Statement on Synagogue Shooting near San Diego

Yesterday, just as they were spending the last day of Passover celebrating freedom from slavery—and the hatred that fuels it—a group of Jews was attacked inside their California synagogue. We grieve with the Chabad of Poway, California, for the death and injury they’ve suffered and for the assault on their sense of safety inside a sacred space. Exactly six months after the shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, it is painfully clear that one of the world’s oldest and ugliest hatreds, antisemitism, is rearing its head in the United States, a place where Jews have long felt blessed to live and worship in freedom and peace. It is painfully clear that the kind of racial animus spurring these attacks is connected to the hatred behind the murderous attacks on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Christians celebrating Easter in Sri Lanka, on black churches in Louisiana, and too many other incidents to count. We pray for healing for those whose lives have been ripped apart by these vicious acts. And we demand that our leaders speak out and act forcefully against all who perpetrate them and who continue to incite racial hatred with their words and deeds.