Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 17, 2022

On Jan. 15, a gunman held four people including a rabbi hostage at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, because, in his words, Jews control the world.

The crisis ended when the rabbi, following the security training hed received, told his parishioners to run and threw a chair at the gunman.

Courageous action on the part of the rabbi, but one wonders at the necessity for security training.

Rabbi Joshua Stanton wonders as well: I did not become a rabbi to be an expert in security, he said. I became a rabbi to teach, to support, to care. . . . And now . . . there is a great deal of fear.

The need for security training follows a string of attacks against Jewish communities.

One thinks, for example, of the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh where 11 parishioners died; those at the Chabad of Poway, one dead and three wounded; and those at the Jersey City kosher market, three dead.

Sadly, the disease of antisemitism grows like a cancer in the United States.

According to the American Jewish Committee, one in four American Jews have been the targets of antisemitism in the last 12 months.

The Ventura County Interfaith community deplores both the cowardly attacks on Jewish communities and the antisemitism that undergirds them.

It also applauds the courage of the rabbi of the Colleyville congregation, and it applauds the everyday courage of the rabbis of Ventura County who continue to minister to their congregations in the face of events like Colleyville and the everyday pain of antisemitism.

More than that, though, we commit to a redoubled effort to combat antisemitism by connecting communities of faith of all stripes in Ventura County.

Timothy HeltonCamarilloHelton is a member of the Ventura County Interfaith Association.

See more here:

Security training the new normal - Thousand Oaks Acorn

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