Jewish American Heritage Month

Jewish Facilities On High Alert After Shot Fired At Nashville Synagogue – Video

Posted By richards on April 14, 2015

Jewish Facilities On High Alert After Shot Fired At Nashville Synagogue
Officials have confirmed one shot was fired at the West End Synagogue in Davidson County.

By: NewsChannel 5

Police: Shot fired into window of West End Synagogue

Posted By richards on April 14, 2015

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) -

Police are investigating after a bullet was shot into the front window of the West End Synagogue on Monday morning.

"Obviously we are in a heightened sense of awareness because of the episode this morning," said Mark Freedman, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Nashville.

A maintenance worker told police he heard a loud bang around 8:30 a.m.

When he finished his work shortly after 9 a.m., the worker said he found a hole in the building with the bullet still lodged inside.

No one was injured, and police said they do not believe the building or staff is facing any imminent threats, but they have put other synagogues on alert.

"We have been in contact with the FBI, the state Fusion Center. It is very safe to say that Jewish institutions in Davidson County, as well as the region, will have a stepped-up law enforcement watch beginning now and for the foreseeable future," said MNPD spokesman Don Aaron.

Police are still working to figure out the motive and find the gunman.

At the Jewish Federation of Nashville, two vehicles were parked in front of the driveways to block the front doors to the building as an added layer of security.

"We've been in touch with every institution in town to alert them of this incident, to give them the latest information that we have and to answer any questions they may have about their own internal security matters," Freedman said.

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Police: Shot fired into window of West End Synagogue

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Now That's a Different Story

Posted By richards on April 14, 2015

The Hasidic philosopher Martin Buber told the tale of a Jewish grandfather who was a master storyteller. Though limited physically, confined to his wheelchair, this did not constrict his mind or his imagination. One day the old man's grandchildren gathered eagerly around his chair and asked him to tell a story about his life.

Happy to oblige, the grandfather began telling a story from his childhood, how his rabbi would leap and dance during his recitation of the Psalms at the synagogue. The more into it the old man got, the more he seemed to incarnate his rabbi, until unexpectedly the grandfather jumped from his wheelchair!

In telling the story - and acting it out - it gave new life to the old man, and his grandchildren needed no further explanation. Martin Buber concludes his tale by saying: "Now, that's the way to tell a story!" And, I would add, that's how to live a life, particularly a life of faith.

People of faith, and I include myself in this assessment, often fall back on hardened dogma or cascading Scripture references to explain our way of life. This is fine for as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. Frozen facts and biblical sound bites do very little to inspire life or to invite others to explore faith. These do even less to heal a fractured world.

But if we become so immersed in the story of a gracious God, so connected to his powerful narrative of redemption, so skilled in incarnating Christ that we are animated and enlivened by it, then others just might be attracted to it. It just might do some good in the world. Faith just might become a story worth telling; a story worth believing; and a story worth living.

The Apostle Paul said it like this in 2 Corinthians: "Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it - not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives!"

This is what the famed British evangelist Gipsy Smith meant when he spoke of "A Fifth Gospel." He said, "There are five Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian - but most people never read the first four." It's also what Malcolm Muggeridge was saying with the use of the phrase, "A Third Testament." There is the Old, the New, and you. As is often said, "The only Bible some people will read is you."

See, we don't need more Bible thumping, or the hurling of theological conclusions at all people who disagree with us, or using our faith as a weapon against our opponents. And no, we don't need to quote words about Jesus as much as we need surrender to the way of Jesus, following his trajectory, becoming more like him, by properly telling and living his story.

What does his story look and sound like? Like him. He was meek and lowly, humble and compassionate; full of grace and truth; the epitome of sacrificial love; forgiving toward all, welcoming to the most repugnant among us; filled with the Spirit that gives love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

If our reading and living of the Bible isn't making us more like that - more like Jesus - then, simply, we are doing something wrong. If, in reciting our favorite verses, and memorizing the text, and proclaiming the truth, we only get more angry; more suspicious of others; more judgmental and fixed in our self-righteousness; more indifferent and apathetic toward the world; more greedy and egocentric - then we might know some religious quotes, but we haven't yet learned to tell the story.

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Now That's a Different Story

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REVIEWS: 'All Who Go Do Not Return,' by Shulem Deen, and 'By Night the Mountain Burns,' by Juan Tomas Avila Laurel

Posted By richards on April 14, 2015

ALL WHO GO DO NOT RETURN

By Shulem Deen. (Graywolf Press, 320 pages, $16.)

In this painful and elegiac memoir, Shulem Deen, a former Skverer Hasidic Jew from New York City, eloquently describes his agonizing fall from faith and ascendant longing to live in a less insular world than the subculture he grew up in and in which he became a husband and father of five.

The result of his crisis of faith was the loss of his family in fact, of the whole world he had known and once dearly loved. And yet, it could not have been otherwise, given Deens questioning intellect and honesty.

While his memoir is set in a small and undeniably suffocating culture few of us will ever experience, his story of innocence slipping away will resonate with anyone who has ever struggled with doubts and dreams that their family and community cannot accept, and in fact denounce.

Deen is a profoundly intelligent thinker and writer whose sorrow is as deep as that in a sad Psalm. Heres hoping that he can console himself over all he has lost the worst loss being his children, who have been told that their father is lost and evil with the faith that his memoir will help many others survive being caught in the merciless and ultimately irreconcilable squeeze between ancient and modern worlds.

PAMELA MILLER,

West/north metro team leader

BY NIGHT THE MOUNTAIN BURNS

By Juan Tomas Avila Laurel, translated from the Spanish by Jethro Soutar. (And Other Stories, 275 pages, $15.95.)

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REVIEWS: 'All Who Go Do Not Return,' by Shulem Deen, and 'By Night the Mountain Burns,' by Juan Tomas Avila Laurel

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