A Young Perspective on Last Tuesday
Many faith leaders from around Richmond have given very strong and thoughtful responses to our visitors from Kansas last Tuesday. For many folks, especially individuals like Jay Ipson, Tuesday’s events brought back bad memories from an uglier time filled with violence and hate. But what perspectives and thoughts did Tuesday bring out for younger Virginians?
Below are some thoughts from Interfaith Center Intern Cilla Kasper, a young Jewish Virginian:
On March 2nd, 2010, about 300 people took off from work and school to gather at the Virginia Holocaust Museum. They began arriving around 10:30 a.m. to stand together in silence. They were of all faiths and came to stand in solidarity with their Jewish neighbors against the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), an anti-Semitic group based out of Topeka, Kansas. This was my first interaction with the WBC. While I always knew there were groups similar to theirs, I had never heard of the WBC until yesterday.
As a senior at an Episcopal high school, I have been taught about the Bible, Christianity, and Moral Philosophy, voluntarily or not, since I was six years old. I was raised by a Presbyterian father and a Jewish mother. I grew up celebrating the prominent religious holidays: Christmas, Easter, Passover, and Chanukah. At sixteen, I wanted to explore more about my Jewish roots so I spent five weeks the summer before my junior year traveling to Europe and Israel.
In Poland we spent a moving day at Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. We walked through the gas chambers and barracks which had held far more people than it should’ve. These images would have significantly affected anyone emotionally, regardless of their faith identity. The presence of the WBC at the Virginia Holocaust Museum yesterday reminded me of that day two summers ago and exactly what can happen if people of any faith fail to take notice of hate in their community.
I didn’t feel so strongly about this just a week ago when folks at the Va Interfaith Center began discussing a response to the WBC folks. I didn’t think it would bring such a large turnout. The approximately three hundred people at the event yesterday presented an interfaith front in solidarity against the WBC. I was excited about the large interfaith presence that was there because It was really great to see a large part of the Richmond interfaith community stand behind their Jewish neighbors.
Yesterday was a prime example of people acting on their impulses and standing against hate as a community. The WBC were obviously outnumbered and shown yesterday that they, along with hate, have no place in the Richmond community.
