H EADLINES
Desecrator Continued from Page 1
congregants and other Jewish
community members gath-
ered to witness the sentenc-
ing and deliver victim impact
statements. One woman, Ronit
Treatman, wore a shirt that
read, “Ethnic intimidation is
NOT the new normal.”
Dzhalilov’s attorney, Lonny
Fish, fi rst attempted to per-
suade Judge Vincent Johnson
to allow his client to rescind his
previous guilty plea, initially
made on Nov. 8. Fish argued
that the charge of ethnic intim-
idation, committed with mal-
ice, did not accurately describe
Dzhalilov’s actions, which were
made in a drunken blur.
Fish even shared a simi-
lar story of his time at the
University of Pittsburgh law
school, wherein the attorney
said he drunkenly urinated on
the famous cathedral on cam-
pus. Fish said he didn’t have
the courage or rectitude to take
responsibility for what he had
done, unlike Dzhalilov, who
turned himself in aft er seeing
stills from the security foot-
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age shared on social media,
and realized what he had done.
Johnson said he was unmoved,
and the hearing began.
Dzhalilov’s sister, Adelya
Ulfanov, delivered testimony
on his behalf. Tearfully, she told
Johnson that while she could not
know her brother’s intentions on
that evening, they were “not
raised that way.” Aft er her testi-
mony, a friend of Dzhalilov’s got
on the stand and said he could
not account for the judge for
why he had pulled the car over in
front of the synagogue, though
the restaurant they’d been been
drinking at was just blocks away.
Following their testimony,
Assistant District Attorney
Brendad Flynn introduced the
incident video. For the fi rst
time, it was totally silent in
the courtroom. As the footage
played, Dzhailov looked down.
Aft er the video, Flynn sub-
mitted a Facebook comment
Dzhalilov had made two years
prior to the incident. Commenting
on a purported video of IDF
soldiers harassing Palestinian
women and children, Dzhalilov
(writing under his screen name,
Ali Ahiska) wrote, “Th is video
makes me want to kill every single
Jew out there, fi nish what Hitler
couldn’t.” Flynn then referred to
two incidents in Dzhalilov’s youth
as being indicative of a prior ten-
dency toward violence, which the
judge found less than persuasive.
Then came the victim
impact statements.
Beth Solomon members
rose and described their hor-
ror at what had happened.
Each had fl ed the Soviet Union
and anti-Semitism to come to
America; many had lost family
in the Holocaust. Pollock, aft er
giving a brief history of atroc-
ities committed against Jews
in the Holocaust, compared
Dzhalilov’s act to Kristallnacht,
arguing that such violence
augurs future escalation.
Synagogue Vice President
Alexander Tamarkin expressed
his love and admiration for the
life he had been able to live in the
United States follwing his immi-
gration from the Soviet Union,
JEWISH EXPONENT
Sheidali Dzhalilov, on the
night of Aug. 13, 2017
Screenshot via
Philadelphia Police
Department and said that Dzhailov should be
deported for his unwillingness
to follow the rules of religious
coexistence in the U.S.
Paul Tenberg, a community
member, told the judge that the
people seated behind them —
he motioned to them with a
wave of his hand — were the
result of Hitler being unable
to “fi nish the job,” invoking
Dzhalilov’s words. Many of
them also pointed to the irony of
Dzhalilov, a Russian immigrant
who fl ed due to persecution of
Muslims, being a perpetrator of
a religiously based attack.
Several of the victim impact
statements referenced Dzhalilov
smiling and laughing during
the hearing, which Dzhailov
seemed to deny by shaking his
head. And Assistant District
Attorney Christina Giardina tes-
tifi ed that Dzhalilov had smirked
and laughed during her initial
meeting with him, where he was
off ered fi ve months probation and
100 hours of community service.
Finally, Dzhalilov rose to speak.
Addressing the congre-
gants, he apologized profusely,
pleading with them to under-
stand that his actions were no
more than drunken stumbling.
But Johnson quickly stopped
him, clarifying that it was a
rarity for him do so.
Johnson encouraged him
to forthrightly answer ques-
tions that had remained unan-
swered, especially regarding his
Facebook post. If he truly har-
bored no ill will toward Jewish
people, why had he made that
comment? Why had he chosen
the synagogue as the place to
urinate? Dzhalilov began again,
but seemed to follow the same
tracks he had previously laid.
Aft er a brief break, Johnson
gave his ruling.
He fi rst addressed the con-
gregants of Beth Solomon.
Noting that Tenberg men-
tioned that he shared updates
with a Facebook group of more
than 10,000 people, who were
looking for the judge to take
a stand against anti-Semitism,
Johnson said, “It’s not my job
to send a message to the world.”
“Th e court does not punish
on a global basis,” he said.
However, he added, he
remained unconvinced by
Dzhalilov’s testimony, noting
his evasiveness on basic ques-
tions and the fact that, although
apparently blackout drunk, he
had bounded up the stairs of
the synagogue with the ease of
a sober man. Johnson delivered
Dzhalilov’s sentence, denying a
request for a delay in his being
taken into custody.
