Guest Blogger, Rabbi Brynjegard-Bialik:What do you remember?

Ten years ago I had just moved back to California. I was a new mom, and we three were living with my parents while we looked for a house. I was sitting in my parents’ bedroom, playing with my infant daughter and watching television when the news broke in to regular programming. There was a shooting at the JCC, I heard; someone was targeting Jews. I was stunned and horrified.

My first thoughts were, admittedly, self-centered; I was worried about myself and my family.

The JCC was supposed to be a safe place. I went to preschool there as a child, and I was a camp counselor there in college. If the JCC was not safe, I thought, what was?

I was still at that new-parent stage of checking my daughter every ten minutes while she slept to make sure she was still breathing; I could barely begin to imagine how terrified the parents of those children at the JCC were. I was years away from sending a child to preschool, but as I watched news footage of the line of children being led out of the JCC I wondered if I could ever feel safe sending my daughter to a Jewish school.

I was a rabbinic student at the time, and spent most of my time in buildings easily identifiable as Jewish -- the very thing that drew the gunman to the JCC; I wondered if I would ever feel safe at school again. I was scared to go to temple for fear of copycats, and I was not sure I would have the courage to walk into any Jewish building again.

This was not the world I was used to; violent anti-semitism was something I read about in history books not something that happened in Northridge. It was two years before the events of September 11, and it was the first time I felt really, personally, threatened.

Shabbat services on August 7 will commemorate the tenth anniversary of the shootings at the JCC in Granada Hills. Ten years ago, we all gathered as a community -- stunned by a tragedy that affected our temple members and friends. This Shabbat our service will be filled with hope for the future; please join us.

What do you remember about that day?