Grief. Darkness. Uncontrollable rage. These are the things consuming the American Jewish community today, the darkest day in our history in this country. There is little surprise, but boundless, unending sadness and anger. In a crisis, we often feel a desire to move. It’s flight or fight. It’s adrenaline. It’s evolutionary. Today, I want you…
The day that the American Jewish community experienced the most deadly anti-Semitic hate crime directed at it in the history of the United States was also Shabbat, the weekly Jewish day of rest. So when Shabbat ended at sundown in the densely Jewish town of Squirrel Hill, where a gunman killed 11 Jews at prayer,…
Alleged Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers used the web site Gab.com to express anti-Semitic views. Here is some information about the site, which said it suspended his account and contacted the authorities after the arrest. Gab launched in 2016 as a “free-speech” alternative to Twitter. Its founder, Andrew Torba, said existing sites like Twitter and…
Mark Hetfield was in synagogue on Saturday morning, attending a bar mitzvah. He couldn’t figure out why his phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. When he checked his messages, Hetfield, who is the executive director of the Jewish refugee aid group HIAS, learned that the suspect in the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue had posted obsessively about…
Every Saturday morning, I go to synagogue to reconnect, both with God and with my fellow Jews. This morning was like any other, featuring prayer, arguments over the sermon, and jokes over bagels and cream cheese during the kiddush luncheon. It was only after I returned home that I realized, to my horror, that while…
Robert Bowers was angry at Jews. But the 46-year-old alleged killer of at least eleven people in a Pittsburgh synagogue seemed most angry at Jews for one particular reason: They were helping Muslim refugees flee to safety in America. In posts on Gab, the social media network favored by white supremacists, Bowers fixated on HIAS,…
On Saturday morning, a white nationalist walked in to the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, and killed 11 people as of the last count. His declared reason for this carnage was a hatred of HIAS, a Jewish organization that advocates for refugees, founded in 1881. The organization does have a chapter in…
I have one daughter who is a freelance journalist and has reported from all sorts of dangerous places in the Middle East and Africa. I have another daughter who is a nurse practitioner and right now is delivering health care to the Rohingya, whose plight is creating the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world….
100% of profits support our journalism
