When the Rev. Darryl Malden stepped up to the bima inside the regal domed sanctuary of Temple Beth El to give a personal reflection, he quickly answered the question a fellow-clergy person had asked reading from a chapter in the Book of Genesis.
FALL RIVER — When the Rev. Darryl Malden stepped up to the bima inside the regal domed sanctuary of Temple Beth El to give a personal reflection, he quickly answered the question a fellow-clergy person had asked reading from a chapter in the Book of Genesis.
The African American Methodist reverend from Beth AME Church in Fall River told about 100 people and clergy of different faiths and beliefs gathered that he was growing up in Boston when he first entered a Jewish synagogue 40 years ago. It was at a friend’s Bar Mitzvah when he turned 13 years old. The temple and ceremony were foreign.
‘The same struggles’
At the interfaith service of peace and solidarity that have multiplied through the country in the weeks since a large group of Jewish people praying at a Pittsburgh synagogue were killed by a man spouting hated for those of their faith, Malden said, “We have the same struggles.”
Three years ago in Charlestown, South Carolina, a white man sat with the Bible study of black citizens, then killed them, he said.
“Am I my brother’s, am I my sister’s keeper?” Malden asked, evoking the violent and unrepentant Bible story of brothers Cain and Able read by retired Rev. Elizabeth Watson of First Baptist Church in Fall River.
“The answer is yes,” he said firmly without raising his voice.
He looked back to America’s history during the 1950s and 1960s and the landmark year of 1964. It was the Freedom Summer Project, a voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights groups.
Mississippi was chosen as the site due to its historically low levels of African-American voters; less than 7 percent of those eligible black voters were registered in that time period, say reports of the drive.
On June 15, 1964, the first three hundred voter registration volunteers arrived. Most were white. Malden recalled how two of the white students, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both Jewish and from New York, and a local African American, James Chaney, disappeared.
Although their badly beaten bodies were not discovered for six weeks, the near-certainty they’d been murdered swept the country and helped bring passage of a long-pending civil rights bill in Congress.
They were their brother’s keeper in Mississippi
Malden said looking back he felt certain Schwerner and Andrew, joining Chaney, “knew that they were their brother’s keeper” half a century ago.
“God is calling on just a few people to stand up,” he said of the present. “God is looking for someone to say, ‘Enough is enough.’”
The Most Rev. Edgar Moreira da Cunha, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Fall River, followed the Rev. Barbara Jean of Somerset Baptist Church, who’d read from the first chapter of Genesis.
“Only a deep conversion of our heart when we open wide our hearts,” da Cunha said, “will compel change in our situation in our society.”
The bishop spoke about the moral and theological problems manifesting themselves with “racism, discrimination and violence,” and offered a pledge.
“Tonight we remember, we pray, we commit ourselves to eliminate all forms of racial and religious discrimination in our society, in our communities, in our country and in our world,” urged da Cunha.
Remembering 22 lives lost to hate
In this service that was multi-faceted with song, hymns, prayers and offerings, a poignant part was the lighting of three candles in memory of three different acts of violence in which gunmen filled with hatred took a total of 22 innocent lives.
As Shashana Brown, cantor for Temple Beth El who coordinated the interfaith service, identified the believed hate crimes, she first listed Jeffersontown, Kentucky, where in October a church of predominantly black people was locked and a gunman, instead, went to the corner grocery store and killed an African-American man and woman “simply because of the color of their skin,” she said.
Bristol Community College student Heidi Cipriano lit the candle and said the two victims’ names: Maurice Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones.
BCC’s Director of the Holocaust Center, Ronald Weisberger, lit the candle and said the 11 names of the Jewish victims of hate shot and killed recently while attending Sabbath services at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg; they ranged in age between 54 and 97: Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, husband and wife Sylvan and Bernice Siman, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger.
“We would also like to remember,” Brown said, “the nine who were gunned down in the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charlestown, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015.” They included three clergy.
BCC student Tatyana Cipriano lit the candle and said their names: the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, the Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanda Sanders, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, DePayne Middleton Doctor, the Rev. Daniel Simmons and Myra Thompson.
Rabbi Mark Elber of Temple Beth El followed with a Jewish prayer for the soul of a person who has died. Evoking their memories as the three small candles burned on a table on the bima, he said, “May their souls find peace in your eternal embrace … May they all rest in peace.”
Brown, Elber’s wife, then chanted with passion the same El Malei Rachamin in Hebrew.
Spirited song fills the synagogue
The interfaith service was noteworthy both by strong calls for action and for its peacefulness in both words and music. Brown was joined throughout by Adlai Williams, Bethel AME Church choir director.
The melodic opening chant was sung by the musical leaders with response from the audience: “Shalom” meaning peace in Hebrew, “Dona nobis pacem,” Latin for “grant us peace” and used in Latin masses, and “Salaam,” Arabic for “peace unto you.”
Williams and Brown, heightened some revelry with a vibrant, clapping, “Down by the Riverside” that included “I ain’t gonna study war no more,” ending with the phrases:
“And every one ‘near their vine and fig tree shall live in peace and unafraid … And into plowshares turn their swords. Nations shall learn war no more,” they sang.
Rabbi Elber spoke about how the Good Book of “love thy neighbor as thyself” has been turned upside down, with so many forces dividing rather than uniting people.
‘No time to be neutral’
“There is so much division in our country today like no time I can remember,” Elber said of the increasing hate crimes.
Giving a message by the late Holocast survivor and Noble Peace Prize winner/scholar Elie Wiesel, he said, “This is no time to be neutral or passive” because neutrality aids the oppressor and not the victim.
In working to “repair the world,” Elber also urged “choosing life that is a blessing, that makes the world a better, safer place.”
The diversity of religions and cultures and unity of beliefs shined through at many times. Martin Bentz, outreach coordinator for the Islamic Society of Southeastern Massachusetts, declared “no distinction” between values of the great religions their holy prophets revealed for worship.
“We care about charity, honesty, fairness, righteousness and justice,” Bentz. He asked “God to give us the strength to push back against ignorance.”
Khmer Buddist Temple shares sorrow & sadness
An older Cambodian man, Sophann Uon, president of Khmer Buddhist Temple that’s been at 745 Highland Ave., Fall River, the past 15 years, humbly told why he had come.
Uon was there personally and to represent his people. “I came to join tonight because of the sorrow and the sadness. The Cambodian people are saddened,” he said in deliberate English.
In a “prayer for our nation,” the Rev. Andrew Stinson of the First Congregational Church in Fall River asked the higher power to “Bless all inhabitants of our country with your spirit. May citizens of all races and creeds forge a common bond in true harmony and banish all hatred and bigotry … May this land be an influence for good,” Stinson prayed.
To safeguard any threat of violence, Steve Silverman, Temple Beth El president, said the temple employed two security officers from a private service and one Fall River police officer. The city force also maintained a surveillance cruiser around the temple during the 1½-hour event without any charge, he said.
“I thought the service was great,” Robert Haela of Fall River, a young man and regular temple attendee said. “I was just great that our community got together in these dire times.”
‘It’s so easy to forget’
To Lloyd Mendes of Somerset, “The most moving thing was when they started to light the candles and read the names. It made me stop. It’s so easy to forget,” he said.
The reflections of the Methodist minister Malden included one that’s personal and lifelong. He spoke of a friend named David Goose. That was the 13-year-old of a different religion and race whose Bar Mitzvah he went to four decades ago.
Every year since, they call and wish each other a happy birthday, Malden said happily.
Email Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com or call him at 508-676-2573.