Within hours after the West Coast became conscious of terrorist attacks on the East Coast Tuesday morning, the S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services had 25 counselors en route to provide Bay Area-wide consultation.
“We have been spending a lot of time with parents, childcare centers and schools,” said Anita Freedman, executive director of the S.F.-based JFCS. “For a lot of people, whether they have relatives and friends on the East Coast or not, this is a psychological emergency.”
JFCS is not alone in its immediate efforts to address this national tragedy. Throughout Northern California, members of the Jewish community reacted swiftly, organizing vigils, sending out prayers, sharing their thoughts and offering assistance.
“One way we deal with feelings like this in the Jewish tradition is by finding ways to make ourselves useful,” said David Cooper, spiritual leader of Kehilla Community Synagogue in Berkeley. “It’s part of tikkun olam.”
In order to get that point across, the Kehilla school reorganized its programming on Wednesday and Thursday. Rather than offering the normal Judaic studies and Hebrew classes, educators encouraged the 120 kindergarten-through-sixth-grade students to express their feelings about the terrorist attacks and talk about ways to improve the situation.
“We told our teachers to give them a message that this is indeed a very sad thing and that we are aware that one of the reactions to this is to feel uncertainty and a vulnerability,” said Cooper. “Our answer is not that we should make ourselves invulnerable, but rather to mobilize ourselves to do what can be done.”
One way the students were encouraged to mobilize themselves was by directing their weekly tzedakah to New York and Washington, D.C., disaster funds.
Cooper also encouraged donations to these funds, as well as blood contributions, during one of many prayer vigils held on Tuesday night.
At that particular vigil, organized by the Berkeley religious community, Jews, Arabs, Buddhists and Christians were present and stood in solidarity.
Held at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Berkeley, it was “a very meaningful service, focusing on prayer rather than political agendas, and a chance for people to really be together in their shock and in their sadness,” said Cooper.
“At a time like this, there is a tendency for certain groups to go into seclusion,” he added. “The most important thing we can do is not allow terrorism to put us into an insular place where we only hear our own pain. If we can’t begin to feel and understand the pain of each other, we can’t begin to feel peace.”
Cooper added that it is particularly important at this point not to turn away from the Islamic community. Regardless of who perpetrated the crime, he said, Muslims are suffering greatly as the recipients of hate calls and threats.
Jonathan Bernstein, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Central Pacific region, agreed. The ADL, he said, is “reaching out to the Muslim community to let them know were here to stand by them…I’d like to see other people, particularly Jewish leaders, join the ADL in standing behind our Muslim brothers and sisters.”
During a meeting of close to 80 religious community leaders with San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown on Wednesday, Bernstein said the need “to speak out against any type of stereotyping” surrounding the attacks was made absolutely imperative.
“An attack against any community is an attack against us,” said Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, who was also in attendance. He explained that the meeting was highly effective since “the grieving process might lead to scapegoating” — people venting anger toward the Arab and Muslim community, for instance — “warranting a response from the religious community.”
For those who are not pointing fingers, however, “there seems to be a tremendous hunger to come together as a community and for educational purposes,” said Kahn.
As for the scapegoating and stereotyping, they’re not just aimed towards Muslims. Bernstein said the floodgates have also opened for anti-Israeli sentiments. “We’ve been getting a lot of calls from people saying this is all Israel’s fault,” said Bernstein. “On craigslist, we’ve heard reports of whole long dialogues of ugly anti-Semitic stuff.”
For this reason, the ADL is forwarding its pledge of respect, which encourages people to interrupt and speak up against prejudice, to clergy throughout the Bay Area. ADL is encouraging the recipients to put up their hands and repeat the pledge during their upcoming services.
“It seems to be the right time for people to do that,” he said. “Everybody is numb. We’re all feeling it.”
It is a feeling that is familiar to Amir Segev, the press officer for the Israeli Consulate.
“It’s the same anger and amazement that Israelis experience every day,” said Segev, who has been in the United States only during the past year. “The scale of today’s events are outrageous. You can’t even imagine a thing like that can happen. But basically, a terror act is a terror act if it happens in the U.S. or in Israel — if there are a couple of casualties or tons of them.”
Rabbi Pinchas Lipner, dean of the Hebrew Academy, called the attacks “a wake-up call to America” as well as a sign to the Hebrew Academy that it’s “time to beef up security” and ensure protection for Jewish children.
But Bernstein said the security concern is not effective “as a response to an incident. It has to be ongoing.”
In an e-mail sent to friends and relatives, Aaron Alpert, cantor at Sacramento’s Mosaic Law Congregation, offered a prayer in which he asked God to grant strength and guidance to those who fight against terror.
“May we soon fear war no more,” he wrote. “May You, our King, answer us on the day we call. For you, Lord are the One who hears prayer.”