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Hold tight to hope

3 min read

Devastating. There’s no other word.

“Suspect’s talking about ‘All these Jews need to die,'” responding officers could be heard being said over their radios.

It was a horrific thing to hear — a sound bite on news reports about the shooting that left 11 dead at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill in Allegheny County on Saturday. Among them was Richard Gottfried, a North Hills dentist, and a Uniontown native.

The 65-year-old Ross resident grew up in Fayette County, the son of an orthodontist and a teacher at Uniontown Area High School. At the time of the shooting, he was getting ready to start a new chapter in his life, preparing to retire from a practice he and his wife started in 1984. There, he did charity work, seeing patients who could not afford dental care.

He and the other 10 victims leave behind families and friends who are drenched in unspeakable grief, grappling with something that has shaken our nation.

Everyone should feel outrage. Every fiber within each of us should struggle trying to fathom how any human being could feel so much hate.

There are no adequate words to express the disbelief and sadness over such a profoundly malevolent act. What happened is incomprehensible, and yet we are forced to try and comprehend how such disgusting evil visited a community that is a scant hour from our doorsteps.

Hurt and pain and sorrow are the words we use. This close to home, many of us now feel them in a way we hadn’t before.

We shake our heads. We cry. We ask unanswerable questions.

Why did it happen? We wonder how someone could have such a desire to hurt people, based, according to authorities, on nothing more than their religious beliefs. How in the world do we live in a society like that?

The answers, even if they come, will not offer any appreciable solace to those who have been shaken to their cores. As Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto so succinctly put it, Saturday’s shooter was an irrational person who acted irrationally.

We nod, hearing this. Of course, the behavior isn’t rational. It’s not normal. It’s not right or moral. It’s indefensible. But we continue to ask questions.

How do we stop people from committing such wholly hateful actions? Is there a way to ferret out and stop someone who is beset upon perpetrating such evil?

It feels, at times, hopeless. But during those darkest times, it is imperative we hold tightest to our hope. We must collectively shine it like a powerful beacon in the night and illuminate the world around us with the good that each of us has within.

We must talk and hug and love. We must accept others.

We talk about having a civilized society. If we wish to continue making that claim, every single one of us must commit to doing better.

Harness patience. Let go of anger. Open up your heart to understanding. Just love.

Hate simply cannot win. We cannot let it.

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