Hey, tribe.
Today was the second and final day of the ADL conference — and as great as yesterday was, today was even better.
I mentioned the very impressive Debbie Lechtman of Roots Metals a few days ago — she was there (and so beautiful in person).
Kiyomi Kowalski, aka The Jewbian Princess, was there and she was brilliant and hilarious.
Merrick Garland was there and he wept onstage recalling his grandmother’s good fortune in being accepted as a refugee by the U.S., sparing her the fate of her siblings who perished in the Holocaust.
Alex Edelman was there and he struck a delicious blow for a huge contingent of his audience, including me, when he slyly called out the ADL for honoring Jared Kushner (truly the only drawback of the entire conference, and the only polarizing figure there).
On the main plenary stage in front of all 4,000 attendees, he boldly told his panel’s moderator, during their conversation about navigating tension in relationships: “Look, it’s okay for friends to have different opinions. For instance, I might think Jared Kushner is a smug, pretentious prick and you might want to give him an award.” Whereupon a huge contingent of the audience gasped, cracked up, and broke into applause.
And finally, my favorite rabbi in the world — Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue in NYC — was there, on a panel with Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker to talk about an upcoming documentary featuring both of them. The film is called Colleyville, after the town in Texas where Rabbi Charlie was taken hostage along with several members of his congregation, by a gunman trying to arrange the release of a terrorist from prison. (You can see the trailer here.)
This incident took place just over two years ago and I remember it with crystal clarity.
How it started:
How it was going, hours later:
I have a very clear memory of bringing the kids over to visit a non-Jewish friend and then hanging out at that house for a couple of hours, agitated and pacing. When my kids asked whether I was okay, I said: “I won’t be able to draw a deep breath until this is resolved,” and the friend’s dad asked me what I was talking about.
I said, “The hostage situation in Texas,” and he looked perplexed for a moment before asking, “Is there a hostage situation in Texas?”
Finally, hours later still, I remember my phone pinging wildly as so many messages came pouring in at the same time:
“They’re out!”
“They’re safe!”
“Thank God this ended well.”
And at least half a dozen other exultant missives of relief followed, a collective exhalation.
Today we heard from Rabbi Charlie himself exactly what went on during that interminable day, which he described as the worst of his life.
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker
The morning began with a stranger’s knock on the door. Rabbi Charlie opened it to 44-year-old Malik Faisal Akram, who was shivering in the cold. The rabbi thought he needed shelter, so he ushered the man inside, offered him a cup of tea, and invited him to remain for the Shabbat service, or simply to stay for as long as he wanted.
The rabbi felt no fear or suspicion toward this unknown guest until his own back was turned to pray facing Jerusalem, as Jews have done all over the diaspora for millenia. That’s when he heard the click of a gun being cocked.
During the next 11 hours, Akram held the rabbi and four of his congregants captive in the sanctuary as he tried to achieve the release of Aafia Siddiqui (aka Lady al-Qaeda), a Pakistani terrorist serving an 86-year prison sentence in nearby Fort Worth.
Over the course of the afternoon, it became clear to the rabbi that Akram had chosen the synagogue because he genuinely believed Jews — random Jews, any Jews — controlled all that happened in the U.S., and that with a few phone calls, Rabbi Cytron-Walker could set the release of Aafia Siddiqui in motion. Specifically, he wanted Cytron-Walker to call Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, the Senior Rabbi and Cantor of Central Synagogue in NYC, and have her arrange to free Siddiqui.
Cytron-Walker did call Rabbi Buchdahl at Central Synagogue. He left an urgent message describing the situation and she returned his call as soon as she was apprised of the crisis. Her memory of their conversation (and other anecdotes about the ordeal), reveal Cytron-Walker — who presents as utterly unassuming, measured, quiet and gentle — as a man of almost impossible cool under fire.
“The first thing I asked him was: how are you?” Rabbi Buchdahl recalled.
And Cytron-Walker, who fully believed he was going to die that day, answered: “Not great.”
In a teaser clip showed during their panel at the conference, his wife tearfully remembered his subsequent call to her that afternoon. “We have this deal where he’s not allowed to die first,” she told her interviewer, weeping at the memory. “And on that afternoon, he told me: I might not be able to keep that promise to you.”
