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This is a special edition because we couldn't wait to share our latest from Colleyville, as Jews around the world grapple with the aftermath of this weekend's attack.
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker speaks outside a solidarity service on Monday. (Getty Images) The Texas rabbi celebrated around the world as a hero for freeing three congregants and himself from a gunman in an 11-hour synagogue siege is set to leave the community in June, the Forward has learned.
Backstory: Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker resigned in November amid debate about whether his contract would be renewed. Rabbi Ben Sternman of Adat Chaverim in Plano, Texas, part of a foursome of area Reform rabbis including Cytron-Walker that meets weekly, said “he showed up for lunch one week and he was looking very upset.” He is on the market for a new pulpit and the synagogue was in the midst of searching for an interim rabbi when Saturday’s hostage situation occurred.
A long tenure: Cytron-Walker has led the synagogue since 2006. Marta Johnson, who had worked in recent years as a High Holiday soloist at the synagogue, said “a lot of people in the congregation are pretty upset” about his impending departure.
Murky reasoning: The rabbi is known for his social-justice advocacy and interfaith bridge building. A man claiming to be a former member of the synagogue said he had left the congregation because Cytron-Walker referred to Israel as an apartheid state and did not allow guns in the shul, a claim picked up by right-wing media but not otherwise confirmed. “They would not tell us why they want him to resign,” Sandy Barenholtz-Silverman, who attended Beth Israel, said of the synagogue’s leadership.
Mutual decision? Anna Eisen, a co-founder of Colleyville’s Congregation Beth Israel, said the rabbi and the synagogue president had agreed on the departure. “As a congregation we have been very heartbroken and distraught, she said, adding: “I myself have begged him to stay, but I also realize that he has given us 16 years of his life.”
And here’s the latest from our news team… Rabbis in Texas wonder: Welcome the stranger, or lock the doors? Dispatch from hometown of hostage-taker: U.K. Jews, already under tight security, say the Texas synagogue attack is not a cause for panic ‘Now it is an imperative:’ Incident prompts a hard look at security at synagogues, JCCs Deborah E. Lipstadt urges Jews to go to shul this weekend
Plus three opinion essays about the aftermath… My husband survived the Tree of Life shooting. The Texas synagogue attack reopened our wounds Can we make our synagogues secure without causing the vulnerable to suffer? How many Jews have to die for our allies to acknowledge the antisemitism Jews face?
Keep up to date with the rest of our coverage of the hostage aftermath at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas.
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