As they reflected on recent events in the Middle East, the leaders of two metro Atlanta faith communities acknowledged the difficulties they’ve been having absorbing what’s been happening in Israel and Gaza.
Dr. Nabile Safdar of the Roswell Community Masjid spoke of how he and his fellow Muslims supported their Jewish friends after a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.
Rabbi Alexandria Shuval-Weiner of Temple Beth Tikvah, also in Roswell, recalled reciprocating following a mass shooting at a mosque in New Zealand the following year.
At the 19th annual Ecumenical Thanksgiving Service Thursday at Temple Kol Emeth in East Cobb, they admitted that the recent atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians, and Israel’s military response in Gaza, have more than unnerved them, their congregants and those in their respective faiths.
“We can’t pretend that everything is okay with us,” Shuval-Weiner said as she spoke interchangeably with Safdar.
“We are not okay, and our communities are not okay.”
The service was begun in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by retired Kol Emeth Rabbi Steven Lebow and a local imam to forge better understandings of people of all faiths.
The theme of this year’s service, “Creating Courageous Connections,” had already been planned before the Israel-Hamas conflict began on Oct. 7.
Concerns over the response to those hostilities in the U.S. prompted service organizers to require online registration and issue a clear-bag policy as “safeguard” measures for the first time.
More than two dozen East Cobb and metro Atlanta faith communities and a few hundred attendees turned out.
“Tensions have soared,” Shuval-Weiner said. “There’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of anger. There’s a lot of pain.”
She added that “trustful relations between our communities are extremely strained.”
She and Safdar noted that those resulting tensions have led to tragedies in the U.S.: a Muslim boy in Chicago, and a Jewish community leader in Detroit, both of whom were murdered in what appear to be sectarian reprisals.
“We cannot allow that to be imported to our community here,” Safdar said to applause. “We are committed to seeing each other’s humanity.”
A local Cobb political response fell through earlier this week, when the Board of Commissioners decided not to vote on a resolution condemning Hamas.
The resolution by East Cobb District 3 commissioner JoAnn Birrell—who attended the Ecumenical service—faced objections from the Cobb Muslim and Palestinian community.
There were meetings with faith leaders to recraft the resolution to include more perspectives, but ultimately they could not agree on a message.
That matter wasn’t referenced at the Thursday interfaith service, which included music as well as reflections from local clergy. It also continued a practice of having a Muslim call to prayer from a member of Safdar’s mosque.
Rev. Kristin Lee of East Cobb United Methodist Church organized an interfaith service in June after neo-Nazi protestors held up swastika flags in front of the Chabad of Cobb synagogue on Lower Roswell Road.
On Thursday, she vowed that “hate will never have the last word. Love and light will” and she praised “a community that’s courageous enough to love.”
Shuval-Weiner concluded her remarks by stressing the need “to keep the door cracked open, so that when the time is right, we can again strive to build meaningful relationships between our communities, and for generations to come.”
Then she and Safdar exchanged copies of the Torah and the Koran and shook hands.
In his closing marks, Kol Emeth Rabbi-educator Daniel Alter said that “with our presence here tonight, we’re trying to be a testament to the power of community.”
The offering will benefit Solidarity-Sandy Springs, which feeds several hundred needy families every week in metro Atlanta.
The other East Cobb faith communities taking part were the Catholic Church of St. Ann, Congregation Etz Chaim, East Cobb Islamic Center, Emerson Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Pilgrimage United Church of Christ, St. Catherine’s Episcopal Church, Transfiguration Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Trickum Road, Unity North Atlanta Church and Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church.
Related:
- Grace Resurrection Methodist Church marks first anniversary
- East Cobb Church temporarily relocating to Roswell area
- New steeple raised into place at Sandy Plains Baptist Church
- East Cobb faith communities take part in new Habitat project
- At East Cobb interfaith service, ‘anti-Semitism is an everyone problem’
- East Cobb synagogue target of Nazi flags, anti-Semitic signs
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