Rabbi Adam Stock Spilker reflects on his son narrowly escaping a shooting at Brown University, while also grappling with an attack in Australia.
ST PAUL, Minn. — As Rabbi Adam Stock Spilker prepares to light the first candle of Hanukkah, he’s also reflecting on a pair of tragedies that touched both his family and his community.
On Saturday night, the senior rabbi of Mount Zion Temple in St. Paul was at home with his wife when they received a text from their son, Eiden, a 29-year-old Brown University graduate now working at the university as a “maker in residence” in the Brown Design Workshop.
“The workshop shares space in the engineering building. It’s right next to it, so the hallway connects to where the auditorium was and the bathroom. And he was about to go to that bathroom,” recounted the rabbi about how his son was mere feet – and moments – away from where the shooter started firing at students in a bathroom before moving onto the building’s auditorium.
Once Eiden realized what was happening, his father said he then helped lead others to safety.
“He and some others helped get some of the students out of the ground design space onto the street. Then the police said you need to run, get into spaces, shelter in place, and they got into safety,” Rabbi Spilker said, noting that Eiden now recalls those moments as “a blur.”
And while the Brown graduate himself continues processing what happened, so does his father struggle to accept the close call involving one of his three children.
“Thank God you’re OK. And my heart breaks for the victims, which it does. But then I started realizing – my body started realizing, as it started shaking – like, oh my gosh, this is where, but for the grace of God, Eiden could have been there,” Spilker shared.
And while the father contemplated the close call, his relative peace only lasted a few hours. The next morning, the rabbi awoke to news about an attack on his “fellow Jews” during a Hanukkah gathering in Australia.
“You think about the human loss and the terror that these families and the turmoil that they’re feeling, and it is really hard,” Rabbi said, adding that he fears the rhetoric of today – largely targeting the actions of Israel – puts all Jews at risk.
“When that turns into statements such as, ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ that statement has real-world consequences,” he warned.
But while this rabbi is still recovering from the weekend’s darkness, today he also holds onto the light of Hanukkah, along with the resilience and hope of his Jewish and greater community.
“Remember that there are many, many more people with love in their hearts than hate in their hearts – and to hold onto that, that is important,” he said before recalling the Hanukkah message he shared with his congregation just a couple days ago: “We often talk about the miracle of the oil lasting for eight nights. I think the real miracle… is they had the faith to light it on that first day, thinking it was only going to last for one day. And they lit that light. That’s faith, and that’s what we have to do in times of darkness.”