When Brian Immerman learned that a gunman had taken members of a Reform synagogue hostage, it “felt like a gut punch.”
It didn’t change his mind about the need to “welcome the stranger.”
Immerman is the spiritual leader of Hamden’s Congregation Mishkan Israel, the area’s largest Reform congregation.
Two Friday nights ago he began the Jewish Sabbath by participating with 20 fellow clergy leaders of different religions in a multifaith service at the Hamden synagogue to mark Martin Luther King Jr.‘s birthday. The next afternoon, while preparing for a havdalah (Sabbath-ending) service, he received the news about an armed man entering a different Reform synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. The rabbi there, Charlie Cytron-Walker, had let the disheveled man in and given him a cup of tea before the man turned around and began a hostage drama centered on demands that a nearby federal prison release an incarcerated alleged al-Qaeda operative.
Immerman and fellow rabbis on a text chain joined the world in following online the rest of an 11-hour drama, as an FBI rescue squad set up outside the synagogue.
In one respect, it was a familiar routine for American Jews: another attack at a synagogue, a reminder of the persistence of anti-Semitism, an occasion to reexamine and strengthen security measures at our houses of worship.
Rabbi Brian Immerman on WNHH FM.
So it was at Rabbi Immerman’s synagoguge.
“When I started, we had doors open all the time,” Immerman, who began at Mishkan Israel three and a half years ago, recalled Thursday in an an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
“When the tragedy happened in Pittsburgh” — the 2018 massacre of 11 Shabbat worshippers at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh — “we said, ‘We have to lock our doors.’
“As things happened in Poway” — the 2019 shooting of four Jews, one of them fatally, in San Diego – “we felt the need to have an armed security guard whenever we have a public service.”
Now came Colleyville. And congregations throughout the region are again reassessing how to remain — and more to the point, feel — safe when coming together to pray.
“This anti-Semitism is so real. It’s nefarious. It’s happening from so many angles now. It’s not just far right,” Immerman reflected.
“Jews are not going to solve anti-Semitism. We’ve been living with it and dealing with it for millennia. We need everyone else to stand up and say: Anti-Semitism is really real and prevalent. And we have to address it as a nation.”
And yet, as details emerged about the Colleyville incident, it also felt in some ways different from the previous incidents, Immerman said.
Congregation Beth Israel.
Initial reports stated that an FBI rescue squad had entered the synagogue as the situation deteriorated and rescued the four Jews inside.
Then a more complicated series of events emerged: As the rescue team entered the building and shot dead the hostage-taker, the hostages had separately made a dash for freedom. Rabbi Cytron-Walker threw a chair at the hostage-taker to deflect his attention, then ran outside along with his congregants.
“That moment — when I read that in The New York Times on Sunday night — I couldn’t even bring myself to say those words to my wife: They escaped,” Immerman recalled. Before that, he had “felt a sense of relief: There are people who are going to protect me. When I learned they escaped, that is a completely different calculus: There are moments when we need to rely on our own.”
And then there was the heroic tale of Rabbi Cytron-Walker: He earned the trust of the hostage taker. That helped calm the situation for hours, until tensions rose and the need for action arrived.
It turns out that the congregation in Colleyville wasn’t as in synch with Cytron-Walker’s approach. Before the hostage crisis, it had already decided not to renew his contract as rabbi.
After it all, Cytron-Walker was unbowed in his approach. He declared: The next time someone in need comes to the door, he will open it again and offer tea.
That declaration resonated with Immerman, who, like Cytron-Walker, makes a point of reaching beyond his community to connect with people of other backgrounds.
“My biggest takeaway” is that “I cannot be scared into not doing the right thing,” Immerman said. “I’m not going to be scared away by people who are anti-Semitic from, from welcoming the stranger.”
Click on the video at the top of this article to watch the full conversation with Rabbi Brian Immerman on WNHH FM’s “Dateline Hamden.”