democratic Party, and another white supremacist killed two people at a Kroger near Louisville, Kentucky, because the African-American church he originally targeted was locked, and he couldn't get in.

The shock is that this could happen to us, to Jews, as if we were somehow on a different plane than African-Americans and high school students. We are not exempt, not even in the United States, and despite our wealth and the relatively conservative political bent of many Jews in Pittsburgh, we are not "better than" any other religious or racial minority.

Even though there are still many Jews in this administration, there is a prejudice against anyone who is not "white" and "Christian" pushed by the right-wing ideologues who are now in power, and despite their denials, anyone who is a Republican has signed on to that. And we still need sensible regulation of firearms, desperately.

Thoughts and prayers are something we, as religious people, can do. We can also call out prejudice, not just against Jews, but against Muslims, African-Americans, immigrants, and certainly against gay and trans people. There is an election coming up. I've already voted here in West Virginia. It might help, but we need to form alliances and be out on the street with all people of good will. There will be a vigil on WVU's downtown campus, at Woodburn Circle, Monday, October 29, at 7. I will be there.

Rabbi Joe at Tree of Life Morgantown, with flowers left at the door on Sunday after the shooting in Pittsburgh