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| Eleven people's lives were abruptly ended on Saturday when a gunman stormed the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood. |
Murder in a house of prayer |
| This past Sabbath, America, that flickering beacon of freedom for a troubled world, witnessed a new twist in an ancient prejudice. Murder in a house of prayer, committed in any country, speaks of bottomless depravity. |
| In the United States it is far more chilling. When churches in Charleston, South Carolina, are turned to charnel, it's time for a profound reexamination. After the horrific killing three years ago of nine peaceful African-American worshipers, on a quiet summer evening, no such national reflection took place. |
| Charleston was followed two years later by the mayhem of Charlottesville, Virginia. Then, too, no such self reflection began. |
| Now, white-and-blue prayer shawls in Pittsburgh are stained red with blood — forming, most ironically, the colors of the American flag. Eleven innocent Americans of the Jewish faith, praying in peace in Pittsburgh's idyllic Squirrel Hill neighborhood, are dead, victims of an Americanized new version of the most ancient hatred — anti-Semitism. |
| Will we let America's beacon, now nearly 250 years old, be extinguished? For surely we realize, it's not Jews or blacks or Hispanics or women or Irish or Italians or Catholics or Muslims or some other group who are threatened. It's America itself. Let us not imagine that the jackboots seek only the most vulnerable. It's our beloved and so maligned Lady Liberty, now tired and huddled herself, tremulously holding her torch aloft, standing perplexed at her sons, whom they seek. |
| Together, we cry. Soon, the crying will cease; after all, this is the way of man. It is at that time when, together, we must ask ourselves this simplest of questions: Have we lost sight of the very principles on which this republic was founded? |
| America is not just another country or state, rather it is mankind's bulwark, that exceptional place of hope and dreams, of shelter and prayer, of liberty and life. Let us not let it be lost. For there is no other. |
| Rabbi Aaron Kotler is president of Beth Medrash Govoha, the largest Jewish college in the United States. It is located in Lakewood, New Jersey. This column first appeared in the Asbury Park Press. |
What our readers are saying |
| Less than a week after the inciter in chief declares himself a nationalist, Jewish worshipers are murdered in their synagogue. President Donald Trump has blood on his hands. |
| — Mike Bates |
| One incident of so-called right-wing violence and all other recent violence is adjudicated to the right wing. No mention of the "antifa" riots or the use of violence on so many collage campuses to stop free speech. All these overt acts of violence committed by liberal/progressive/leftists are of no concern and, of course, do not lead to further violence. The violence of the left is excused by so many. |
| — Walt Kay |
| Trump is responsible. Sure, these people had these thoughts for a long time, but the reason they act on them now is that they have someone of authority, the president, saying the same horrible, racist things as they do. So naturally, they feel empowered to act out. |
| — Alex Canfuso |
| Trump's daughter is Jewish. Trump's son-in law is Jewish. Trump finally made good on an old promise to move the American embassy to Jerusalem and recognize it as the capital of Israel. What have the last few presidents done to strengthen our ties with the only Jewish nation on Earth? |
| — Eric A. Heidel |
What others are saying |
| Karen Tumulty, The Washington Post : "Hate groups feel emboldened to show their faces in public, as they did when they marched last year in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting: 'Jews will not replace us.' That, too, had a deadly result. But the president of the United States insisted there had been moral equivalency between the neo-Nazis and those who had shown up to protest them. ... Now, what President Donald Trump claims to have been unimaginable has actually happened on his watch. He is right to denounce an act so vile — but he and others in his party must quit giving hatred the oxygen and sunlight it needs to grow." |
| The Wall Street Journal, editorial : "Trump says he'll visit Pittsburgh, and well he should. That trip would be a statement of national solidarity with the victims and against anti-Semitism. This being 2018 in America, the political left nonetheless jumped immediately to shift blame for the murders from the killer to Trump. The Post ran off multiple pieces on the theme. No matter that Trump's daughter has converted to Judaism and she and her husband are raising their children in the faith. Americans would do well to ignore this toxic habit of political blame for murderous acts by the racist, anti-Semitic or mentally disturbed." |
| Alan Zimmerman, USA TODAY : "I'd like to say that I am, again, shocked at the violence now perpetrated against Jews in Pittsburgh, but I am not. Given what I saw in the streets here, it now seems that it was an inevitable tragedy, a straight line from the events in our small town in August 2017; to Trump's assertion of 'very fine people on both sides'; to the demonization of George Soros and other, so-called and unnamed 'globalists' with the use of time-worn anti-Semitic conspiratorial tropes that they are secretly pulling strings to undermine the standing of white culture; to Saturday's horror." |
| To join the conversations about topics on USA TODAY or provide feedback to this newsletter, email jrivera@usatoday.com, comment on Facebook, or use #tellusatoday on Twitter. |
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