Worshippers gather at Upper West Side synagogue to show support for Israel
NEW YORK -- Hundreds gathered on the Upper West Side on Wednesday to comfort one another in their grief for the victims of the attacks in Israel.
Aliza Felix went to synagogue Wednesday because she didn't know what else to do.
"I can't do anything except support the other people that I know," she said.
She joined hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers in Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, paralyzed by worry, to pray for their brothers and sisters in Israel.
"There is no force in the world more powerful than the united spirit of the Jewish people in urgent times," Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch said.
Hirsch called the emergency service three days before Shabbat.
"I think most American Jews are not doing well. We're deeply pained, deeply sorrowed, worried about not only the hostilities now, but the war to come," he said.
For Erica Komisar, her anguish is layered.
"It not only breaks my heart what's happening in Israel, but it breaks my heart what I'm seeing on social media and what I'm seeing as public commentary on this issue," she said.
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The rabbi told his temple that silence in this moment can be deafening.
"With our history, we're acutely sensitive to the way the world looks at Jewish suffering," Hirsch said. "It perpetuates traumas that Jewish people have experienced for centuries that nobody really cares. We're on our own."
But inside this synagogue, not one suffered alone.
"My reaction when I walked in this room and saw people I know and love was just, an outpouring of the feelings that I've been holding in ... because I'm just looking at the facts and trying to understand what's going on, but the emotion behind it comes through for us when we're together, and we feel what it is to be a Jew now," Upper West Side resident Maxine Davidowitz said.