Torahs were returned to the ark at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., on Friday night, as congregants gathered in the synagogue’s sanctuary for the first time since a March terrorist attack.
“Welcome home,” Cantor Neil Michaels told the congregation during the Shabbat service, which also marked the beginning of Rosh Hashanah. “For months we have prayed in borrowed sanctuaries; we have sung in unfamiliar rooms. We have carried Torah from place to place and discovered again and again something our people have known for thousands of years: A sacred community is not defined by walls.”
“And yet, there is something about coming home,” he said.
The return came nearly six months after an attacker drove a truck into the Reform synagogue, which is one of the largest Jewish houses of worship in Michigan. Temple Israel said its High Holy Day services would return to the sanctuary this year.
On March 12, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, rammed his truck through the synagogue’s doors and drove about 200 feet down a hallway while about 140 children and staff members were inside. His truck was laden with improvised explosives, according to the FBI. After striking a security officer with the vehicle and firing his gun through the windshield, Ghazali shot and killed himself.
During Friday night’s service, members of the congregation involved in rebuilding the synagogue carried the Torah scrolls down the aisle and placed them in the ark as the cantors sang.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he was “deeply moved” by the return.
“Let this be a lesson to those who seek to threaten the Jewish people or minimize the danger we face,” he stated. “Terror will not deter us. Our faith and resolve are stronger than your hate.”
