TEXAS SYNAGOGUE HOSTAGES
‘Quite simply a mensch’: Meet Rabbi Charlie CytronWalker, freed after hostage crisis at his synagogue Andrew Lapin
(JTA)—Over the course of a harrowing 12 hours on Saturday, January 15, the entire world found out just what the Jews of Colleyville, Texas, think of their hometown rabbi. “Our rabbi is a wonderful human being,” Ellen Smith, who grew up at Congregation Beth Israel, said about Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker during an online vigil while he was being held hostage inside the synagogue building. Cytron-Walker was leading services on Saturday morning when a man took him and three others hostage, reportedly in an effort to free a woman who was convicted of attempting to kill American military personnel. The crisis, which streamed online for some time before being taken down, drew the world’s attention to a rabbi who is in many ways synonymous with the synagogue he leads. Congregation Beth Israel was founded in 1998 as an informal community in a rapidly growing suburb of Fort Worth,
located just miles from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Cytron-Walker, who joined the Reform congregation in 2006 after graduating from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, has been its only full-time rabbi. In that role, he has tackled the everyday challenges of synagogue leadership—seeking out a virtual program when COVID-19 forced Beth Israel’s Hebrew school to go online, for example—while also becoming well known in the area for his interfaith and social justice work. He has made friends everywhere he has gone, locally and across the extended network of Reform and Conservative rabbis who poured out their recollections of studying and working with him over the years. Colleyville’s police chief called Cytron-Walker a close personal friend. Even the man who attacked the synagogue praised him, saying on the live-streamed audio that the rabbi had welcomed him into the building when he knocked on the door asking whether the synagogue was a shelter. “I bonded with
‘I am grateful to be alive’: Rabbi held hostage in synagogue attack speaks out in Facebook post Shira Hanau
(JTA)—Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker spoke out about the hostage experience for the first time in a Facebook post Sunday, January 16, the morning after his release. He wrote: I am thankful and filled with appreciation for All of the vigils and prayers and love and support, All of the law enforcement and first responders who cared for us, All of the security training that helped save us. I am grateful for my family. I am grateful for the CBI Community, the Jewish Community, the Human Community. I am grateful that we made it out. I am grateful to be alive. He added to the post in a comment: “Now that I’ve put this out, maybe I can finally get to sleep. Sending love and compassion to all!”
8 | JEWISH NEWS | January 24, 2022 | jewishnewsva.org
him,” the man said. “I really like him.” Cytron-Walker is married to Adena Cytron-Walker, a vice president of a Fort Worth organization focused on diversity with whom he remains “completely in love,” according to his biography on Beth Israel’s website; the couple has two daughters. Cytron-Walker grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, where he leaned into Jewish life at an early age. His family belonged to Congregation Shaarey Zedek in East Lansing, and he attended Camp Tamarack, a popular summer destination for young Michigan Jews. While in high school, he was president of both Lansing’s temple youth group and the National Federation of Temple Youth’s Michigan region. At the end of every regional NFTY convention, he would show up wearing the same outfit: a T-shirt riddled with holes, adorned with the words, “Oh No… Acid Rain!” “It wasn’t just Charlie being silly,” Cytron-Walker’s childhood friend, Rabbi Aaron Starr, recalls in an email to the JTA. “It was him educating others and calling us to action without any meanness or judgmentalism.” When Cytron-Walker graduated from high school, he passed the shirt onto Starr, who continued to wear it in the same manner he had. Today, Starr, too, is a rabbi, of a different Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan. “Charlie has devoted his life personally and professionally to caring for those in need,” Starr says. When he heard the news of the hostage situation, Starr sent prayers for Cytron-Walker to his entire congregation. In college at the University of Michigan, Cytron-Walker was involved with the school’s Hillel chapter. He also spent a handful of evenings with Ann Arbor’s homeless population to better understand their plight. His commitment to social justice has extended throughout his career: between graduating from college and entering
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker
rabbinical school, he worked for a variety of social services organizations including Focus: HOPE, a Detroit nonprofit that provides education, job training, and other services to underrepresented groups; and an assistant directing role with the Amherst Survival Center, a soup kitchen and food pantry in western Massachusetts. His thesis in rabbinical school, where he received an award for his leadership on LGBTQ issues, was on “Jewish Service-Learning.” Cytron-Walker is well-known in Colleyville for his commitment to interfaith work. He serves on the steering committee of a local interfaith organization headed by a Unitarian Universalist church, and local Muslim leaders spoke out supporting him. One, Alia Salem, the founder of an advocacy group exposing abuse among Muslim faith leaders and a self-proclaimed “vocal supporter” of the movement to free the woman supported by the hostage-taker, said on Twitter that she has been a friend of Cytron-Walker and his wife for 15 years. “They are the kindest, most gentle, and loving people who have been absolutely rock-solid friends and allies not only to me but to the entire Muslim community through thick and thin,” Salem wrote.
