Zoom interfaith gathering calls for healing, unity after Colleyville synagogue attack
Leaders from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths came together Thursday night to condemn antisemitism, call for unity and give thanks to God and the North Texas community and first responders who supported Congregation Beth Israel when it was attacked on Saturday.
In a gathering on Zoom, the leaders denounced any claims that the hostage crisis that occurred during the Colleyville synagogue’s Shabbat service was anything other than an attack on the Jewish community and said an attack on any faith is an attack on all faiths.
“This was not a pizza parlor or a shopping mall, though violence in those places would be horrific. It was a Jewish house of worship, on our holy Sabbath,” said Cheryl Drazin, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Central Division. “Violence aimed at a synagogue is antisemitism.”
General Consul of Israel to the Southwest Livia Link-Raviv said the nation of Israel supported Congregation Beth Israel during the attack and will continue to do so. She said Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and the three congregants who were taken hostage displayed faith and courage that was inspiring.
“It is then in the moment of distress, being caught between raging sea waves on one side and Egyptian soldiers on the other, that they overcome fear, took a leap of faith and witnessed a miracle,” Link-Raviv said, comparing the attack to the Jewish escape from Egypt in the book of Exodus.
Safi Khan, an instructor at the Qalam Institute Muslim seminary in Carrollton, said he believes all faiths have a central calling of loving others and was horrified by the attack on Congregation Beth Israel.
Cytron-Walker and his congregation have been an example to him and others across faiths of what it means to live a good life, Khan said.
“I find myself working to emulate them in many ways in courageousness and in honor as well,” he said.
Cytron-Walker talked during the community gathering about a conversation he had with the hostage-taker as the crisis was ongoing, telling him the Jewish idea of mensch.
“It means, in Yiddish, human being. The way we use it in the Jewish community, it doesn’t just mean to be human, it means to be the most loving, compassionate version of ourselves,” Cytron-Walker said he told the gunman. “All of humanity, we are one people. The more that we can know that, the more that we can understand that, the more peace, the more love we’ll have within our community and our world.”
Michael Higgins, the priest of Good Shepherd Catholic Community in Colleyville, said his congregation and that of Congregation Beth Israel have a years-long friendship and Saturday gave his church the opportunity to act on that friendship.
Good Shepherd on Jan. 15 hosted a prayer vigil for the hostages in Congregation Beth Israel as the crisis was ongoing and offered the families of the people being held by the gunman a safe space to go.
“The friendship that had been forged between our communities for so long was just bearing fruit at that point,” Higgins said. “When our Jewish friends were suffering, we suffered with them because we do consider them a part of our wider community.”
The interfaith leaders prayed for peace, healing and unity during Thursday’s gathering, calling on the world to give up hate and for different faiths to embrace each other as “siblings.”
“Let us all extend our hands to each other … so that we can heal, and throughout the world we become the shining light of blessing,” Cytron-Walker said.