There will be no forgiveness on Yom Kippur for those who have stormed the Jewish community in a series of brutal summertime attacks.
“You can’t go into Yom Kippur expecting to be forgiven unless you make amends to those who you’ve wronged,” said Rabbi Stuart Rosen, spiritual leader of Sacramento’s Kenesset Israel Torah Center, virtually destroyed in a June 18 arson blaze.
“There’s no obligation to forgive those who have wronged you,” he added. “It is an act of piety. But when somebody steals from you, they have to give back what they stole. If someone damages your property, they have to pay for it. That’s a requirement.”
That attitude is not just borne of the outrage of the moment but has deep historical roots in the Jewish faith, according to Abraham Foxman, national director of the New York-based Anti-Defamation League.
“We do not turn the other cheek,” he said. “We need to seek justice and make sure the people are brought to account for their crimes. Anyone who plans or wants to do harm to the Jewish community must know they will be brought to justice.”
The irony, Foxman said, is that it is the Christian faith that prizes forgiveness, “and many of these people [accused of hate crimes] say they are Christian. Let them practice some forgiveness.”
Meanwhile, Michelle Schipper, director of the North Valley Jewish Community Center near Los Angeles, where a gunman sprayed staffers and young children with bullets last month, will not spend her time thinking about the perpetrators during the High Holy Days.
“I am very proud of our staff and our community, and that is what I am going to focus on,” she said. “What we’ve seen here is that in the face of evil there is tremendous good.”
That sense of personal and community resolve resonated in the Sacramento area, where three synagogues were struck by arson.
“We must remain committed to who we are and what we do,” said Rabbi Matthew Friedman, whose Congregation Beth Shalom was among them. “If we stop, we’ve lost and they’ve won.”
Secondly, “we need to rebuild, whether it’s bricks and mortar, books, or giving fundamental support to those among us who have been injured,” he said.
For the ADL’s Jonathan Bernstein, two trends are meeting headlong during the High Holy Days. One is troubling, the other heartening.
“I’ll tell you one thing we should not be doing,” said Bernstein, director of the ADL’s Central Pacific region. “This is certainly not a time for us to hide our identity out of fear — covering over letters that say ‘Jewish’ on a day camp van or on a building. Those kinds of actions send the wrong kind of message, especially to Jewish youth. If they learn that they have to conceal their identities, they won’t be very interested in exploring and affirming who they are as a people.”
Conversely, “I am also seeing some very positive reaction, people coming back to Judaism. My hope is that temples will be overflowing with attendees interested in discovering and reaffirming who they are.”
Elaborating on the topic of granting forgiveness, Friedman noted that the two brothers who have been linked to the arsons, and are currently incarcerated in Redding while awaiting trial for murder charges, “haven’t come forward to say anything [expressing remorse]. Nor has Buford Furrow,” who was charged with the North Valley Jewish Community Center shooting and the killing of a Filipino postal worker.
“Forgiveness comes on the asking, but first you must be sorry,” Friedman said. “Secondly, you must make amends. Only then is there the possibility of reconciliation.”
But in the case of the perpetrators of recent hate crimes, the likelihood of reconciliation was largely dismissed by at least one local rabbi.
“It’s not much of an issue since I don’t hear anyone coming in here asking for forgiveness,” said Rabbi Alan Lew, spiritual leader of San Francisco’s Conservative Congregation Beth Shalom. “You can’t short-circuit someone else’s process. It’s meaningless unless that person is seeking forgiveness, has gone through the process of teshuvah,” repentance.
“There’s [also] the whole issue of who has the right to forgive,” Lew added. “We, the living, do not necessarily even have the right to forgive on behalf of those who are no longer here, those who survived the Holocaust and those who perished in it.”
The same principle holds true for the victims of the summer’s hate crimes, advocates say.
“It’s up to God to forgive evil people,” Rosen said. “It’s for humans to sue for damages.”
Those who have survived the onslaught of attacks say they have been deeply moved by the interfaith show of support that came afterward. But many are more consciously aware of what it means to be a Jew in a largely non-Jewish society.
“Being in exile, we’re the prey of the nations of the world,” said Rabbi Yosef Langer of San Francisco’s Chabad House, who counseled demoralized congregants in Sacramento after the June arson attacks.
“We must remain alert. But the spark of God lies deep within the crevasses of our soul, and when that enters us, we are able to fight any obstacle in our travels in exile. When we go out into the streets, we have to let our light, our pintele yid [Jewish spark], go in front of us — and always, go with one eye open.”