MARBLEHEAD — More than 500 people gathered from Marblehead, Swampscott, Lynn, and other neighboring communities at Temple Sinai Sunday evening for an interfaith vigil to mourn the victims of the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning.
Eleven people were killed when a man, later identified as Robert Gregory Bowers, barged into the Tree of Life Congregation during worship services, proclaimed hatred for Jews, and opened fire for 20 minutes. Four police officers and two others were injured in what officials are calling one of the deadliest attacks on Jews in U.S. history.
In addition to Jewish leaders from Marblehead and Swampscott, local leaders from various faiths, including Catholicism and Islam were present and participating in the vigil. The ceremony involved remarks from religious and elected leaders, along with song and prayer.
“What we heard happened in Pittsburgh broke our hearts,” said Rabbi David Cohen-Henriquez, of Temple Sinai, who spoke of the importance of loving your neighbor as yourself. “It struck very close to home. It could have happened here as we were sitting … This group of religious men and women have met too many times for my taste in the last few years for vigils, for memorials like this. We have had enough of them.”
State Rep. Lori Ehrlich (D-Marblehead), who is Jewish (in the early 1900s, both of her parents’ families fled for their lives from Ukrainian pogroms before settling in the North Shore), said her heart was heavy following the shooting, but it was already in pain.
“Something truly terrible is happening in our country,” Ehrlich said. “We are fractured. Those fractures are being exploited into fissures by those who should know better. The fissures are deep and are being filled with hatred and bigotry. The delicate norms that have (been woven) together into the fabric of our nation are being torn apart.”
In the last three days, she said there were two other incidents of hatred that occurred before the shooting. Two African Americans, a man and a woman, were shot down by a white supremacist while grocery shopping in Kentucky and a “deranged white supremacist” mailed more than a dozen pipe bombs to prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, along with CNN, where Ehrlich’s daughter works.
“We cannot stand idly by while the messages of hatred for immigrants and Jews cause this one person with a heart filled with hate pick to up a whole bunch of his guns and commit this act in Pittsburgh,” Ehrlich said. “Any message of hatred, no matter who it’s for, must be out of bounds. We have to be better than this.”
Rabbi Michael Ragozin, of Congregation Shirat Hayam in Swampscott, said an event like the one at Temple Sinai shows the strength, not just of the Jewish community, but of the general Marblehead, Swampscott, and Lynn communities, in that many people across many faith communities and civic organizations came together.
“We each may feel this tragedy on different levels, some of us on a more particular, unique, Jewish level, others of us on a more human level,” Ragozin said. “I think the Jewish community should continue to support its synagogues and attend synagogue on Shabbat. I think the way you respond to an anti-Semitic mass shooting on Shabbat is to show up on Shabbat.”
U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass) spoke of a challenging time in his life, where he was helped by a book written by a Holocaust survivor, Dr. Victor Frankl, a neurologist and psychiatrist. He said the story of resilience, survival and hope put his struggles into perspective, but also helped him think positively of his own circumstances.
Between stimulus and response, he paraphrased from the book, is the space and power to choose our own response, which is where growth and freedom lies. Moulton said the book taught him that when someone is no longer able to change a situation, people are challenged to change themselves.
“We can’t change what happened (on Saturday),” Moulton said. “We can’t get those lives back. The Pittsburgh community will never be quite the same. But we must change this country. It is in our power to choose growth, to choose freedom for all people, to choose love.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents rose nearly 60 percent from 2016 to 2017, the largest increase since those figures started being tracked in 1979. In Massachusetts, there was a 42 percent increase over that same time period.
“(Saturday’s) horrific massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history,” said Robert Trestan, ADL New England regional director, in an emailed statement provided to The Item by the organization.
“It is a horrific reminder that unchecked anti-Semitism can manifest itself into the targeted killing of Jews. As we mourn and reflect on this deadly attack, we remain steadfast in our mission to stop hate wherever it appears, and root out anti-Semitism with education and advocacy efforts at every level.”
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
