Here’s hoping hope prevails over hate

REGINA BRETT columnists@cjn.org | @ReginaBrett

The antidote for hate is hope.

It’s easy to give up hope after a gunman opened fire during Shabbat services at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, killing 11 people and wounding six more.

Especially when you read about the anti-Semitic graffiti posted after the murders at temples in California and in Brooklyn, N.Y., where someone wrote, “Kill all Jews” on the temple walls.

But signs of hope and resilience abound.

Right after the shootings, more than 2,500 attended a vigil in Pittsburgh, including some Clevelanders who drove two hours to honor the dead and wounded. In that City of Steel, people left flowers and candles, turning street corners into shrines.

An overflow crowd filled the Mandel Jewish Community Center in Beachwood and the Schottenstein Auditorium in the Jewish Community Center of Columbus. More than 500 gathered at each event for a prayer vigil.

We outnumber the haters and the shooters and the anti-Semites. We outnumber them all. Let’s not forget that.

That lone shooter in that temple was outnumbered by all those who donated blood for the victims in Pittsburgh. Those hateful graffiti scrawlers are outnumbered by all those who have chalked messages of love and hope on the sidewalks outside of temples across the country.

The haters are outnumbered by the thousands who attended rallies and the vigils and interfaith prayer services across the country at colleges, temples and churches.

By the untold masses who changed their Facebook logos to the modified Pittsburgh Steelers logo, yellow, red and blue, “Stronger Than Hate” with a bright yellow Star of David at the top.

People are standing up to hate.

The far-right social media site where the suspect posted his hatred against the Jews, gab.com, went silent, hopefully forever, after its domain server, GoDaddy, told it to find a different domain. PayPal banned the site from using its payment service.

Robert Bowers, who is accused of the slaughter at the synagogue, had posted his anger toward a Jewish nonprofit that serves refugees and wrote, “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

Facebook and Instagram banned a farright group called Proud Boys, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a hate group.

The New York Times reported two Muslim groups raised more than $200,000 to help the victims and their families of the massacre. Tarek El-Messidi, an activist in Chicago, tweeted, “Muslims, let’s stand with our Jewish cousins against hate, bigotry, & violence.”

He created an online campaign with two Muslim groups, CelebrateMercy and MPower Change. Celebrate Mercy tweeted, “MUSLIMS: Let us stand with our Jewish cousins against this senseless, anti-Semitic murder. Guided by our faith, @CelebrateMercy & @MPower_Change ask you respond to evil with good. Donate now to help shooting victims with funeral expenses & medical bills: http://launchgood.com/synagogue.”

Iranian immigrant Shay Khatiri started a GoFundMe Campaign for the synagogue, even though the 29-year-old lives in Washington D.C., and has never even been to Pittsburgh,

His GoFundMe page reads: “An antiSemite attacked and killed several attendees to a baby’s bris at a Pittsburgh synagogue. This fundraiser is meant to help the congregation with the physical damages to the building, as well as the survivors and the victims’ families. Respond to this hateful act with your act of love today.”

Within six days, he had raised more than $1 million.

If you look for the helpers, they far outnumber the haters.

It’s either ironic or perhaps a beautiful grace that Mr. Rogers once lived just blocks from the synagogue. Fred Rogers urged parents to tell their children in times of crisis, “Always look for the helpers. There are always people who are helping.”

And the helpers? They even helped the shooter.

The helpers put aside any hate they had for Bowers, who was shot by police and ended up at Allegheny General Hospital. Some of the medical personnel who treated him were Jewish. So is the president of the hospital, Jeffrey Cohen.

Cohen told CNN, “Isn’t it ironic that somebody who is yelling in the ambulance and in the hospital, ‘I want to kill all the Jews,’ is taken care of by a Jewish nurse and there’s a Jewish hospital president that comes in to check on him afterwards?” Cohen knew nine of the people who died.

Ever since the shooting, this Mayan proverb has given me hope: “They thought they could bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” gathered. “They shake us to the core, reminding us that there are still forces of evil in our midst, forces that seek to divide us, marginalize us and even harm us. But that darkness cannot overcome us. In the end, it is God’s light and love that will be victorious.”

The shooter left us 11 people to bury.

He had no idea how many acres upon acres of hope would spring forth.

Read Regina Brett online at cjn.org/ regina. Connect with her on Facebook at ReginaBrettFans. 2018 Best Columnist, AJPA Louis Rapoport Award for Excellence in Commentary.

