A Message from the Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign Co-Chairs on the hostage incident at Congregation Beth Israel in Texas:

We give thanks to God and to all who worked tirelessly to ensure that the people held hostage at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas on January 15, 2022, were released alive. We pray that the trauma they experienced, felt also by the wider Jewish community, will be healed through God’s mercy and continual acts of interfaith solidarity.

We affirm the many statements of Muslim organizations in the United States condemning the hostage-taking and violence. We stand shoulder to shoulder with all those who uphold human dignity and who work to build bridges over the raging waters of anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, racism, white supremacy, and violence in our shared society.

As we honor the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on January 17th, we remember his words, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

-Kathryn M. Lohre & Rabbi Esther Lederman, Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign Co-Chairs

Kathryn Mary Lohre is the Executive for Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Relations in the Office of the Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Rabbi Esther Lederman is the Director of Congregational Innovation for the Union for Reform Judaism.