How one Pittsburgh church shows up for its Jewish neighbors
An upcoming service will "name antisemitism plainly, offer intercession for those who continue to live with its wounds, and ask for courage and faithfulness in our shared life as neighbors."
Following Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, not all of Pittsburgh’s faith leaders offered support to Jewish colleagues experiencing shock, trauma and grief.
One of the several who did was the Rev. Jonathon Jensen of Calvary Episcopal Church.
Jensen and his congregation have modeled time and again what loving your neighbor actually looks like. From inviting the Tree of Life Congregation to hold High Holiday services in Calvary’s sanctuary after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, to partnering with Rabbi Aaron Bisno on interfaith programming, Jensen and his flock have nurtured relationships with generosity and sincerity.
After Oct. 7, many Jewish clergy “lamented the fact that they didn’t feel that their longtime interfaith partners understood them or were available or extended themselves,” recalled Rabbi Aaron Bisno of Temple Ohav Shalom in Allison Park. “That wasn’t my experience at all, because the relationship here is just such a natural part of our interactions and extension of friendship that it was incongruous to me.”
Following Bisno’s departure from Rodef Shalom Congregation in 2022, where he served 18 years as senior rabbi, Jensen and his congregation offered him an office at Calvary and the title of rabbi-in-residence. The two faith leaders founded the Center for Interfaith Collaboration that year. Since then, the center has hosted several interfaith programs, including recent talks by Rabbi Danny Schiff exploring ethical challenges and religion in a digital age.
Jensen incorporates Jewish-related programming at Calvary frequently. For example, Bisno delivers Sunday sermons several times a year, and has been teaching a weekly class along with Jensen called “A Priest and a Rabbi Walk Into a Classroom.” The first year, the course focused on the parables of Jesus and the second year on the book of Genesis.
“This year is Exodus, and it’s meant to be, by design, a Christian and Jewish perspective or approach, and the idea of being, each of us — both traditions — ratified and learning from one another,” Jensen said.
About 25 or 30 people attend the Sunday morning classes, Jews and Christians.
Jensen views the classes as “another extension of our work with the community, with specifically the interfaith community.”
Calvary’s first outreach to its Jewish neighbors was in 2019, when it invited Tree of Life to hold High Holiday services in its building. The relationship between the two congregations continues to be strong.
“They still come here for their High Holidays each year, and will for probably, I would say most likely two more times until they move into the new building,” Jensen said.
Members of Calvary and Tree of Life have established friendships and now gather for reasons less lofty than studying scripture — like mahjong.
Is mahjong “going to save the world? Probably not, but it gets people to know each other and become friends and sit in with one another in a physical proximity rather than Zoom,” Jensen said. “There’s a relationship built.”
Tree of Life members even participate in Calvary’s annual Christmas pageant and Calvary members join Tree of Life congregants for their Chanukah party.
Interfaith relations are “so normalized here,” Jensen said. “We forget how unbelievably rare that is — both the depth of the relationship, and that Jews participate in a Christian service and Christians participate in Jewish services and life — because we’re friends.”
Likewise, Bisno maintains an office at the church and “is a beloved, expected now, part of life at Calvary,” Jensen said.
“It’s become so normative,” Bisno said. “It may strike someone as unusual to read the church bulletin and see my name in among the others, but for folks that are here on the regular, it’s just part of how Calvary does church, how Calvary makes real its commitments to God and neighbor.”
Calvary often goes the extra mile to accommodate their Jewish friends — like in September 2022, when Rosh Hashanah fell on a Sunday and Calvary canceled its three morning services so that Tree of Life could use the sanctuary.
“There was almost no discussion about it,” Jensen recalled. “I went to my board and said, ‘Hey, the High Holidays are going to go on a Sunday morning, and they have to be there at certain times. And what are we going to do with church? I recommend we not have any of the Sunday morning services and only have one at five o’clock. Everybody was fine, and it wasn’t even, as I say, a discussion. I brought it up and they said, ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’”
Jensen then invited Rabbi Jeffery Myers of Tree of Life to deliver a sermon to Calvary at the evening church service. Myers agreed, and shared one of his two Rosh Hashanah sermons.
The rabbi was moved by the response.
“The moment that was so powerful to me is that at the conclusion [of the service] there is a recessional and then a greeting line,” Myers said. “Here’s what got me: As I’m sitting in line, person after person came up, shook my hand and said to me, ‘L’shana tova.’”
Jensen had taught his congregation how to share a High Holiday greeting in Hebrew.
“He models this, so it’s from the top down,” Myers said. “And it saturates the entire institution in terms of the attitudes that his parishioners have, because it comes from him.”
In another act of solidarity with their Jewish neighbors, Calvary will host an Interfaith Service of Remembrance and Healing on April 12, at 4 p.m. Members of the three congregations targeted in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting have been invited.
The service, which will be rooted in the Anglican tradition of sung Evening Prayer, “will remember in particular the lives taken and harmed in the Tree of Life, Dor Hadash, and New Light congregations on October 27, 2018, and will acknowledge the continuing reality of antisemitism in our society,” the invitation reads. “Prayers will name antisemitism plainly, offer intercession for those who continue to live with its wounds, and ask for courage and faithfulness in our shared life as neighbors. … The intention of the service is not dialogue or explanation, but prayerful solidarity and remembrance, offered with humility and respect.”
Some of the Oct. 27 first responders, civic leaders and representatives from the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh also were invited, Jensen said, not only to thank them for supporting the Jewish community following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, but “also to mourn and grieve together.”
And that relationship extends beyond the confines of the church, Myers said. Every year Jensen comes to PNC Park on Jewish Heritage night to take in the Pirates game.
Myers and Jensen sit together at the game, “neither of us in any, shall we say, formal attire,” Myers said. “We’re just, you know, dressed down. We sit next to each other, just two guys at a baseball game and just talking baseball.” PJC
Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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