During the minhah service at Beth Shalom this afternoon, we read the beginning of Parashat Hayyei Sarah, which recounts in its second verse the death of Sarah Imeinu, our mother Sarah:
וַיָּבֹא֙ אַבְרָהָ֔ם לִסְפֹּ֥ד לְשָׂרָ֖ה וְלִבְכֹּתָֽהּ
Vayavo Avraham lispod leSarah velivkotah.
Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her (Genesis 23:2).
You can’t see this above, but in the Torah, the letter kaf (כ) in velivkotah is smaller than the other letters; it is an ancient scribal tradition. We read this small kaf as suggesting that Abraham, in losing Sarah, felt a little smaller as he wept for his wife.
The events of this tragic Shabbat in Pittsburgh have made me feel a little smaller, a little more powerless, a little more anxious. I wept at multiple points today as I began to comprehend the way our community’s soul was torn by a killer with an assault rifle who was spitting anti-Semitic slurs, for the synagogue-goers who had to run and hide as holy words of tefillah / prayer trailed from their mouths, for the families of those who are still awaiting confirmation of their loved one’s status.
Nonetheless, our community is a strong one, and I hope that at this time we continue to draw strength from our tradition and from each other as we grieve. Our people have survived millennia of persecution, oppression, displacement, pogroms, and genocide; Jewish Pittsburgh will overcome this tragedy as well. Even as we are all made smaller today, we pray for those whom we have lost, and we recall that it is our duty as Jews to continue proudly doing what we do and being who we are.
~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
The Modern Rabbi 
2 replies on “A Post-Shooting Thought”
A constructive response…there is not much else to say.
You have the support of the entire Jewish world.