Rabbi’s Update 9/12/2025

Dear Friends:

Our country is appropriately troubled by the murder on Wednesday of Charlie Kirk, a right-wing political activist, while giving a talk at Utah Valley University. 

Kirk’s murder is correctly seen as another troubling example of the breakdown of civil debate in our society. When I wrote Wednesday afternoon on Facebook that political violence has no place in our society, it immediately devolved into a discussion of Kirk’s positions and suggestions by some of my college classmates that he somehow deserved what happened to him -- to the point that I deleted those comments and closed the post to any further comments.

If you are troubled by the murder of Charlie Kirk but not by the murders of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark (and the killing of their dog Gilbert), you are not really against political violence, you are just being partisan.

If you are troubled by the murders of Melissa and Mark Hortman but not by the murder of Charlie Kirk, you are not really against political violence, you are just being partisan.

Former Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone, who was attacked and injured during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, wrote: violence has no place in American politics. None.

That day (January 6)  taught me something too many of us are still trying to ignore: once political violence becomes acceptable—once you decide that your enemy isn’t just wrong but expendable—you don’t control where it leads.

If you cheered this shooting because you hated Kirk, you’re no better than the mob that chanted for Mike Pence’s hanging. If you shrug it off because it happened to the other side, you’re part of the same sickness that’s rotting this country.

The truth is, we’re running out of safe spaces for disagreement. Universities, statehouses, even the Capitol itself—each one has been marked by the threat of blood.

Democracy doesn’t survive in that environment. Free speech doesn’t survive. We don’t survive.

Charlie Kirk’s death doesn’t make him a martyr. It doesn’t redeem his politics. But it does mark another line we’ve crossed in this country—a line that should never have been crossed in the first place.

I’ll say it again: violence is not politics. And if we don’t reclaim that principle right now, we’re going to lose the very thing that makes this place worth fighting for.

On a very different note, I want to remind you that we will be joining our friends from B’nai Shalom of Olney, Shaare Tefila, and Tikvat Israel for Selichot services and study tomorrow night at 8:30 at B’nai Shalom. We will be learning from Rabbi Avi Strausberg of Hadar. Her topic is “Pregant with Possibility: Waiting, Hope, and Action in the New Year.” Rabbi Strausberg is an excellent teacher who does a lot of teaching to adult groups, and I look forward to learning with her. The program is available on livestream if you cannot make it in person.

As a reminder, I am having drop-in hours on Thursday afternoons from 2 to 4 at the shul. For my drop-in hours, you do not need to make an appointment -- that would negate the whole point of drop-in hours -- but I’d urge you to check and make sure I am there regardless as sometimes there are unavoidable pastoral or other emergencies which might take me away from the building.