Eventually, the gunman got on the phone and spoke directly to Rabbi Buchdahl. He told her she had a single hour to achieve Siddiqui’s release, and that if she failed, he would kill the congregation members he was holding hostage.
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl
Though Rabbi Buchdahl could not imagine why Akram would ever believe her capable of fulfilling his request, she recalls trying as hard as she could. She managed to connect directly with Merrick Garland’s office and she implored them to perform at least a charade of acquiescence. “Can’t you just take Siddiqui out, bring her to the synagogue long enough to appease or distract him, and then put her back?” she pleaded, only to be told, “Uh, no, Angela, that’s not how things work.”
In the end, of course, neither she nor any other Jewish clergy had the slightest power to deliver on any aspect of the gunman’s demands. And finally, around 9:30 that night, Rabbi Charlie saw an opening when Akram took his hand off his gun for the first time. He thought: this might be the best chance we’ll ever get to make a move. He made sure the other congregants were ready to bolt through the nearest exit door. Then he told them to run — and to give them cover, he threw a chair at the gunman. And finally, in those moments of surprise and confusion before Akram could recover his bearings, he dashed after them.
When the FBI, encamped outside, saw the congregants sprint out the side door, they rushed the synagogue and Akram was killed in the ensuing gunfight.
*
So many aspects of this conference were so moving, but this panel was my very favorite. Unlike the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, which was my own childhood synagogue and where my own bat mitzvah took place, there were so many redemptive facets of this harrowing story.
Throughout the ordeal, the gunman kept repeating the same chilling statement. Over and over, he told his captives: I love death more than you love life.
And of course, this mantra is emblematic of Hamas as well. Again and again, they tell us how they accept, even welcome, their own deaths and the deaths of their children in service of their mission, of jihad.
But in striking contrast to their death cult, again and again we Jews choose life. Rabbis Cytron-Walker and Buchdahl each talked of many ways the Jews of Colleyville chose life. When the gunman announced toward late afternoon that he would release just one of the captives, the five of them argued amongst themselves, each of them urging another to go free.
“You should be the one to go, because you have diabetes and you need access to your medication,” they told one of the congregants. But he said no — that instead, it should be the oldest man in the group, because he would be the one among them least able to run away. Incredibly, each of them tried to cajole another into escaping the hell they were in. Eventually, it was decided that the oldest among them should be spared.
Another captive wasn’t yet Jewish. He was at shul that day because he was considering conversion. During that long, terrifying day, he told Rabbi Charlie that if they made it out of there alive, he would definitely become a Jew. And true to his word, that’s what he did.
And Rabbi Charlie stressed to us that the outpouring of love from the entire Jewish world lifted and sustained him in the immediate aftermath and ever since. Rabbi Buchdahl remarked that as with 9/11 and other events that sear a date into memory forever, every Jew will always know — as I do — exactly where we were and what we were doing during our brothers’ time in captivity. Those men had the prayers of Jews all over the world, including the prime minister of Israel, for each of the hours they were locked inside. We all suffered, individually and together, that day — as we all have suffered individually and together, and continue to suffer, over our hostages in Gaza now.
During the Q&A, someone asked Rabbi Charlie what he would do the next time a stranger appeared on his doorstep. Would he still grant entry and brew the visitor a cup of tea?
And the rabbi told us that while we shouldn’t be naive about the risks — and he urged everyone in the room to seek out Active Shooter training if we had not already done so — neither should we close our hearts to the stranger. He told us we should live every moment striving not to do the safe thing, the easy thing, but the right thing — the Jewish thing.
He told us that not long ago, his family had taken part in a social justice march, and his young daughter had carried a sign that read: Life isn’t fair, so make it better.
I think this is the secret of our resilience as a people. To us, surviving means more than continuing to breathe. We find a way to hold fast to our Jewish values even in extremis. These two days, filled with extraordinary Jews and their stories, have only reinforced that conviction for me.
I’ll share more beauty from this gathering in the coming days. In the meantime, I recommend seeking out Jewish community in real time as a way to stave off despair.
I’ll try to send tomorrow’s post before Shabbat. In the meantime, I send you love and moxie from NYC. Chazak v’ematz!
Am Yisrael Chai.
One of the benefits of being a night owl -- I got to read your story the moment you published it! Hope you continue to enjoy the conference xoxoxo