opinion
A Shooting in Buffalo Brought
Jewish, Black Communities
Together. What Took So Long?
Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein
T he attack on the Tops Friendly Market on
Buffalo’s Jefferson Avenue last May 14 shook
Western New York to the core. In less than 10
minutes, an 18-year-old wielding an AK-47 killed seven
and injured three Black people.

The victims were teachers, caretakers, activists,
new fathers, grandmothers, community leaders and
all-around good people. If not for the heroism of
retired police officer Aaron Salter Jr., who lost his
life in the attack, and the quick response of the
Buffalo Police Department, the death toll could have
been far higher.

For our Buffalo Jewish community, the attack was
a call to action. In years past, the Jefferson Avenue
corridor was the heart of the Jewish community. As
Jews joined the white flight to the suburbs, it became
a place that few Jews ever frequented. The vigils held
in the aftermath of the attack were the first time many
Jews in our community had been back in the East Side
of Buffalo in decades, if not more.

The gunman specifically targeted the neighborhood,
traveling three hours away from his home to “kill black
people.” As the national media emphasized over and
over, Buffalo is the sixth most segregated city in the
country. What does it mean that our white Jewish community
is so removed from our Black and brown neighbors?
A casual remark by a young Jewish parent a few
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endorsed the notion of a constitutional monarch — a
king or queen who is esteemed, but also bound by
the law and by restrictions imposed by the people. In
practice, this makes today’s monarchy an awful lot like
that of ancient Israel, and very different from historic
European monarchies, as well as very different from
how Americans and others often see it. After nearly
six years living and working on these green isles, I’ve
come to appreciate the complexities and absurdities
of the British monarchy and to value the role that the
ceremonies play in the collective life of Britons.

Many here are surprised to find that, being a
Yankee, I’m not also a republican (an anti-monarchist,
in the British context). Indeed, while I have my doubts
weeks after the attack really struck home for me.

He said the shooting at the school in Uvalde, Texas,
in June 2022 hit a lot closer to home than the
shooting just down the road at Tops. As a parent of
school-age children, he could relate to the suffering of
the parents in Texas, not to the horror that occurred in
Buffalo’s inner city. How could this be? Where did our
community go wrong?
As the rabbinic consultant at our local Jewish
Communal Relations Council, I take this disconnect
personally. I grew up in a predominantly Black part
of West Philadelphia. Back in the 1980s, none of my
classmates in my suburban Jewish day school would
come to visit my house. They and their parents were
afraid to come by, locking their car doors whenever
they happened to drive by my home. Sadly, the divide
has only grown worse.

Starting in 2017, our local Jewish federation has
made a concerted effort to bridge this divide. We have
held two missions to Israel, specifically geared toward
our local African-American leadership. We hired a
racial justice coordinator, and are part of the initial
cohort of the Jewish Federations of North America’s
Jewish Equity and Diversity Initiative.

It has begun to make a difference. The Sunday after
the May 14 attack, dozens of Jewish communal leaders
showed up on the street outside Tops. Over the
past year, we have held racial healing circles, hosted
museum tours of local Black artists, held a Freedom
Seder and toured gardens on Buffalo’s predominately
Black East Side. While we are very far from the shared
society we aspire to, I can honestly say we are making
strides toward closing the gap. Our community is
much more open and accepting of Jews of color, and
its members are beginning to accept our role in the
systemic racism that is pervasive in our society.

This has been a very bad year for us in Western
New York. Beyond the mass shooting at Tops, we had
the stabbing of Salman Rushdie at the Chautauqua
Institution, two major blizzards that left more than 40
people dead and the near death of Buffalo Bills player
Damar Hamlin on the football field.

The one-year anniversary of the Tops attack will hit
us hard, but it will not deter us from the work ahead.

We, the Buffalo Jewish community, will be there in
full force at the various events planned to mark the
occasion, not as bystanders, but as upstanders. We
are, after all, not only Jews, but Buffalonians.

As my friend, fellow recent traveler to Israel and
poet laureate of Buffalo, Jillian Hanesworth, wrote
in her poem “Choose Love”: “[W]hen evil tries to
break us / we choose to stand tall / We’ll shout loud
and live louder / until the walls of hate fall / because
justice can’t be limited / so we choose it for all… So,
no matter what others say / no matter what they try
to do / love, light, and each other / is what we will
always choose.” ■
about the idea of monarchy and while, religiously,
there is a strong argument against human authority,
the monarchy as it operates in modern Britain is fairly
compatible with the idea of kingship as established
by halacha — restrained, limited and primarily
occupied with being a moral exemplar rather than
an authoritarian ruler. Maybe then it shouldn’t be
so strange that so much of the ceremonies this
weekend were drawn from our texts, and so much
of the symbolism referential to our tradition. We can
be grateful that King Charles’s coronation, the first
in a generation, went off without a hitch and without
bloodshed, and with the support and involvement
of a diverse representation of Britain’s peoples and
faiths. To the outside, the coronation likely appeared to
be just a lot of pomp and pageantry. No doubt, it is
often Americans who are camping out on the Mall in
see-through tents or wearing the royal family’s faces
as masks in coronation parties — but this American,
after more than half a decade here in Britain, can
appreciate the depth of the monarchy in ways I
couldn’t before.

I see both its deep significance and history, its
connection to our own tradition (sometimes through
appropriation) and its negatives. As a rabbi and a Jew,
I will always believe that there is only one Sovereign
who truly rules, but there is something to be said for
having a king as well as a King. ■
Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein is the rabbi of
Congregation Shir Shalom of Buffalo in Williamsville,
New York, and a rabbinic consultant to the Buffalo
Jewish Communal Relations Council.

Rabbi Adam Zagoria-Moffet is the rabbi of St. Albans
Masorti Synagogue. He was ordained by the Jewish
Theological Seminary where he also received an MA
in Jewish thought and moved to the UK in 2017.

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