Weiss said African-American pastors and ministers were among those in attendance, and he specifically highlighted the recent killings of Maurice Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones, whose deaths outside a Jeffersontown, Ky., supermarket Oct. 24 are being investigated as hate crimes. Their names were included in El Maley Rachamim, the memorial prayer, and at the reciting of Mourner’s Kaddish.

B’nai Jeshurun’s service included Psalm 121, Debbie Friedman’s “Mishaberach,” Psalm 23, “Od Yavo Shalom” and Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.”

“The most beautiful thing was that the clergy turned around and invited other clergy, and they invited their communities to come,” Weiss said.

At Green Road Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Beachwood, there are usually three separate Friday night services.

“I very much wanted the congregation to come together as a whole, and I also wanted to invite people from the outside,” said Rabbi Binyamin Blau. “I wanted to stress the light. And the response of the Jewish community, and even the non-Jewish community, has been so supportive,”

Blau said he invited people from all three services to join in the main sanctuary. That pushed attendance to 400.

“Because we built that as an opportunity to show our unity and solidarity, I think more people came out,” he said, adding that the main service on Friday night typically draws 70 to 80 people. “There were tears. It was such a powerful expression.”

On Nov. 3, he said the synagogue’s three services numbered “well over 400.” Blau also stressed the need to call out antiSemitism whenever it is seen.

Rabbi Lauren Werber at Temple B’nai Abraham, a Reform temple in Elyria, said she was surprised by the response of the wider community. At Temple B’nai Abraham’s Friday night service, there were 250, including representation from three other synagogues, 15 churches, a mosque and a Hindu temple. That number contrasts with the about 30 people who ordinarily attend Shabbat services.

“For us, it was pretty remarkable because we didn’t advertise heavily,” Werber said. “We were blown away by the response and by how kindly and gently and generously these people came and joined us.”

Prior to lighting Shabbat candles at B’nai Abraham, Yartzeit candles were lit in memory of the victims. Werber said there were memorial readings.

“It’s really hard to express just how amazing the evening was, how heartwarming it was for us, but also how meaningful it was to our guests,” she said.

Temple Am Shalom, a Reform temple in Mentor, also saw its numbers swell at Friday night services to a full house of 100 and a full parking lot, according to its president, Andrew Kenen. The temple has 37 families. Membership from four churches was represented at its service.

At Park Synagogue, a Conservative synagogue in Cleveland Heights and Pepper Pike, where services normally draw 350 to 500, 700 people turned out for services at the Pepper Pike location Nov. 3. Rabbi Joshua Skoff said he spoke about the importance of uniting with people of other faiths.

“We got larger, but we’re a shul-going shul,” he said.

He said that the Nazis were most effective when they divided people of different faiths.

“There are many more of us than there are of the bad guys,” he said.

Skoff said he encouraged congregants to nominate each other for aliyahs as a community-building exercise.

“The way you become a community is you learn something about the people sitting next to you,” he said.

At The Temple-Tifereth Israel, a Reform temple in Beachwood, Senior Rabbi Jonathan Cohen estimated close to 500 people attended Friday night services, including members of clergy from other faiths. He said Friday night services typically draw 120 to 150 people.

“We had a moving candlelighting ceremony in memory of the 11 lives that were lost in Pittsburgh, and we had a very meaningful gathering and drew comfort from each other’s presence and from the presence of community leaders and others who reached out to us,” Cohen said.

While Robert Nosanchuk, senior rabbi at

Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, a Reform temple, made a trip to Columbus to visit with Fairmount Temple students attending The Ohio State University, Rabbi Joshua Caruso led a Shabbat service Nov. 2 that drew more than 400 to 500 to the Beachwood temple. Friday night services typically draw 150 to 300.

“The building of hope began this week for me,” Caruso said in his sermon, “when I, kipah resting on my head, was standing in line at a local Walgreens behind a gentleman who glanced at me and said, ‘Hey, man, I’m sorry about what happened to your people in Pittsburgh.’ I thanked him, and I thought, ‘It’s no less tragic than what happened in Charleston or Sutherland Springs.’ And it is a reminder that the demonization of Muslims and immmigrants in our country today is widespread and unacceptable.”

Nosanchuk said he listened at his dinner with 14 students in Columbus.

“I didn’t come down to do a program, just to spend time with them and to remind them of how precious they are,” he said. “It’s hard when you’re just beginning your young adult life to navigate Jewish identity. There were a number of students amazed that I was there only for them.”

