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The most important thing to understand about the most deadly attack on Jews in US history is that the alleged murderer did not simply hate us by the Jews. Judging by his social media posts, he hated us for what we believe – for the highest ideals of what the Jewish religion embodies.
Start with the name of the Pittsburgh Synagogue he attacked, Tree of Life. This name is a metaphor for the Torah, the founding document of Judaism. Every Shabbat, when the scroll of the Torah is returned to the ark, the congregation sings these words, in Hebrew: "It is a tree of life for all those who hold it. . . His ways are ways of pleasure, and all his ways are peace. Help us turn to you, Lord, and we'll come back. "
It is truly awful that a synagogue whose name evokes this yearning for the protection of God has found itself in the theater of such carnage and such evil. Among the murdered: a 97-year-old woman. A husband and a wife in their 80s. Two brothers, 59 and 54 years old.
And why? Because their religion teaches tolerance and, more than tolerance, the obligation to welcome and care for those who need it most. At least 36 times, the Torah urges us to embrace the alien, the immigrant. I recited this passage from Leviticus to my daughter's bat-mitzvah: "The stranger who resides with you will be for you one of your citizens; you will like it as yourself, as you were strangers to the land of Egypt. "
This tolerance, it seems, prompted Robert Bowers, the accused murderer. On Gab, the social network of extremist havens, he attacked HIAS, the Hebrew Society for Immigrant Aid. The group was founded in 1881 to help Jews, like my grandparents and great-grandparents, flee the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe. But his mission has expanded to fulfill the biblical injunction to take care of the alien. As HIAS President Mark Hetfield likes to say, "HIAS was founded. . . to host refugees because they were Jewish. Today, HIAS welcomes refugees because we are Jewish. "
It's Bowers' rage. "HIAS likes to bring invaders to kill our people," he wrote a few hours before the rampage. "I can not stand by and watch my people being slaughtered. I'll go. A few weeks earlier, he had posted a link on the National Refugee Group Shabbat, writing, "Why hello there hias! Do you like to bring hostile invaders among us? Another message that he shared: "Open your eyes! It was the evil Jews of evil who brought the evil Muslims evil in the country !! "
Antisemitism is a disease without healing and, apparently, without end. It persists from generation to generation and from society to society. People like Bowers have always been part of an ugly American fringe. Social media simply provides a powerful new mechanism for the transmission of this long-standing venom and the amplification of pre-existing hatreds in the era of growing tribalism.
Which brings us to our president. "It certainly sounds like an anti-Semitic crime. It's something that you think still could not happen, "said Trump in Indiana on Saturday. You would not want? It is only if you are deliberately blind to what happened that Nazi protesters in Charlottesville chanted "The Jews will not replace us" and that ugly memes of Jewish reporters have seared Stars of David in ovens.
Just on the eve of Saturday's massacre, Trump, at an event at the White House, attacked the "globalists" – word-code alert – and chuckled while audience members were calling "George Soros!" – code-word alert – and shouted "Lock it" on the Jewish financier of Hungarian origin. If Trump does not flirt deliberately with anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism, he is unfortunately unaware of their presence.
But the animosity of his administration toward the refugees, exemplified by Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, seems to be directly related to Bowers' concern about the "hostile invaders" who "kill our people." If there is no cause and effect between Trump's language and Bowers' alleged actions, there is moral culpability for the creation of this climate of overheated fear. From supposedly Mexican rapists from his campaign launch to his baseless assertions that the migrant caravan includes "very tough criminal elements" and "unknowns from the Middle East," Trump has fomented among us the fears of the Bowers.
To that, the only answer may be to insist that what the Torah teaches about love from abroad is true and just. And that it's not just Jewish wisdom – it's, notwithstanding Trump, an American value. Eleven Americans died for this Saturday. Do not forget them.
(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group
