Reflection 2: Don't Be A Bystander, Be An Upstander

Today's guest is one you don’t want to miss. Rabbi Ron Symons has been the senior director of Jewish Life, since July 2015, at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, and also the founding director of the organization’s Center for Loving Kindness, since August 2017. In our conversation with Rabbi Ron, we discuss so many pressing matters happening around the world, but especially here in the United States like living wages, demoralizing rhetoric in public discourse, and especially gun violence. Rabbi Ron shares very poignantly about his experiences with an antisemitic terrorist attack in the form of a mass shooting, which took place at the Tree of Life Synagogue, in 2018 – in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the midst of tragedies such as this one, Rabbi Ron reminds us what it means to move from being a bystander to an upstander who ‘Loves your Neighbor as Yourself.’