In March, after an anti-Jewish attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, a ballroom across the street became a place of refuge.

The Shenandoah Country Club, which serves the area’s Chaldean Iraqi Christian community, opened its doors to the Temple Israel community. Children from the temple’s day care center were brought inside. By afternoon, families were reunited there. The next evening, the same room held Shabbat services for roughly 1,000 congregants.

Rabbi Jason Bennett of Temple Israel said the two communities had long been “inextricably linked.” Jibran Jim Manna, a Chaldean community member, recalled that, before leaving Iraq, “our neighbors were Jewish, and we loved them.”

In Michigan, such gestures across lines of faith have precedent.

In 1864, when a small group of Jewish families in Jackson dedicated a synagogue,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)