Anti-Semitic attacks are attacks on us all, Wilmington faith leaders say

Rabbi Michael Beals found out about the massacre of Jewish worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue during a happy event at his own Congregation Beth Shalom in Wilmington.

Beals was conducting a celebration in anticipation of a wedding, when news of the anti-Semitic mass shooting began trickling into the congregation. Not wanting to alarm anyone with false information but also wanting to take precautions, he quietly had the synagogue doors locked. 

There was “nothing in the rabbi’s manual” for what to do in the moment or in the days that followed, Beals said. He didn’t know how to accept kind words that poured in from people of different faiths, offering support in the face of a crime that had not happened to his own congregation.

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Standing in the basement of Bethel African Methodist Church on Wednesday with other local religious leaders, Beals said he’s concluded the right thing to do was embrace Wilmington’s interfaith community and its expressions of solidarity. 

At a news conference and interfaith prayer session Wednesday, Delaware rabbis, imams, and pastors spoke against anti-Semitism and religious discrimination, and denounced the rhetoric of the national politicians who they said are sowing racial and religious discord. 

“An assault on one faith is an assault on all our faith traditions,” said Rev. Lawrence M. Livingston, pastor of the Mother African Union Church in Cool Spring.

Livingston is first vice president of the Interdenominational Ministers Action Council, a group of clergy members in Wilmington who advocate for social justice issues, such as addressing racism in state government.

The group convenes regularly and discusses tragic events nationwide. Last year, it held gatherings when Jewish community centers were the target of bomb threats in Delaware.

“We honor our Jewish brothers and sisters, we honor our Islamic brothers and sisters,” Livingston said. “We really are the antithesis of some of the hatred going on in the world.”

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Upstairs in the church, he spoke the names of the 11 people killed in Pittsburgh. The congregants also recognized the two African American people killed last month in a grocery store by a gunman in Kentucky who had first tried to enter an African American church.

Rabbi Micah Becker-Klein of Hockessin led the dozens of attendees in two somber prayer songs asking for healing. 

Unbeknownst to the congregants as they gathered, another potentially anti-Semitic incident was unfolding in Delaware. Police were investigating a suspicious package at Siegel Jewish Community Center in Talleyville and evacuated the building. 

“The slaughter of these human beings was the result of a kind of hatred that is alive in our world,” Livingston said, “and cannot be tolerated, not only in homicidal acts, but in any form.”

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Contact Jeanne Kuang at jkuang@delawareonline.com or (302) 324 2476. Follow her on Twitter at @JeanneKuang.