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At several Bay Area congregations last weekend, Shabbat services started out as worship and ended up as group therapy.
Crowds gathered at synagogues on Nov. 11 and 12 to share their questions and concerns about the country’s direction and the safety of Jews and other minorities in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as president.
At Oakland’s Temple Sinai, Rabbi Jacqueline Mates-Muchin led Erev Shabbat services, with more than 100 people in attendance. In the middle of the service, the rabbi turned the microphone over to congregants who wished to talk about the week’s events.
Though the forum was open to people from across the political spectrum, only those opposed to Trump spoke up, many with trembling voices. Said one woman, “I started feeling I lost my country.”
“I have three black kids and a Hispanic son-in-law,” said another. “We’re walking numb. They are experiencing vitriol hurled at them. It’s a scary world, and I’m in mourning.”
Another woman mentioned she had worked for years on behalf of women’s rights and human rights. “It feels like half of my life is a waste,” she said. “We struggled so long in this country. I fear for my daughters and grandchildren, who may lose the right to choose.”
Temple Sinai Rabbi Emeritus Steve Chester also spoke, recalling a time years ago when he marched in protests, wearing out several pairs of shoes in the process. He reminded the congregation that the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, speaking in the 1960s about civil rights marches, encouraged activists to “pray with our feet.”
“We don’t want to be numb,” Chester added. “It’s time to march again. We don’t accept hate speech.”
One man said he woke up after Election Day and wondered if it was 2016 or 1936. “We can’t let 1936 happen again,” he said, referring to the rise of Hitler in Germany. “The city of Oakland is boiling with anger. If we don’t do something, it could self-destruct.”
At Congregation Emanu-El’s Erev Shabbat services in San Francisco on Nov. 11, a packed sanctuary listened to Cantor Arik Luck sing “Hallelujah,” the world-famous song by Leonard Cohen, who had died two days before. Luck wept as he sang.
In her sermon, Emanu-El’s Rabbi Sydney Mintz called the election of Trump “shattering,” adding that as a married lesbian and the co-parent of two children, she worried her family’s legal status could be jeopardized, even reversed, in the coming years.
Noting that 24 percent of American Jews voted for Trump, some Emanu-El members among them, Mintz said the congregation would continue to be inclusive.
“We still have this,” she said, holding up the Torah, “this 4,000-year-old book. The Torah has lived through times like this and worse, and we will, too.
“This Torah is not going anywhere; the Torah is not moving to Vancouver,” she said, referring to popular interest in moving to Canada.
After the service, worshippers expressed a range of emotions and opinions concerning the election and its immediate aftermath.
Jill Storey compared it to Kristallnacht, the notorious Night of Broken Glass in November 1938, which brought a wave of anti-Jewish violence and vandalism across Germany and Austria.
“I thought about how it might have felt for the Jews in Germany that night,” she said. “Not that I think it is going to happen like that here, but I held an awareness of the possibility.”
There were some pro-Trump voices within the congregation. One said, “I am one of the silent majority. My husband is a Russian Jew, and having experienced Communism, he worries about the direction of this country and thought Trump would better maintain its values.”
Emanu-El past president Steven Dinkelspiel said, “I don’t describe everybody who voted for Trump as a racist, bigot or misogynist. I just think they ignored the fact that he personifies that, and they voted for their own self-interest, which is very human, but is not a value that I think lies at the heart of Judaism.”
The next morning, Berkeley Renewal congregation Chochmat HaLev held Shabbat services followed by a discussion about the week’s momentous events.
Led by spiritual leaders Jhos Singer and Julie Batz, some 50 men and women formed a circle in the sanctuary and voiced their hopes and fears. They started with silent meditation and Batz leading the song “Kol HaOlam Kulo, Gesher Tzar Me’od,” which translates, “The world is a narrow bridge; the important thing is to not be afraid.”
Said one woman, “I’m very frightened that Jewish concerns and anti-Semitism will be dismissed in a world of so many problems. I feel a sense of guilt and shame in putting Jewish concerns at the forefront.”
One woman distraught by the election results said she cleared out her closet and donated her winter coats to charity as one positive step she could take.
Another said the election had her thinking about her parents, who fled Poland and Austria in the 1930s as Hitler rose to power.
“I lay awake and wondered what it was like for them to give up their home, adapt to a new place, a new language,” she said. “I felt it in my gut.”
One man acknowledged the 1930s comparison, but said the election reminded him more of 1968, a year of tremendous upheaval around the world, but one that ended in a hopeful vision for the future.
“Martin Luther King was murdered,” he said. “The leading presidential candidate [Robert Kennedy] was murdered. But the center held, the [Vietnam] war ended and we all got through.”
A woman who grew up in South Africa said the events of the week brought to mind her homeland’s apartheid days. “I feel the same sense of impending tragedy,” she said. “There’s nowhere to run. These are revolutionary times.”
Another, sensing the despair around her, invited congregants to help themselves to her vial of medicinal herb capsules.
Not wanting the gathering to end in despair, another woman spoke up, saying that no matter what happens in the months and years ahead, no one needs to go through it alone.
“As hard as this is,” she said, it’s been harder for Jews over the centuries. “We don’t know what’s coming, but we will find strength together.”
J. correspondent Laura Paull contributed to this report.