Charlottesville’s Jewish community uses dialogue to combat white hate, 5 years after Unite the...

Half a decade later, Charlottesville’s Jewish community is still processing the events of August 2017.

“I grew up as a child watching these old black and white newsreels of the rise of Hitler and of the Nazi Party,” says Rabbi Tom Gutherz of Congregation Beth Israel. “They always had the sense of being sort of history and far away. And yet to see and to hear and to be face to face with this kind of hatred, and to have it screamed at you and to see it marched by, probably was really quite shocking.”

Congregation member Diane Hillman mentally returns to Saturday morning Shabbat service on Aug. 12, 2017. Then-president Alan Zimmerman suggested members exit the synagogue through the side door because of the violence escalating in the streets, she says.

Hillman stood on the synagogue’s steps and watched the marchers go by.

“The groups marched by and scream profanities and antisemitic slurs at the synagogue and a block away, [there was] conflict. Confederate flags marching down the street,” Hillman says. “And those images have stuck with me and probably will always be with me.”