UC Berkeley’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at prayer in a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday – while screaming “all Jews must die” – has traumatized the Jewish soul and shaken the core of all Americans. Christians are mourning with the Jewish community, for we are part of the same faith family through the Hebrew Bible.
As an Orthodox rabbi and an evangelical pastor, we see this tragedy through the lens of what the Bible teaches us about mourning. On this occasion, as the Jewish community mourns this tragedy, Christians and other non-Jews can learn about the beauty and wisdom of Judaism’s mourning customs, which the Jewish people have relied on for centuries to get them through individual and communal tragedies.