Park Slope School Responds To Hate With Inter-faith Healing

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Anyone walking through Park Slope last Thursday might have noticed an interesting sight around 8th Avenue: a line of children in Catholic school uniforms making their way through the rain — a plastic-wrapped orange tree on a small red wagon in tow.

The children, lit electric candles and umbrellas in hand, were on their way not to church, but to a synagogue down the street. Their cargo — which underneath the plastic had origami doves and Jewish stars hanging from its branches — was a gift of solidarity for Congregation Beth Elohim.

Its aim was to bring a sense of inter-faith healing to the synagogue in the wake of increased anti-Semitic and hate speech incidents in the city, and congregation members said it did just that.

"...When I saw the children turn the corner onto Garfield Place, walking in a straight line and holding electric candles in their hands, it was as if the clouds began to dissipate."said Sam Sterling, director of membership engagement with Beth Elohim. "I knew that their gift would be a special one, but I could not have predicted what a meaningful experience it would turn out to be."

Students from St. Saviour Catholic Academy's 7th grade had put together the orange tree donation with 11 origami doves to represent the 11 victims of a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh last fall.

The idea, thought of by parent Sandra Rossier, was originally to honor those victims and the Jewish community in the wake of the attack, but eventually became about more than just that one incident. Rossier said she wanted to give the students an empowering way to deal with the increase of hate both in New York City and across the country.

"I grew up in New York City and I have never seen the amount of hate toward people of different cultures and different religions (than now)," Rossier said, noting anti-Semitic graffiti that's popped up in the city as an example. "Raising a child in this environment has been challenging to say the least.

"I figured starting this initiative will give kids...a way of helping the situation and feeling stronger rather than just standing around and watching what's going on and feeling helpless and scared," she said.

The gift has become part of a larger movement Rossier is calling "Little Red Wagon" — after her daughter's wagon they used to carry the tree — that she hopes can create positive actions in response to hateful incidents. She said the next event will likely be a vigil with the local Muslim community to honor those lost in the mosque attacks in New Zealand.

At Beth Elohim, congregation members agreed that there is a growing need recently for inter-faith collaboration to face incidents of hate. Sterling said the donation created a meaningful interaction between the two faiths.

When the students brought the tree, Beth Elohim was waiting with fruit and cookies as part of their Purim holiday tradition sharing gifts with friends and neighbors, a tradition she said the tree can help continue even after the holiday.

"Our students are working on a small roof garden and we hope to plant the tree there shortly," she said. "It would be fantastic to be able to harvest the fruit and have our 7th graders bring it over and share it with the 7th graders at St. Saviour's."

Rossier said creating the tree, which the students put together in art teacher Avalyn Mathis' class, already seems to be making a difference. One student from St. Saviour's who is Jewish told her she was happy to see the two faiths coming together and another called the experience "magical," she said.

"They were so pleased to have some way of helping — it really gave them a feeling of, 'I'm doing something good and that's a way to heal,'" she said. "We are trying to build bridges and take down any walls that exist. There is strength in unity and accepetance."

Anyone with ideas for the initiative can contact Rossier here.