Right after the relative of a survivor lit the third candle, in memory of the 6,000,000 Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, within the solemn silence of the sanctuary, you decided to start your rant.

Why then? Did it take you that long to get up the nerve? Or were you waiting for the right moment and this one seemed appropriate to yell about Gaza and genocide?

You were not there to mourn the 6,000,000 victims of an actual genocide, murdered for being Jewish, murdered by an entire government apparatus created by the Nazis and their enthusiastic collaborators that occurred from 1933-1945. You were not there to cry with the people who came up to the bima (raised platform in front of the sanctuary) to name family members lost, to cry over names never known, to lament entire shtetls incinerated.

You were not there to give a sliver of your heart to sympathize with the horror that engulfed your great-great-grandparent’s generation. You were not there to honor the annual moment we give to honor the losses and remember the importance of Never Again—especially, now, since this moment is so fraught with Jew hatred again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again AGAIN!

No, you decided that the people sitting in a synagogue in Oregon were committing crimes against humanity. These people who march and organize for everyone, truly living tikkun olam (repairing the world) didn’t deserve a moment to remember their own people who no one marched for, or saved by opening borders, or prevented from death in the gas chambers by stopping trains from reaching the death camps.

You say you’re Jewish and attended the temple’s Hebrew school. Surely, as you yourself stated, something failed. Not just that you listened to lies and distortions, but that your conscience can skip over the humanity of your own people as if—oy—we don’t count.

Your selective compassion, shaded with shame, covers the stranger, but what about your own family? What is a victim to you? Can you see that a people, that Israel and Israelis (your Jewish cousins), are trying to protect itself from those who want to destroy it, that they can be victim, survivor, protector—and not be accused of the crime of survival?

As I escorted you out, along with a few other congregants, you were silent. I took your papers, folding them in half then half again as if protecting me and now you from those accusatory words and images. After you left the building, I threw them in the garbage.

Did you feel alone in the cold wet night after the warmth of the synagogue?

I wonder if you pushed yourself further from the people who would listen to you and help you hear the cries of both Israelis and Palestinians. Was this you leaving the family table in a huff, closing yourself off from who you are to satisfy your need to be liked, even at the cost of betrayal?

By disturbing this moment of deep connection, you tainted the sacred feeling of loss of 6,000,000 Jews. I cannot forgive you for that. Putting yourself above them.

But I wonder what the Jewish community—the people sitting in shock at your outburst—can do to bring you back? The first thing the stunned rabbi said was to offer to meet and talk to you. Because dialogue for compassion, for understanding, for change—shouldn’t this be what we all want—cannot be one-sided. Speak and listen in a cycle that goes from separate threads to one entwinned in strength. This is what I hope for—for me, for you, for us, for them.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)