He said those questions may have been heightened by the shootings in Pittsburgh, but he also said that this generation of young adults has grown up with frequent large-scale shootings.

Masroor Malik of Solon, a board member of the Chagrin Valley Islamic

Center in Solon, attended two services at different Beachwood congregations.

“I went to Fairmount Temple on Friday night, and then I went to Shaarey Tikvah on Saturday,” he said. Of the 45 to 50 families he regularly worships with, he estimated 15 to 20 people joined him at Fairmount Temple and four or five went to Congregation Shaarey Tikvah on Saturday. He said word of Solidarity Shabbat went out on the Islamic Center’s Facebook page and in its weekly email.

“I’d never been to a Jewish service before,” he said. “It was nice to hear similar messages that I normally hear at our mosque.”

He expressed gratitude to Caruso for allowing Muslims to use a room to pray at one of the five prescribed times of day: sunset.

“We just want to make sure we show our support and we are standing shoulder to shoulder with all faiths at any time of need,” said Malik, who also spoke at the Mandel Jewish Community Center vigil in Beachwood on Oct. 29. “I think the most important thing is to stay united and defeat hate.”

After that defeat, Superintendent Robert P. Hardis recommended, and the school board approved, going back to voters to request funding for school operations.

On Nov. 6, Beachwood schools sought and received a 5.9-mill operating levy that would raise an estimated $4.3 million to help offset a forecast deficit of $4.6 million in the current operating budget.

Hardis said Nov. 7 he feels grateful to Beachwood voters, whom he called savvy.

There is no immediate impact to the Beachwood schools’ budget based on the passage of the operating levy, Hardis said, and no plans to restore funding to areas that were cut.

“As the year progresses,” he said, “it is our intent to maintain the budget that we started the year with.”

Hardis said the widespread but small budget cuts to the current school operating budget guaranteed that no one area was affected deeply. Any potential additions to the budget, he said, would be tested on their merits.

Homeowners will be assessed an additional $413 for every $200,000 of market valuation.

The levy will mean that Beachwood schools will not need to go to voters for additional operating funds for the next four to five years, as the schools face current and anticipated state funding cuts, Hardis said.

He also said there is no anticipated discussion of what to do with city’s aging elementary schools.

“We promised the community that everything to do with our aging elementary schools was on hold, and that they are on hold indefinitely,” Hardis said.

A local political action committee, Low Tax Citizens, opposed the levy.

Mikhail V. Alterman, assistant treasurer and spokesman of the group, said, “The battle will continue despite the negative coverage of the Cleveland Jewish News. It’s not over.” two very important people who weren’t able to be in attendance: his parents, Marcia and Thomas Dettelbach, both of whom passed away in 2017.

The Beachwood schools’ operating budget for the current fiscal year stands at $34,774,816.

Beachwood schools have an enrollment of 1,637 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade with a staff of 300.

“I started this campaign with both my parents and didn’t end this campaign with my parents, but I know they’re looking down and saying what all of us feel, which is the fight for justice, the fight to be right, the fight to make things better is something that never ends in one night,” he said. “It goes on and on and on. It will go on for me, and I know it will go on for everybody in this room.”

Yost will replace term-limited Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine as Ohio’s top cop and highestranking lawyer. The office oversees four crime labs, a police training academy and the state’s debtcollection system. The attorney general also writes legal opinions, assists district attorneys, and helps local and federal law enforcement. His four-year term will begin in January 2019.

“(Dettelbach) is a smart man. I’m sure we’ll hear more from him, but tonight, tonight belongs to the Republicans,” Yost told supporters at the Sheraton Columbus Capitol Square in Columbus. “Let us remain true to our principles, let us never waiver from our duty and let us govern with passion and compassion in the days ahead.”

Dettelbach’s effort to become Ohio attorney general marked his first attempt at winning an elected office. He said he drew inspiration along the way from the Jewish community.

“I’m very proud I’m the only person who’s running for statewide office who’s a member of the Jewish community,” he said shortly before voting at Grantwood Golf Course in Solon. “I’m also proud that I’m part of a lineage of candidates from the Jewish community who’ve held statewide office in Ohio – both Republicans and Democrats – ever since Howard Metzenbaum became our (U.S.) senator.

“Our community has always given and contributed and punched above our numbers in this state, and I’m very proud of that,” Dettelbach continued. “I’ve worked a lot in the Jewish community, met with people in the Jewish community, and I think there’s a real feeling in the Jewish community – in the Cleveland Jewish