This Pittsburgh Rabbi Lost 3 Congregant. Now It’s Shabbat Again.
(JTA) — Six days ago, on Shabbat, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman was hiding in a pitch-black storage closet as one of his congregants was shot dead in front of him. The time since has been filled with funerals, counseling congregants and figuring out how to move forward as a community, a city — and a rabbi.
Now, for the first time since the massacre that killed 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue, Perlman and his small congregation, New Light, will welcome Shabbat. It will be in a different building, with an armed guard outside and without three of the Conservative congregation’s most active members.
New Light will be meeting on its own Friday night. But on Saturday morning, Perlman and the leaders of the two other congregations that shared the targeted building, Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha and Dor Hadash, will preside over a combined service in the large sanctuary of another local Conservative synagogue, Beth Shalom, that is expected to draw hundreds of worshippers.
The Tree of Life building is closed for an investigation of the shooting, so its congregations must meet elsewhere.
“Hopefully when I get there, I’ll be feeling strengthened by everyone else around me,” Perlman told JTA on Friday afternoon.
“This Shabbat I hope to be the opposite of last Shabbat: We’ll get some rest,” Perlman told JTA, noting that Beth Shalom also would be celebrating the recent marriage of one of its clergy on Saturday. “There’s celebrations and tragedies, and we’re pulled — our emotions are pulled every which way. But it’s a renewal.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO