Temple Beth Torah in Wellington, Florida, was vandalized in the early morning on Sunday, August 9. Surveillance cameras recorded the event. It showed a man wielding a baseball bat and trying to shatter the glass front doors of the synagogue.
The congregation’s rabbi was interviewed by local station WPBF-TV. He was quoted as saying, “I hope that whoever did this gets apprehended. I hope that he or they get the help that they need and I hope that it seeps in that they understand how much they hurt people when they did something like this.”
The rabbi’s reaction was shocking. There was not even a flicker of outrage at the vandalizing of a synagogue. The rabbi, however, did seem quite concerned about the perpetrator’s emotional health and seemed to want to get him into therapy so that he could “understand“ what he had done.
The lack of an appropriate response to this incident is, unfortunately, not an anomaly. It is a microcosm of a certain mindset of the Jewish world today. The narrative is that we don’t want to sink to their level. We want to be better. This idea, however, often leaves those who engage in it better and deader than their enemies.
Maimonides (the Rambam) examined the idea in The Guide for the Perplexed. The concept is often called “the mercy of fools.” Maimonides stated that “He who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.” He further posited that “mercy to criminals is cruelty to all creatures.”
Violence that is allowed to go unpunished against some Jews or Jewish institutes puts all Jews in danger. It creates the idea that Jews are a soft target and that attacks on them will bring little or no retribution. It gives a green light to those who wish to go after Jews and Jewish interests. It creates a dangerous precedent.
Temple Beth Torah and all Jewish organizations around the world need to take a zero-tolerance stance, not a Kumbaya moment, when threatened in any way.