11 October 2023
TOPEKA (KSNT) – Jewish residents of the Capital City gathered and prayed for those impacted by the war in the Middle East.
Tuesday, Congregation members of Temple Beth Sholom gathered at the synagogue for a night of education, prayer and to be able to come together and share how they feel about the tragic war in Israel and along Gaza that’s been inflicted by Hamas.
While the group who gathered Tuesday was small, the message was powerful. Tuesday allowed people in Topeka with similar backgrounds to be able to feel closer together and become more educated about the war in the Middle East.
Rabbi Stern with Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka invited people in to talk about the war that’s been inflicted by Hamas. This night of education allowed people to express their feelings and learn about the tragic events that are occurring and pray.
As the war continues and the death toll rises, one congregation member can’t help but feel for an uncertain future.
“Antisemitism is just on the rise and the world is just not a safe place to live like it once was, it’s changed so much,” Temple Beth Sholom congregation member Laura Silverberg said.
While the world is seemingly changing as we know it, it’s moments like this that Stern says it’s so important that people come together.
“When something tragic happens we feel a need to be together, to be able to share how we feel and I also wanted to make sure that people knew what was happening,” Stern said. “There’s so much information out there. Some of it’s great, some of it’s not so great and I wanted to make sure that everybody had reliable information and was able to process that information together in community.”
While it might not feel like there’s a lot people can do here. Just talking about it can do more than you know. Because for Silverberg, silence is deafening.
“If you discuss it and talk about it with friends that are not just Jewish that it brings it up in the open and people are then educated about it,” Silverberg said. “Because when you’re silent people don’t know what to say, they don’t know what to do.”
Tuesday night’s get-together, while it might have been small, it was all but silent.
“I was really happy that people came out and were willing to be open and were willing to bare themselves so that we could have a good understanding of what’s happening in the middle east which is terrible, tragic, horrific really,” Stern said.
Temple Beth Sholom will have a similar event Wednesday, Oct. 11 at 12 p.m., then Shabat services this Friday that will be centered around bringing focus to the current attacks on Israel.