Opinion: Attack on Texas synagogue strikes chord with Iowa City Jewish community

Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz sings a song during a Hanukkah celebration on Sunday, Dec. 2, 2018, at the Agudas Achim Congregation in Coralville.
Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz sings a song during a Hanukkah celebration on Sunday, Dec. 2, 2018, at the Agudas Achim Congregation in Coralville.

On a snowy Martin Luther King Day, nearing the end of our second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us in the Iowa City/Coralville community were examining and perhaps grieving for the state of our country and our world.

The ills, injustices and cruelties of our current age are unrelenting, and as ever, unevenly burdened upon the shoulders of the most vulnerable.

As of last Saturday, our local Jewish community finds itself grappling anew with the implications of continued and dangerous anti-semitism.

Last Saturday, on the holy day we call Shabbat — a day of rest, togetherness and prayer — a gunman entered a small Jewish synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and held Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and three of his congregants hostage for 11 hours. Law enforcement came to the synagogue’s aid during the standoff. In addition, we have learned that the rabbi’s safety training and incisive judgment may have saved all four Jewish lives as he was able to distract the gunman and lead his congregants and himself to safety.

As a rabbi of a community of equal size and similar demographic makeup, the incident struck a particular chord. I can’t even ignore the coincidence in the similarity of place name between Colleyville and Coralville, where Agudas Achim Congregation, our local synagogue, is located. We Jews have a long and storied history of resilience, but there is no denying that the sharp increase in anti-semitic incidences, some of them lethal, leave an impact on our Jewish lives and Jewish souls.

The Iowa City/Coralville Jewish community has been an integral part of our wider community for more than 100 years. We love and serve our wider community and feel safe, loved and embraced here. We have built strong interfaith and civic relationships with Christians, Muslims and other faith groups, and in true Midwestern spirit, value the mutual kindness between us and our town.

At the same time, we are scared, worried, angry and exhausted. We have to make calculations and investments to keep our Jewish community safe from hatred and violence. Protecting ourselves takes all the emotional oxygen in the room and leaves us focused less on all our Torah calls us to be in the world and more on the logistics of security.

We may look over our shoulder; worry at an unknown entity near the synagogue, switch on the alarm, review the camera footage, evaluate the safety of our children at worship and in Sunday School. It is not how we Jews want to live and it is not how we should live.

There is another very important story we want to tell. This is the story of Jewish flourishing and thriving, of resistance and resilience, of culture and justice, of connectedness and solidarity. Of the love we feel for the communities we are part of and the call we heed to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other vulnerable communities and peoples, especially on MLK Day.

We are determined to be both uncompromising in combatting anti-semitism and purpose-driven in how we will not let anti-semitism drive a wedge between us and the families of the earth. We will continue to stand with our Muslim siblings who may also be feeling vulnerable at this time, fearing islamophobia, and with the timeless, prophetic and appropriately discomfiting message of Martin Luther King Jr. in our struggle for equity and justice for Americans of color and all humanity.

Martin Luther King Jr. astutely taught us:

"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice."

The Jewish community of Iowa City/Coralville is grateful for the solidarity and love of our non-Jewish neighbors and doubly committed to continue sharing the love for all humanity as our proud history, life-giving tradition and God demands of us. The only enduring answer to hatred that any of us can bring is an "ahavah rabbah," a great and abiding love.

Esther Hugenholtz is the rabbi of Agudas Achim congregation in Coralville.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Opinion: Iowa City Jewish community will answer hatred with love