Jewish people are not safe in our houses of prayer, homes, supermarkets, and now our schools (not that the lack of safety in those was ever really in doubt).
On Friday, Thomas Develin, was arrested in Columbus, Ohio.
10tv:
Court documents say Thomas Develin, 24, posted photos of himself posing with a semi-automatic handgun on March 11 while he was working as a private security guard for Columbus Torah Academy in east Columbus. The posts were found on the social media platform, Discord.
According to the court documents, Develin posted statements that said, "I'm at a Jewish school and about to make it everyone's problem," and, "The playground is about to turn into a self-defense situation."
For those who aren’t Jewish, we’ve got guards at everything. Synagogues, community centers, even my Rabbi’s backyard Sukkot party; you name it, we’ve hired someone to keep us safe. We trust these people to protect us, not be the threat. It’s also expensive. Jewish institutions spend between 50-150k each year for these folks and other security measures, like metal detectors. I tried to find comparative numbers for churches, and was unable to locate any. Suffice to say, it’s a drain on our institutions. In response to these rising costs, Jewish groups and bipartisan members of Congress have advocated for a an increase to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which was set up in 2005 to help to religious institutions with security costs. On Monday, President Biden released his budget proposal, which includes an $360 million for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, doubling the amount of funds from last last year. Let’s hope that when it comes time to vote, Republicans keep their word.
I know as a people, a possible school shooting is a bit ho-hum. And there’s a lot going on right now, what with the war, Lindsey Graham’s aggressive racism towards Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and so on. But I’m a bit surprised I didn’t hear about this until my rabbi’s sermon yesterday. The Daily Beast did a write up, but other than that, I’m unaware of reporting here, cable news, or other national media. But I can’t help thinking about Dara Horn’s book, People Love Dead Jews. In the book she talks about how non-Jews aren’t interested in the stories and lives of Jews unless we’re dying, and unless that death can teach everyone else a feelgood lesson. Her essay, Everyone’s (Second) Favorite Dead Jew, she discusses Anne Frank saying:
The entire appeal of Anne Frank to the wider world- as opposed to those who knew and loved her- lay in her lack of a future.
There is an exculpatory ease to embracing this “young girl,” whose murder is almost convenient for her many enthusiastic readers as it was for her persecutors.
That’s why we read Anne Frank in every high school, and not, say Sholem Aleichem (author of the Tevye the Dairyman stories which were adapted to Fiddler on the Roof). That’s why I was stunned when, two weeks ago, Ali Velshi did a sensitive smart piece on the Jewish community in Budapest helping Ukrainian refugees. Prior to that,I had literally never seen any nationally televised news about Jews that wasn’t related to an act of antisemitism. Instead, the piece talks to and about living Jews during Purim, connecting their activism to our own history of oppression. It was sadly shocking for me. Love to Ali Velshi!