“…any Rabbi that says you should not carry a firearm in a synagogue, or any clergy that says it’s wrong to be armed, is unworthy of leading a congregation. […] houses of worship that state you can not defend yourself are houses of worship that you should not belong to.’
This was published directly after the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Eleven are dead, murdered, in Pittsburgh. Jews, celebrating birth and life, killed for being Jews at The Tree Of Life Synagogue. Murdered by a Nazi-acolyte, screaming that “All Jews Must Die.” Anti-Semitism is real, and the answer to its most violent adherents cannot be prayer alone. God may want us to heed His word, but He also gave us minds to recognize reality.
Anti-Semitism is real, and it isn’t subsiding; it’s growing worldwide, and locally. It existed in the 1940s, it existed when some lowlife chemically burned two swastikas into my lawn when I was a teenager living in Middletown, NJ in the late 1980s and it exists today.
No one is dead in Pittsburgh because of “gun violence.” And — because somehow in 2018 things must get said that are, without question, understood — no one at The Tree Of Life synagogue deserved to die. Americans engaged in their faith, celebrating a new life; they were assembled not only for Shabbat, but for a baby naming. Those are not people who deserve to die. Those are not families who deserve to suffer pain I do not pretend to understand.
by Tony Katz
