I have gone to synagogue quite a few times in my life. I have heard people pray on holidays, on Shabbat. and in the middle of the week.
But the prayer I heard at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday morning will be forever burned in my memory. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life.
One week after the massacre, silence fell once again upon the Tree of Life congregation. It was not the silence of a week earlier, the fearful silence of Jews hiding from an anti-Semitic killer, but the silence of a fragile yet powerful community in mourning. For one minute and 11 seconds, we stood in silence in memory of the victims: Cecil and David Rosenthal, Jerry Rabinowitz, Irving Younger, Melvin Wax, Rose Mallinger, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Joyce Feinberg, Richard Gottfried and Daniel Stein.
I expected to find a community that was broken, but it was strong, with love and faith bursting out to the heavens. There were no sad tears, but strength and pride, the prayer of a community that understands that if it were to relinquish its Jewishness and its synagogue, the terrorist will have won.
But along with the strength, there was also pain. In the middle of the prayer, a man in his 50s approached me and with one sentence, broke my heart into a million pieces.
"When you go back to Israel, tell everyone you can that we are Jews. Tell them who you met here, everything you have seen here," he said.
I wanted to cry, to apologize for the idea that people who were murdered for being Jewish may have felt in their last moments that they were not quite Jewish enough. I froze, thinking: These people are Jews. Oh, how Jewish they are.
I stood in a sea of hundreds of people, wrapped in tallitot, kippahs on their heads, reciting prayers that even I, an Orthodox settler from Israel, do not know by heart. Alongside the American flag, the Israeli flag waved. It was painted on the windows, alongside Israel's Declaration of Independence and the state symbol. I prayed with people who wept bitter tears when they prayed for peace for the State of Israel.
When they placed the Torah back in the Torah ark, they began singing "Am Yisrael Chai" – "The people of Israel live." This was followed not by the American national anthem, but by Israel's – 500 Jews, all American citizens, singing "Hatikvah" in the steadfast belief that Israel is their homeland. In their hearts, they are the most Israeli people in the world, connected to Israel in their souls. But somewhere in their minds lies the sense that they are second-class Israelis.
It doesn't have to be this way. Their prayers may be different, their ceremonies unique; after all, they are citizens of another country.
But they are our brothers and sisters. We, the citizens of Israel, have the power to embrace them and change the way they feel. We must bring our continents and hearts closer together. We must extend a hand, look them straight them in the eye and tell them we will never give up on them. They are part of us and we are a part of them.
