Source: Politics<\/p>\n
On the eve of her 100th birthday Saturday, Ruth Salton told her daughter she was going one way or another to Friday night Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel, just days after a gunman voicing antisemitic conspiracy theories held four worshippers hostage for 10 hours at the Fort Worth-area synagogue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to support my people,\u201d said Salton, a Holocaust survivor. She said she told her daughter \u201cif she doesn\u2019t take me, I\u2019ll go by myself, because I feel I belong there. I am Jewish, and this is my faith, and I am supporting it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s far from alone.<\/p>\n
Jewish leaders throughout the U.S. are calling for a strong turnout at this weekend\u2019s worship services as a statement of defiance against antisemitic acts such as last weekend\u2019s hostage siege at Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cSHOW UP IN SHUL THIS SHABBAT … IN DEFIANCE\/JOY\/TO SEE FELLOW JEWS,\u201d Emory University history professor Deborah Lipstadt tweeted, using a traditional term for synagogue. She is President Biden\u2019s nominee as a special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism abroad.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh, who survived the Oct. 27, 2018, mass shooting at his synagogue, echoed the call. After a gunman killed 11 worshipers from three congregations at the synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic hate crime in U.S. history, people packed synagogues around the country the following weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo not let the antisemites terrorize us and win by keeping us out of our sacred spaces,\u201d Myers wrote in his blog. \u201cShow up in synagogue, and loudly state by your presence that you will not be driven into hiding. … (Antisemites) will not chase us from our home. Not now. Not ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Authorities say Malik Faisal Akram, a British national, took the four people who were at Congregation Beth Israel last Saturday hostage. He was demanding the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist convicted of trying to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan and who is serving a lengthy sentence in a prison in Fort Worth, which is 15 miles (23 kilometers) southwest of Colleyville.<\/p>\n
The hostages said Akram cited antisemitic stereotypes, believing that Jews could wield power over President Joe Biden to have Siddiqui released.<\/p>\n
The siege ended after the last hostage ran out of the synagogue and an FBI SWAT team rushed in. Akram was killed by multiple gunshot wounds. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner ruled the case a homicide, which under Texas law indicates that one person was killed by another but does not necessarily mean the killing was a crime.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who was among the hostages, said Thursday that the congregation was \u201cdoing its best to heal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have services on Shabbat evening. We\u2019re going to have services on Shabbat morning. We\u2019re going to have religious school on Sunday,\u201d Cytron-Walker said during a webinar Thursday hosted by the Anti-Defamation League.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stand before you with great gratitude just to be alive,\u201d he added during a Friday news conference.<\/p>\n
Cytron-Walker encouraged those in the Jewish community \u201cto have a Shabbat shalom, a Sabbath of peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGod willing, we\u2019re able to find a sense of wholeness with our families, with our communities. … And I would extend that not only to the Jewish community, I would extend that to all communities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Congregation Beth Israel\u2019s services this weekend were being held at another location because the investigation at the synagogue is ongoing. Attendance was limited to members.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect it to be emotional, because we have not had the opportunity to come together and express or experience whatever emotions we have,\u201d said Anna Eisen, Salton\u2019s daughter. \u201cI\u2019m ready to hug people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said congregations in his region were preparing for greater attendance and were taking coronavirus-related precautions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn face of a new wave of antisemitism, where Jews are threatened online, forced to prove themselves on campus and fear eating in restaurants, we must not let the fear our enemies want to instill in us define us,\u201d he said Friday. He called on Jews everywhere to \u201cshow the world that we are not afraid to live Jewishly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many Jewish leaders have said the hostage standoff was an example of a larger rise in antisemitic acts. The Anti-Defamation League says such incidents have reached their highest levels since it began tracking them decades ago.<\/p>\n
Eisen said that the supportive response of local police and the FBI has made her \u201cfeel safer in my community and my country,\u201d but that it\u2019s also important to confront antisemitism.<\/p>\n
Eisen, co-author of books about her father\u2019s Holocaust experience and her own as the daughter of Holocaust survivors, said synagogues in Nazi-controlled Europe \u201cwere attacked, and people were attacked and killed, because of the same kind of hatred\u201d that was shown last Saturday by the hostage-taker.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nothing new to me. I hate antisemitism. I don\u2019t understand why people feel that way about us,\u201d Salton said.<\/p>\n
At the same time, having survived the Holocaust and much else, she is ready to celebrate her centennial.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would very much like to be 18, but since I\u2019m 100, I\u2019m grateful that I came to a point to live to 100 years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n