This past Shabbat, the doors of Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto were locked. The lights went low. More than 200 people pressed against walls and waited. We were not davening. We were practicing survival.

It was a lockdown drill. A simulation of an active shooter in our synagogue.

I am the senior rabbi of this congregation. I have presided over bar and bat mitzvahs and funerals, simchas and shivah calls, beginnings, and endings. I have never done anything that broke my heart quite like this.

The context demands naming. Since Purim, three shooting incidents in Toronto have targeted synagogues. A synagogue in Detroit was attacked. A leaked assessment from Canada’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre—our own national security apparatus—has warned of a “realistic possibility” of a mass casualty event in this country directed at Jews. We have added security infrastructure at Beth Tzedec: cameras, protocols, trained personnel, hardened entry points. Not because we wanted to. Because we had to.

I am sad. I am angry. And those two feelings are the beginning of honesty, not the end of it.

Here is the argument I want to make plainly, to this community, in this publication: when solidarity with a people under attack becomes grounds for targeting them,........

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