“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond.” —Fred Rogers.
I can’t shake the shooting at Tree of Life Synogogue in Pittsburgh this past weekend. I feel so many things. Hopeless, sick to my stomach, angry, fearful, and so desperately sad that hate crimes are becoming a regular occurrence. How to respond to such evil? Such hatred? I don’t have answers. But I do know that being silent is no longer tenable for me. It never was, and let me be clear, I never believed it to be, but I let my discomfort with sharing my outrage, my grief, my truth and my vulnerabilities in public forums and on social media grow into silence.
Honestly, social media is the last place I want to be in these moments of crisis. I long to share human, face-to-face connection during these moments of stunned outrage, grief and sadness. I want to share a hug, share tears with friends, share rage and sorrow and then make a plan of what we can do to respond. I can’t tell you how many posts I started to write — after the Charleston church shooting, the Pulse nightclub shooting, after Charlottesville, after the Portland train attack. Each time I started to write, but then I let my fears of expressing my vulnerability, my fear of saying it wrong, of not doing enough, get the better of me.
I just can’t do that anymore. I can’t accept that. This is bigger than my fear. I say to my Jewish friends, colleagues and neighbors: I am thinking of you, I am grieving with you, although I know it doesn’t do anything to lessen the pain and the anguish you are experiencing.
I say to everyone else — no matter your religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender or background — what happened at the Tree of Life Synagogue this weekend is EVERYONE’s problem. The problem is the growing fragmentation, isolation, fear and hatred growing in our society. The problem is divisiveness and “othering” of whole groups of people for their thoughts, their beliefs, their identities and how they express themselves. I will not tolerate this othering of people — at the macro level or at the micro level. I will not tolerate bigotry or hatred in any form, and I will not tolerate hate speech and demeaning speech in the many insidious ways in which it is expressed (including jokes and many other subtle ways that we perpetuate bias and intolerance within our social groups).
Silence is not an option. I will not be silent as the flames of anti-Semitism, racism and oppression are fanned from within hidden and not-so-hidden corners of our country and our community. Next Monday, I will be joining the interfaith rally and call to action at Congregation B’Nai Israel. If you share my outrage, please join me. Now is the time to unite in our shared work of crusading against injustice in its many forms.
Alison Keller
Easthampton