Since the Hamas attack on Israel Oct. 7 that killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and took more than 200 hostages, Mt. Zion Temple on St. Paul’s Summit Avenue has hired a police officer to stand guard at the front door during services and religious school.
[image_caption]Rabbi Adam Stock Spilker[/image_caption]
“People in this congregation are experiencing two things: fear and anxiety,” he said. “Anxiety is that amorphous fear that is not quantifiable, but the fear is because there is some reality of incidents happening.”
The police officer was brought in, Spilker explained, to help reduce some of that anxiety and fear, but for some members of the congregation, the officer’s presence has brought its own sense of unease. “There were some who were thinking,” Spilker said, “‘Why do we have to have an officer for school and services?’”
To address those concerns, Spilker continued, the synagogue assigned a member of the congregation to stand next to the officer: “We wanted to mitigate any type of anxiety and to create a sense of welcome,” he said. “Audacious hospitality is part of our philosophy as a community for everybody — guests and members alike — and we don’t want to cut back any level of that audacious hospitality — even with having to lock our doors, even with having to have officers.”
Spilker said that Mt. Zion has always paid careful attention to its members’ mental health and well-being, but during this time of heightened tension, it is particularly important to provide a place where the community feels safe and cared for — both physically and emotionally. “This is a kind of situation that is affecting everybody deeply in the world. Anyone with a heart is feeling impacted by the loss of life, which happens in wars.”
Across the river, at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, students, faculty and staff are feeling heightened levels of grief, fear, and anxiety, said Najeeba Syeed, professor, El-Hibri endowed chair and executive director of the university’s Interfaith program.
[image_caption]Najeeba Syeed[/image_caption]
At Augsburg, a university that is home to one of the largest Muslim student populations in the state, much of the grief and anxiety comes from people with personal connections to the war or histories of war-related trauma and oppression.
According to the health ministry in the Gaza Strip, more than 17,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since the war began, and the ministry said 70% of the casualties have been women and children. The easy availability of images of death and destruction has been particularly upsetting for students and faculty, Syeed said. This constant barrage of images wasn’t as readily available in past wars, she said, and Augsburg students and faculty are feeling overburdened by the emotional weight.
Syeed supported the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa when she was in college three decades ago, but the emotional impact of what was happening was more diluted than it is today. “I would watch the news every day with my family at 6 p.m. and read the paper the next morning,” she said. “Now, our students have access to information in a more immediate way, but from the mental health side there is no separation between experiencing very traumatic information: They are seeing it happening in real time.”
Constant access to distressing images of war has left many Augsburg students feeling raw and bruised, Syeed said.
“We have to understand that students don’t feel that distance in the same way as they may have in the past. The immediacy and the scope and degree of trauma they are experiencing is immense. Many are directly connected to people in the crisis or connected in some other way,” she said.
Tamim Saidi, resident scholar at Islamic Resource Group, a nonprofit dedicated to building bridges between Muslim Americans and the broader community, said that even though his home in Minnesota is physically distant from the war in Israel and Gaza, every time he looks at his phone or computer, he is transported to the center of the conflict.
[image_caption]Tamim Saidi[/image_caption]
He knows it would be better for his mental health to look away from these images, but Saidi said he can’t — even though it is having a negative effect on his mental health. “Seeing it just breaks your heart left and right,” he said. “I have been feeling depressed and distraught. It has been hard for me to focus.”
Real-world connections
Though this war is happening far away, many Minnesotans have personal connections that make the tragedies feel close to home. The state has the largest per capita number of refugees and asylum seekers in the nation, Syeed said, and this makes the reality of war feel more immediate and difficult to process.
“One of the things I’ve been concerned about when working with students is that many were already fleeing some sort of violence when they came here,” she said. “This isn’t going back three or four generations: I have students who have memories of fleeing their home.”
Many Muslim Minnesotans have family members in Gaza, Saidi said. Some have relatives who have died in the fighting. Even for those who have not lost loved ones, close connections to real-world trauma feel like a physical injury.
“It is so raw, so tender,” Saidi said. “If you have a wound, if you get close enough to touch it, it starts bleeding. That’s how it feels to the Muslim community right now.”
Spilker said that members of Mt. Zion have friends or family members who have been hurt or killed in the attacks. He explained that there are 15.5 million Jews in the world today — fewer than before the Holocaust. That means the connections in the Jewish community run deep and strong.
“It is a very small family,” Spilker said. “Everyone knows someone who knows someone.”
The raw, tender feelings created by this war mean that even peaceful pro-Palestinian protests like the one that has been happening every Friday for 30 years on Summit Avenue just a few blocks from Mt. Zion, start to feel unsettling, Spilker said.
