The President of a Jewish congregation in Charlottesville
posts about what it was like there on Saturday:
Several times, parades of Nazis passed
our building, shouting, “There's the synagogue!” followed by chants of
“Seig Heil” and other anti-Semitic language. Some carried flags with
swastikas and other Nazi symbols.
A guy in a white polo shirt walked by the synagogue a few times,
arousing suspicion. Was he casing the building, or trying to build up
courage to commit a crime? We didn’t know. Later, I noticed that the man
accused in the automobile terror attack wore the same polo shirt as the
man who kept walking by our synagogue; apparently it’s the uniform of a
white supremacist group. Even now, that gives me a chill.
When services ended, my heart broke as I advised congregants that it
would be safer to leave the temple through the back entrance rather than
through the front, and to please go in groups.
This is 2017 in the United States of America.
Later that day, I arrived on the scene
shortly after the car plowed into peaceful protesters. It was a horrific
and bloody scene.
Soon, we learned that Nazi websites had posted a call to burn our
synagogue. I sat with one of our rabbis and wondered whether we should
go back to the temple to protect the building. What could I do if I were
there? Fortunately, it was just talk – but we had already deemed such
an attack within the realm of possibilities, taking the precautionary
step of removing our Torahs, including a Holocaust scroll, from the
premises.
Again: This is in America in 2017.
The neo Nazis did have a permit, though.
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