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Key Westers Of Many Faiths Gather To Repudiate Anti-Semitism

The Rev. Randy Becker, left, and Rabbi Simon Dudai lead an interfaith gathering against anti-Semitism Sunday in Key West.
Nancy Klingener
/
WLRN
The Rev. Randy Becker, left, and Rabbi Simon Dudai lead an interfaith gathering against anti-Semitism Sunday in Key West.

More than a week after 11 people were shot and killed at a Pittsburgh synagogue, Key Westers of many faiths gathered at South Florida's oldest Jewish Congregation to speak out against anti-Semitism.

More than 100 people attended the service and read the names of the 11 people who died.

Rabbi Simon Dudai of Congregation B'Nai Zion in Key West led the group in the Mourner's Kaddish.

Afterward,  he said the service and the number of people who attended showed Key West living up to its official motto, One Human Family.

"This community has risen to the occasion, has risen up and showed the true character, this community, this city can be very proud," he said. "We are truly one human family."

The Rev. Randy Becker organized the service with the Key West Interfaith Ministerial Alliance.

"The city has to stand up as a single spiritual whole and say 'no' to all acts of anti-Semitism. We can't just sit quietly in our own misery and our own loss and say 'that's terrible," Becker said. "We need to be able to say, especially to the people in the Congregations here in town, and the Jews in town, we will stand with you. We do stand with you."

Sixteen different faith traditions were part of putting together the service, Becker said.

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Nancy Klingener covers the Florida Keys for WLRN. Since moving to South Florida in 1989, she has worked for the Miami Herald, Solares Hill newspaper and the Monroe County Public Library.