Response to the video, Sherril Skibell from Lubbock, Texas
After the killings at the Tree of Life synagogue, I felt great anguish and shock. My heart was broken for the Jewish Community in Pittsburgh. I felt like I had known all the families; not in reality but in familiarity. Families just like ours and like so many, not only in this country but all over the world. Charles, my husband, and I are secular Jews tied to our Jewish community with love and respect. Friday night Congregation Shaareth Israel had a Memorial Service for the Tree of Life congregants who lost their lives , and forme it was truly like a funeral. I cried like I knew them, but I think I was crying for myself as well as all US Jewish communities. Like me, no one ever thought this could happen in the United States of America. My dad, a veteran of WWII told me all Jews were safe in America, for the US was established at the beginning to have Freedom of Religion. It was truly a time of lost innocence and disappointment. But I stand with the Tree of Life congregant in the video above. There is "a kind of togetherness" that we can be standing for. It is open, compassionate, just, and free -- filled with discrimination for no one, and with doors open. This is the America my my dad hoped for. This is the America people of all religions and no religion deserve. This is the America I hope for.