A Week After Pittsburgh Shooting, A Show Of Solidarity At An Overland Park Synagogue

Saturday morning Shabbat at Congregation Beth Torah in Overland Park typically draws about 30 worshippers. But this Saturday saw a crowd at least four times that number show up, drawn to this white stone synagogue along 127th Street wanting to show solidarity against hate and anti-Semitism.

Synagogues across the country, including at least nine in the metro, participated in what organizers called Solidarity Shabbat, in which people were invited to attend services alongsite regular congregants, just a week after the massacre of 11 Jewish worshippers at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Many of the guests Saturday at Beth Torah were not Jewish. And some of them, like Shannon Stone of Kansas City, Missouri, had never been to a shabbat before.