Thread by @Delafina777

the $150,000 security costs he's talking about are I think, roughly the same as our total operating budget, most of which goes to rent and the rabbi's salary

smaller synagogues often don't own buildings and can't institute permanent security measures like these

https://twitter.com/RavBogard/status/1483166622298820619

our doors usually stay open if it's warm enough

late this summer, when we'd all been vaxxed and it looked like maybe COVID was winding down, for a few weeks we met in the courtyard

I sat on the steps up to the second floor in a sundress

the neighborhood could hear us singing

Even if we had all those security measures and closed and locked our doors during services, I think if someone came to the door and said they needed shelter, we would let them in

ultimately, you know why Texas probably wasn't worse?

because there were only a handful of people in the synagogue

imagine if it hadn't been during COVID times, if people had been gathered there in person

more people to panic, children, a more stressed-out gunman

we are only as safe as the communities around us let us be

this will continue to happen as long as news about these events continues to say it's not about antisemitism

as long as gentiles aren't talking about antisemitism

as long as we're letting conspiracy theories flourish

we keep saying Shema

"listen"

we've been saying it to each other for thousands of years

now I guess we're saying it to you too

LISTEN

how much longer must this keep happening?

LISTEN

we aren't puppetmasters
we aren't secret cabals
we aren't running the world

most of us can't even run a temple board meeting

we aren't all rich
we're just trying to afford health insurance for our rabbi
she hospices dying cats and brings us soup when we're sick

we aren't all that Other
prick us and we bleed--it shouldn't have been a villain who got that line
and haven't you seen enough of our blood spilled on the news the last 5 years?

we aren't all that Other

your Jesus learned his compassion and his justice and how to tell stories from our traditions

maybe you could learn to love living Jews and not just a dead one

and maybe we are a little bit Other to you

we're still here doing our thing after millennia of people trying to stop us

still living out proof that it's possible to do things differently than the way most people do them, to think differently, to *know* differently

we're here, living proof that you can have both change and continuity at once, that you can adapt over and over again and still keep who you are

you can lose so much, over and over again, and still dance and sing and laugh and celebrate

maybe we *are* a little bit Other to you

and if that doesn't give you hope rather than hate I don't know what to tell you

because that's what it is to be human

that's what it is to love another human
without remaking them in your image