'As a rabbi, you deal with grief. But not like this': Condo disaster rocks Jewish community

July 2, 2021 Bobby Ross Jr.

Weekend Plug-in 🔌

Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” features analysis, fact checking and top headlines from the world of faith. Subscribe now to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr. at therossnews@gmail.com.

(ANALYSIS) Back in 1995, I covered the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building for The Oklahoman.

To many of us in Oklahoma, images of the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, seem “gut-wrenchingly similar” to the Murrah Building rubble 26 years ago.

Even the slow, excruciating search for victims — as loved ones pray for a miracle — stirs tearful reminders.

More than a week after the Miami-area condo building’s collapse, the fear is no longer that the missing won’t be found alive. It’s that “they may not be found at all, making it harder to know when and how to grieve those lost,” report the Wall Street Journal’s Alicia A. Caldwell, Valerie Bauerlein and Daniela Hernandez.

“The grief here is really deep,” Rabbi Ariel Yeshurun of the Skylake Synagogue in North Miami tells the Journal. “As a rabbi, you deal with grief. But not like this.”

The disaster “has rocked Surfside’s Jewish community, a cohesive and interconnected group mirrored in just a few places in the United States,” explain the Washington Post’s Laura Reiley and Brittany Shammas.

Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron interviews Rabbi Sholom Lipskar, who leads the Shul of Bal Harbour, a synagogue that takes up nearly an entire city block less than a mile from the Champlain Towers.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. At landmark U.S. Hindu temple, a timely rite of rejuvenation: Associated Press religion writer Peter Smith teams with visual journalist Jessie Wardarski to cover what Smith describes as “a once-in-12-years festival near Pittsburgh at the oldest major Hindu temple in the U.S.”

The multimedia feature by Smith and Wardarski is exceptional.

2. 'A glimmer of hope': New leadership for Southern Baptists offers an opportunity for racial reconciliation: The Montgomery Advertiser’s Krista Johnson travels to Mobile, Alabama, to profile the Rev. Ed Litton, the Southern Baptist Convention’s newly elected president.

In other SBC news, Litton faces scrutiny over whether he plagiarized material in his sermons, as Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana and the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner report.

3. Canadian churches on First Nations land are burning: Last week’s Plug-in highlighted the role that Christian denominations played in snatching Indigenous children from their families.

Religion News Service details a variety of new developments this week, including this story by Renée Roden on a slew of church burnings on First Nations land and other reports by Emily MacFarlan Miller and Jack Jenkins.

Also, Pope Francis “will meet with Indigenous leaders later this year to discuss coming to Canada to apologize for the church’s role in operating schools that abused and forcibly assimilated generations of Indigenous children,” according to the New York Times’ Ian Austen and Vjosa Isai.

BONUS: Who might succeed the retiring Rick Warren as pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California?

In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Dartmouth College religion historian Randall Balmer suggests a candidate: Beth Moore.

Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines

I don’t want to brag, but I’ve followed — and appreciated — Holly Meyer’s fine work on the religion beat since she wrote about the controversy surrounding a rural Wisconsin church’s annual pig-wrestling event in 2014.

That was during her time on the Godbeat at The Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wisconsin, before she joined The Tennessean in 2016.

Now, Meyer is making another big move up: to serve as a news editor for The Associated Press’ global religion team. She’ll remain based in Nashville. This is the wire service’s second A-plus hire in the last few months, following the addition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Peter Smith in May.

Charging Station: In Case You Missed It

Here is where you can catch up on recent news and opinions from Religion Unplugged.

• Meetings on Kashmir raise questions about an uncertain future (by Zaffar Iqbal)

• Communion wars: why Biden continues to take the Eucharist and support abortion (by Clemente Lisi)

• Churches in Canada confront their past after the remains of 215 children found (by Bobby Ross Jr.)

• Following the wars inside the SBC (by Terry Mattingly)

• These Iraqis follow the last continuously surviving gnostic religion (by James F. McGrath)

• Religion shapes morals even for those who are not religious (by Philip Schwadel and Sam Hardy)

• Documentary explores Vatican soccer tournament through the power of prayer and penalty kicks (by Clemente Lisi)

• A brief history: how the Black church reformed American Christianity (by Kirubell Yohannes)

• Are mainline Protestants less susceptible to sexual abuse scandals? (by Richard Ostling)

The Final Plug

“The Chosen” has gone mainstream.

Or at least the “hit Jesus TV show” — as Ohio journalist Chris DeVille dubs it — has made its way into an article in The Atlantic.

“Take it from a critic and a Christian with an aversion to Christian entertainment: The show is good,” DeVille writes.

Thank you for reading, everyone. Enjoy the Fourth of July weekend!

Bobby Ross Jr. is a columnist for Religion Unplugged and editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 15 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.

Weekend Plug-in 🔌

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

More Top Reads

Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines

Charging Station: In Case You Missed It

The Final Plug