Jews in communities far from Israel have gathered at synagogues this weekend for their first Shabbat services since Hamas militants attacked Israel, igniting an ongoing war.
Rabbis led prayers of peace and shared grief with their congregations.
At many synagogues, security was tight.
One US rabbi based in Pittsburgh said the deadly Hamas attack is not just another geopolitical event for Jewish people – it is dredging up generations of visceral trauma, especially in a city scarred by the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history.
“More Jews were killed last Shabbat … than on any other day since the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Daniel Fellman of Temple Sinai, during the first service following the violence in Israel.
“It isn’t that Hamas wants the destruction of Israel. It’s that Hamas wants the destruction of you and me.
“The world deserves better, the Palestinian people deserve better, and we need to do better.”
Despite that anguish, Rabbi Fellman’s congregation – and others across the world – heeded the words of an Israeli soldier who had urged worshippers “to go sing and dance, go make sure that every person in the world hears us singing this prayer this Shabbat”.
Rabbi Fellman preached on the biblical story of the first murder – that of Abel by his brother Cain – and urged an understanding that all people are siblings, including Jews, Christians and Muslims.
“They are all our brothers and sisters, and when one of us hurts, we all hurt. If we can’t see that we share this earth, that we share God’s love … then we are doomed to live the curse of Cain and Abel again and again.”
For Rabbi Seth Adelson of Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh, receiving the news about the attack last Saturday morning as he headed to worship brought back traumatic memories of October 27 2018.
That Sabbath morning was shattered by news that a gunman attacked the nearby Tree of Life synagogue and killed 11 people from three congregations meeting there.
The difference, he said in an interview, was “we just we could not comprehend the idea of a shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh”.
By comparison, last week’s Hamas attack was “tragic and horrifying and gut wrenching, but it was believable”.
After the Pittsburgh synagogue attack, “we felt the whole community embraced us,” Rabbi Adelson said.
“One of the things that many of us are feeling right now is that we are not feeling that embrace. We are really a community in pain and we don’t feel support.”
But they are carrying on with the rhythms of ritual life, Rabbi Adelson said. Saturday’s service at Beth Shalom includes a bar mitzvah, a young man’s coming-of-age initiation.
“Sometimes we celebrate, even as we know we must grieve,” he said.
Meanwhile, police in Germany’s capital, Berlin, visibly increased security in front of synagogues as worshippers flocked to Shabbat prayer services.
The heightened safety measures come in reaction to global tensions triggered by Hamas’ attack, and Israel’s subsequent bombing of Gaza, as well as calls on social media to violently protest in front of Jewish institutions in Germany.
At Berlin’s Chabad community in Berlin’s Wilmersdorf neighbourhood, the street leading to the synagogue and adjacent community centre was blocked to traffic. Police and private security service patrolled on the pavement as congregants arrived at the house of worship.
Some men wore their yarmulkes hidden under baseball hats, while others did not wear any skullcaps until they entered the synagogue.
Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, head of the local Chabad community, told The Associated Press on Friday evening that “this is a very challenging moment for the Jewish people”.
“At the same time we will stand together with resilience and complete trust in God for a positive future,” he added.
“There is nothing more than the terrorists want than to demoralise us – they’ve achieved the opposite.”
His remarks came as hundreds of Berliners assembled in front of another temple, the Fraenkelufer Synagogue, on the eve of Shabbat to protect it and the prayer service held inside from possible attacks.
Elsewhere, an Indonesian rabbi at the only synagogue in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation called for peace on Saturday and an end to the fighting in the Israel-Hamas war.
“We call and pray for peace,” Modechai Ben Avraham said, “because when peace is restored to our lives, we can carry out any activity and worship peacefully.”
The rabbi, who led prayers at Shaar Hashamayim synagogue in Tondano city on Sulawesi island, said the conflict has not caused anxiety or a sense of fear and isolation for the synagogue and its worshippers “because people know our community only focuses on carrying out religious services.”
Shaar Hashamayim is currently the only synagogue in Indonesia; it has served a local Jewish community of some 50 people in Tondano since 2019. Judaism is not recognised as one of the country’s six major religions, but its practices are allowed under the Indonesian constitution.
There are an estimated 550 Indonesian Jews, mostly live in North Sulawesi, a province home to more than 2.6 million people, who are mainly Christian in the mostly Muslim archipelago nation.
