SAN ANTONIO — Rabbi Avraham Scheinberg reflects on the recent string antisemitic events across Texas, longing for communities to unite against hate toward Jews.
“You just have to get to know each other and to realize the divine spark in each other and to get to know each other as a person and as a family and to break down those barriers of those prejudices,” Scheinberg said, who serves as a rabbi at Congregation Rodfei Sholom in San Antonio.
Texas’ Holocaust Remembrance Week marks a significant time for public school students and the general public to become educated on the atrocities during World War 2 and uphold the value of human life.
The Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler was responsible for the mass murder of at least 6 million European Jews during the 1930s and 40s.
Stories of death, escape and survival exist throughout the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio.
Museum director Leslie Met noted Holocaust Remembrance Week in Texas ties in with the 2019 passage of state legislation calling for public school education on the Holocaust.
“The Holocaust wasn’t an isolated event. There is hatred in our world, and it continues even into today. We’ve seen that in our society over the last few years,” Met said. “It’s really important for us to be able to continue to educate, how things happened during the Holocaust, how the Nazis came into power, why they came into power, and to learn the lessons from the Holocaust so that it doesn’t happen again, and other populations are never annihilated.”
The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) antisemitic events tracker has recorded nearly 30 incidents in January 2022 across the U.S.
A British citizen held four people hostage for several hours at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, on January 15.
The standoff ended in the gunman’s death while the worshippers escaped.
Multiple out-of-state protestors rallied across the street from San Antonio’s Jewish Community Center in October, holding signs filled with hate-filled rhetoric about the ADL and Jews in general.
“It’s not just something that’s on the news, it’s something that we see firsthand. I drove by where it happened. It’s a mile from my home. I heard what they were screaming myself, and it’s a very jarring thing,” Scheinberg said.
Such situations have prompted heightened awareness and discussions about safety measures at synagogues nationwide.
Scheinberg hopes and prays for a more united America; one with less hate and violence toward the Jewish community.
“I think that it’s a very American and Texas thing to take safety into your own hands. We believe that a person has to be vigilant around what’s going on about themselves and about their family. But most of all we’ve got to put our faith in God, that God is watching over us.”