“We actually sent out something as part of our messaging to our congregation saying that because [the protests] are on a Friday night, on Shabbat when people come to synagogue, we suggest that members go a different way so they don’t have to encounter that for their families. It’s tough emotionally. We weren’t worried about people’s safety, but it’s just hard emotionally to go through that,” he said.
This generalized anxiety extends to the temple’s children, Spilker said. Last month, when a peaceful pro-Palestinian rally held by students at St. Catherine University spilled into the neighboring streets, a Mt. Zion member reported that their children were frightened when the group marched past the playground at Horace Mann Elementary, carrying anti-Israel protest signs.
“This traumatized some of our students,” Spilker said, “because they experienced it as feeling they were not safe.”
Student participants in the protest were “horrified,” Spilker said, to learn that they had upset children, “because that was not their intent.” But, he added, the incident demonstrated the delicate state of our collective mental health: “People need to recognize that words matter, that phrases need to be investigated for what they mean before anyone says them, because they can have implications in the way people interpret them.”
‘We’re working together’
In the midst of trauma and anxiety, Syeed has seen reasons for hope and optimism. She is heartened by a feeling that members of her university’s diverse campus have come together as a community to support one another — no matter their religious or cultural backgrounds.
“As soon as this crisis became an issue for our students,” she said, “I was happy to see that our campus ministries that offer chaplain and spiritual care services for students all came together out of concern for our student mental health needs.” Students were able to access professional mental health and spiritual support, and many students without direct connections to the war came out in support of their classmates at gatherings.
Though in many ways, religion is at the core of this war, Syeed said that many Augsburg students have been using their faith as a way to connect with others and bolster their mental health.
“One of the ways that students have supported each other has been through a lot of spiritual spaces,” Syeed said. “For Muslim students, many are using their spirituality to navigate times of trauma. That is one of the nuanced and complex dynamics that religion can play in our communities. People see religion as a source of conflict. What I am learning and seeing is it also is a source of comfort.”
At Mt. Zion, synagogue staff have offered opportunities for members to gather and talk about the war’s impact on their lives.
“We’ve provided opportunities for young families to get together and just talk about what they are experiencing in their schools, what they are talking about with their kids,” Spilker said. “We are also creating a space for people to talk about having conversations in the workplace with friends and neighbors.”
Mt. Zion also offered a “Shabbat of well-being” for congregants. It was a time, Spilker said, “not to talk about the situation, not to reflect on the situation, but a time just to have a breath and space and have opportunities for some chair yoga, to be with each other, to sing together, to have opportunities to write down the feelings we’re having and experiencing and the emotional triggers that are happening.”
To help ease the feelings of anxiety and distress, Spilker said he tries to remind members that even during times of war and conflict, “the vast, vast majority of people in our communities are practicing kindness and love.”
Hearing this kind of sentiment repeated taps into people’s deeper, more elemental needs, Spilker said, and helps to keep congregation members at a more even emotional keel.
“If you are a kid, you want your parents to say, ‘Things are going to be OK,’ and if you are a member of a congregation, you want your congregation to say, ‘Things are going to be OK.’ There are no false promises. It’s just to say: ‘We’re working together. We’re going to stand together.’ I think that has created a sense of calm for many people.”
The power of connection
A few days after the Oct. 7 attacks, Spilker got an email from a local imam. “It just said,” Spilker recalled, “‘I’m thinking of you. You’re in my heart.’ That was probably the limit of what he could say with all of the emotions about the politics around the situation, but the fact that he reached out was significant.”
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Reaching out and offering solace or support across religious and ethnic lines can carry powerful meaning during a time of conflict. Even if your political convictions differ, simply extending a caring message can go a long way, he said.
“If you know someone who is Muslim or is Jewish, you ought to reach out at this time and say, ‘I’m thinking of you,’” Spilker said. “This has nothing to do with choosing sides. There’s no need to choose sides. That’s even a false choice. It’s best to think about your neighbor, knowing that they are seen and respected in our community.”
Saidi hasn’t experienced this sort of gesture from a non-Muslim neighbor, but he believes it would be welcome from many people in his community. “I think reaching out would mean a lot to people,” he said. “Offering help or just meeting for lunch or dinner or coffee — they might really appreciate it.”
Saidi said that even though many Muslims are experiencing this war through a different filter than Jewish Minnesotans, he still wants to emphasize that both sides are deeply feeling its tragedies. “What the Muslim community and the Jewish community are going through is very similar,” he said. “They are both suffering mightily.” He tries to bring that reality into his interactions with people of all religious backgrounds.
The positive impact of small kindnesses spreads beyond the intended recipient, Spilker added. “Everyone who experiences any sort of small outreach of kindness remembers that and shares that with others and it goes a long way, not only for the person who received it — but for others hearing about it. And every absence of acknowledgement or connection also is felt and it impacts someone more than one would think.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct misspellings in a few references of Najeeba Syeed’s last name.
