On October 28, I walked into my synagogue and the first conversation I heard was between a dumbfounded father and his six years old son. The father looked shocked at what was coming out of his own mouth. He was trying to explain to his son what had happened the day before in a place just a few hours away.

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting took place on Saturday October 27.  Robert Bowers walked into a baby-naming ceremony at the Tree of Life synagogue and then proceeded to shoot and kill eleven people and injure seven. According to a SWAT officer at the scene, Robert Bowers is quoted afterwards as saying that he “wanted all Jews to die” and that he was “committing genocide for his people.”

It’s hard to count the number of ways this event has already changed my temple and the people in it. Because these weren’t just numbers on paper, they were people, and it’s a scary thing to know it could have been you. Although this horrific shooting took place 5 hours away in Pittsburgh, PA, the aftershocks are felt all over. Temples in the Lehigh Valley as well as around the country felt the pain of this shooting. For example, Josh Day a seventh grader at AACMS, went to a service held at the Jewish Community Center in Allentown to remember those who were killed in the shooting. I didn’t personally go to the service, but I did get a general idea of the service and the good it did. The service’s goal according to Josh Day, was to “to worship our God, Yeshua, and to mourn for the people we lost. The ages were from 54 to 98.” There were about 321 people at the service Josh is talking about, which blows my mind. That number shows just how many people were affected, and sure enough, according to Josh, not just Jews were there. And why shouldn’t non-Jews go to mourn for this tragedy? Not just students mourn when a school shooting happens, so why should Jews only mourn such a horrific thing?

On the day after the shooting, police officers came to my temple, Temple Covenant of Peace in Easton, PA, to make sure our security would be enough to keep us safe. So something good did come out of this shooting, our temple got safer. We now have fire drills, future lockdown drills, and we will be addressing other safety concerns, like who to let in. But that only is part of what our temple did to make everyone feels safe. We first explained what had happened, comforting anyone who cried, while the Rabbi tried to control her emotions. We also are doing activities like writing positive letters to people in the temple, talking about how it affected us, and how to help others going through the same pain.

As one of the older students at my temple, I was expected to help the younger students understand what happened, and help them write their letters. While I tried to help out the best I could, I was a mess. I was one of those kids who needed to be comforted, reassured that this wasn’t a sign of something worse. Only now have I been able to recover from the sadness, the fear, and the waiting. I’ve stopped waiting to wake up and hear my mom say that another similar shooting took place.

 Something that gives me comfort, and I hope it will give others relief with the same struggle, is that Robert Bowers was alone. He didn’t have an anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) organization behind him. He was one guy who had awful hatred for other groups of people. But a part of me is still disappointed that we didn’t see this coming. When police looked at Robert Bowers social media, it’s full of anti-Semitism and racism. He goes as far as to say this about the, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered… I’m going in.” How in the world did no one see this coming?

To wrap up, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was awful and affected everyone Jewish or not. This isn’t something to take lightly, and we should try to help others who are struggling to come to terms with what happened. It’s important to talk about your feelings when you see horrible stories such as this.