In the raw, disoriented days following the Hamas massacre of October 7th, something happened at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church on St. Clair Avenue that members of my congregation, Beth Tzedec, still talk about.

The Rev. Jason Byassee called me.

Not to express condolences through proper channels. Not to issue a statement. Jason called me — my friend Jason, the theologian and pastor who leads one of Toronto’s most storied Protestant congregations — and said: We need to be together. Bring your people. Come to our space. Let’s not let your community stand alone in this.

And so, we came. Hundreds of Beth Tzedec and Holy Blossom Temple members filed into that magnificent Gothic sanctuary and sat, together with the Timothy Eaton community, in the kind of silence that only shared grief makes possible. We prayed. We wept. We bore witness to one another in a way that no interfaith panel or joint programming initiative could manufacture. It had to be earned. And Jason and his community gave it to us freely.

I have been a rabbi for 30 years. I have attended many interfaith events. What happened that October evening was not an interfaith event. It was an........

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