“I was defi nitely happy with
the way that the judge saw the
defendant,” Pollack said aft er-
ward. “Th ere’s no question that
it was an anti-Semitic act.”
Pollack said that most of
those in attendance were sat-
isfi ed by the sentence, though
some believed he deserved a
harsher punishment.
“I defi nitely hope that this
is over,” he said. “I really hope
that we can turn the page and
we’ll never have anything like
this happen again.” ●
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
H eadlines
Retreat Continued from Page 1
life — on street signs.
That was how my retreat
began, but arriving at the center
surrounded by trees and moun-
tains just before Shabbat, it was
nice not have my phone func-
tioning. It helped me be present.
I spent that weekend, from
March 1 to 3, with a group of
about 30 young adults who had
come to this Jewish getaway from
cities across the country to attend
the Passover-themed retreat.
Passover is, of course, not
here for another month-and-
a-half, but this retreat was not
intended to be a celebration of
the holiday. The experience was
intended to empower and pro-
vide resources to the attend-
ees in advance of the holiday
so they could host their own
seders when they got home.
This retreat was just one of
more than a dozen that Moishe
House puts on throughout the
year in different parts of the
country — and even sometimes
the world. Examples of other
retreats include The Shavuot
Study, The Havdallah Hike
and The Sukkah Build. Like
the Passover retreat, the hol-
iday-themed ones are held in
advance of the actual holiday.
The Passover Seder retreat
was my first Moishe House
retreat, so I can’t say how it com-
pares, but other attendees told
me they are all different, even
when they are on the same topic.
When I arrived at the cen-
ter, retreat activities were
already underway, so I imme-
diately jumped into icebreaker
activities. Then we did a text
study of “In History,” written
by Antiguan-American writer
Jamaica Kincaid. Afterward,
we went off to our cabins to get
ready for Shabbat.
In early March, the Isabella
Freedman Jewish Retreat
Center was a winter wonder-
land. The center looked over a
frozen lake and trees covered
in snow.
We ate our Shabbat din-
ner, like every meal during the
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM One of the cabins at the retreat center
retreat, in a dining room that
we shared with the center’s
other guests: a Jewish family
staying there to celebrate their
daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.
The center felt both like a
camp and a farm. We slept in
cabins and spent the majority
of our days in a room with big
windows and bookshelves on
topics that included Chassidus,
women and LGBTQ issues and
Zionism. While walking one of
the center’s trails, we even saw
the center’s goats.
The vast majority of the
attendees on the retreat were
women, and most worked in
the Jewish community at day
schools, Hillels, synagogues
and other organizations.
Attendees ranged in religious
observance, and while some
had a concrete task of planning
a seder ahead of them — one
woman was there gathering
resources for a 300-person
seder — many others didn’t.
Over the next day, we
engaged with Passover. We
studied different types of met-
anarratives, read through the
Maxwell Coffee Haggadah,
learned Yiddish Passover songs
and storytelling techniques
and brainstormed ways to
enhance the holiday.
Finally, in the late after-
noon on the second day of the
retreat, we began preparing for
our mock seder.
The entire weekend felt like it
had been gearing up to this event.
We were divided into ran-
dom groups of three or four
and assigned pages from our
Maxwell Coffee Haggadahs.
As fate would have it, I was in
The frozen lake at the retreat center
the first group, and so ended
up with pages that included
the first cup of wine, the first
hand-washing, dipping of the
karpas and the Four Questions.
We had about a half an hour
to figure out how we would
present these parts of the seder.
Then, we gathered for
Havdalah and we were on —
seated around conference-style
tables arranged in a rectangle.
I was the first to speak, and
I opened our mock seder by
weaving together the Kadesh
with a guided meditation. I
had everyone close their eyes,
and in between each line of the
blessing over the wine, I added
instructions to breathe in and
out, or be aware of their toes or
other parts of the body.
Some memorable ways
attendees presented their parts
of the Haggadah included a
game in which each person
said only one word at a time
as the group tried to tell the
Passover story and 10 Plagues
charades. When we got to the
“Ki l’olam chasdo” — “whose
mercy endures forever” — part
of the Haggadah, the group
leading this activity started a
beat, then each person shared
what they were thankful for
to the rhythm of the beat,
followed by everyone join-
ing together to say, “Ki l’olam
chasdo.” This got everyone at
the table to join in.
From this exercise, I learned
how central the idea of thanks-
giving is to Passover. Many
of us know “Dayenu” and are
familiar with the idea that
“It would have been enough.”
But the concept of grateful-
ness was intertwined through-
out much of the seder, which
became apparent when multi-
ple groups’ activities related to
that idea.
We had one morning left
together after the mock seder,
and then I was back on the
road, winding through moun-
tains and over creeks, trying
to beat the snow scheduled
for that evening and follow-
ing the one other Philadelphia-
area resident who attended
the retreat.
When we reached the bor-
der with New York, he stuck
his hand out the window and
gave me a thumbs-up, asking,
I assumed, if I had connection
again and felt comfortable con-
tinuing on my own.
I rolled down my window
and gave him a thumbs-up. l
szighelboim@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
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MARCH 7, 2019
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