Grounded Resident or Alien Stranger: Reflection and Call to Action After Pittsburgh

On Monday at JCHS - Jewish Community High School of the Bay -  we reflected in a number of ways on the horrible tragedy in Pittsburgh. I am writing to share what I said at Monday’s school-wide gathering and to encourage you to support the Pittsburgh community of Jewish day schools (see link at the bottom). I hope you will join us in taking action to embrace them at this difficult time.

Since Saturday’s shooting, my JCHS colleagues and I are grateful for the many touching expressions of sympathy and support we’ve received from educators across the Bay Area. In that spirit, here is a picture from the makeshift memorial at the Tree of Life synagogue on Sunday as members of the Pittsburgh Muslim community step-up in support. (Photo by Alexandra Wimley, Post-Gazette.)

Here’s what I told JCHS students and educators on Monday:

This morning during Tefillah you had a chance to reflect individually or privately on the tragic shooting in Pittsburgh. We are making time now as a unified community to seek to understand, relate to, and stand in solidarity with the Pittsburgh Jewish community and Jewish communities everywhere.

What happened in Pittsburgh touches us deeply, close to home -- even at a distance of 2,500 miles. Some of us are feeling shaken or saddened. And some of us are not sure what to feel.

For many centuries now, the Jewish community has developed a well-exercised muscle for juggling tragedy and the life-affirming activities of daily life. We do that to ensure that daily life is not swallowed up by those who impose tragedy on our community, or by those who seek to extinguish the light of our community. We do that so that tragedy does not swallow our lives or our communities.



In a moment, I will invite us to use that muscle this morning -- as we move from this time of somber reflection toward the purpose of our being here today -- to grow and learn in classes and beyond, with treasured friends and trusted educators.

With Pittsburgh very much in our minds, I draw our attention to a simple phrase in this week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah. In the Torah narrative the biblical matriarch Sarah has just died and her husband Abraham is trying to buy a spot for her burial. He is residing near what is now Hebron and tries persuading neighbors there to sell him a burial plot. He tells them, “I am among you as both a stranger and as a resident. (Genesis 23:4.) That is, I am feeling both like an alien stranger and a grounded resident. both a stranger or alien and a grounded resident.

Each one of us, I think, can relate to how it is to be in tension between those two feelings. Whenever we enter a new community, as in high school, there are times when we feel like an excluded stranger and other times when we feel like an included resident.

Which is why you see behind me the names of Tywanza Sanders and David Rosenthal. Each of them was a grounded resident in their community of faith. Sanders in his Charleston church studying bible. And Rosenthal in his Pittsburgh synagogue greeting guests on Shabbat.

Until the day in 2015 when an individual animated by hatred for Blacks entered that Charleston church and killed people as they studied bible.

Until the day in 2018 when an individual animated by hatred for Jews entered the synagogue and killed people as they celebrated Shabbat.

Tywanza and David were “residents” until the moment someone came in from outside the community to viciously declare Tywanza and David “strangers.”
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We live in that tension as American Jews -- moments of feeling safe here and moments wondering whether we are really secure. Many Blacks, I imagine, feel the same way living in the tension between feeling at home and not.

The tragic irony is that the haters, the shooters are the true strangers. Those who seek to marginalize the “other,” are the strangers. Their hatred should be seen as alien, foreign, and unacceptable here. The future of our communities depends on our being able to see Tywanza and David as belonging and included and those who killed them as being alien and excluded.

Where we make a place for hateful words, we encourage hateful deeds.

The JCHS partnership with ADL through its program called, “No Place For Hate,” means just that. And my letter to you last Friday about racial slurs being unacceptable at JCHS also expressed that. Anyone who uses racial slurs, or demeans others, or is so animated by hatred to hurt them, is the stranger here. There is no place for them at JCHS, nor in the communities we celebrate and support beyond JCHS.

I hope that none of us are ever confronted -- as Tywanza and David were -- by a hate-filled shooter. If we were, which of us could demonstrate Tywanza’s courage in trying to shield his mother and great-aunt from the shooter?

Yet, each of us has the opportunity to confront hateful words, hurtful deeds, even casual or careless attempts to marginalize others. We can begin today building up our communities by rejecting those behaviors.

In thinking about our motivation for acting in the world, the Rabbis of Talmud teach -- it is better to act from Ahavah -- love -- than from fear. Sotah 31a. We can tell from the Hebrew that the Rabbis' sense of love here is not romantic love, but rather the type of love rooted in the idea of “giving” -- of serving others.

In a moment, we will stand in solidarity with the Pittsburgh Jewish community. When we do I will ask you to juggle two thoughts -- the first is reflecting on the tragedy and your reaction to it or the reaction of your family and friends. The second is pledging yourself to do something active and meaningful today that will involve you giving in service to others.

We stand now for a moment of private reflection -- about solidarity with the Pittsburgh Jewish community and about making our pledges in response to the tragedy there.

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A Call for Immediate Support in Pittsburgh

The local Jewish community federation in Pittsburgh has asked for our help in taking care of Jewish day school educators who are giving their all to students and families even as they are in the midst of processing the tragedy for themselves. Specifically, we have been asked to provide meals for the faculties of the four Pittsburgh Jewish day schools. This is one concrete way that each of us can support the Pittsburgh Jewish community is in this difficult time and can show appreciation for their selfless efforts. Please join us in supporting the Pittsburgh educators by clicking here. Each $4,000 raised will cover the cost of one day's lunch. Any additional funds collected will be directed to the support of the Pittsburgh day school educators.