OP-ED: What the shooting in Charleston has to say to us

By RABBI DAVID POLSKY

Yesterday was the first day of the Jewish month of Tammuz. In a little over two weeks, we will begin a three-week period of mourning for the destruction of the temple, culminating in the fast of Tisha B’Av. Even though it has been almost two thousand years since the second temple was destroyed, we still mourn its destruction. This may seem excessive for a building.

But, for traditional Jews, the temple for was not just mortar and bricks. In traditional Jewish thought, the temple expressed our most sacred ideals and beliefs. In the temple, the Jewish people could worship and commune with God in the most sublime manner possible to humans. It not only helped the Jewish people connect to God, but even served to foster greater connection throughout the entire cosmos. When life outside the temple was difficult and chaotic, the temple and the greater perception of God’s presence served as a constant reminder to the Jewish people that God had not abandoned them.

Contemplating the significance of the temple helps us understand why we still mourn its destruction so many centuries later, even after the creation of the State of Israel. I believe it also helps us to appreciate why we mourn all of the tragedies of Jewish history on Tisha B’Av, the day on which the two temples were destroyed. The destruction of the temple represents not just the loss of a beautiful structure or sublime worship, but our very sense of connection with the cosmos and our place within it.

Spiritual sensitivity to the importance of the Jerusalem Temple enables us to better understand the horror of the attack on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston on Wednesday night. The viciousness of this terror attack is exacerbated by Emanuel AME’s place within the lives of its worshippers. It was the oldest black church in the South outside of Baltimore. As Jamelle Bouie writes in Slate magazine, it was a “historic symbol of black resistance to slavery and racism.”

Aside from the particular significance of Emanuel AME, we must appreciate the shooting in the context of African American history. Emanuel AME is certainly not the first African American church in the south to be attacked. During Jim Crow, African American churches were frequent targets of terrorism. As recently as two decades ago, a number of African American churches in the south were set on fire. There are many reasons for churches being selected as targets for those seeking to terrorize African Americans. But among them are their roles as sanctuaries from hatred outside their walls.

Entering the Jerusalem Temple (and the synagogue, a miniature temple, to a lesser extent) enabled the Jewish people to feel God’s presence and protection despite droughts, wars, etc. Similarly, I can imagine that for many African Americans, churches served (and continue to serve) as spiritual safe-havens from the racism, discrimination, and hatred they experience outside its walls. Terror attacks like that against Emanuel AME thus suggest attempts to provoke African American feelings of terror in their sacred spaces, the spaces in which they feel most spiritually protected.

By attacking African American churches, Dylann Storm Roof and other terrorists convey another not so subtle message that should be offensive to all religious people: That—God forbid—African Americans are not created in God’s image, cannot connect with Him, and are—again, God forbid—unworthy of His love. Just as the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem led us to feel separated from God, the shootings at Emanuel AME suggest an attempt to do the same to its parishioners.

As a rabbi and religious leader, I also mourn the death of Emanuel AME’s pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney. My friend and rabbinic colleague, R. Avraham Bronstein, tweeted another reminder of the parallels felt between the attack and the destruction of the temple, a reference to Lamentations 2:20: “Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?”

Finally the hatred expressed by Dylann Storm Roof reminds me of another parallel. According to the Talmud, the second temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred. It is hard to think of a baseless hatred more irrational, fierce, and destructive than that of racism.

I pray that God comforts and brings spiritual healing to the congregants of Emanuel AME as well as the community of Charleston. I further pray that God enables the rest of America to heal itself from the chronic disease of racism and other forms of baseless hatred.

(Rabbi David Polsky is the spiritual leader of Congregation Anshe Sfard, located just outside the Garden District in New Orleans.)