ROSH HASHANAH 5786 SECTION A, PAGE 9
Aside from his duties as spiritual leader at Congregation Beth Evergreen, Rabbi Jamie Arnold is a volunteer chaplain for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Dept.
That assignment means that Rabbi Arnold receives alerts of distress in the county faster than most.
Shortly after 12:24 p.m. on Sept. 10, the first moment authorities received the 911 call that reported a shooting at Evergreen High School, the rabbi was alerted of the news that shook Colorado, once again.
“As a chaplain, I got an update very quickly on what was going on,” says Rabbi Arnold. “At the time, I was about to present a talk to 200 middle school kids at Merrill Middle School about Judaism.
“Over the course of the presentation teachers were getting the alerts, and so we spoke about it with the teachers afterwards.
“The first thing is that you hope for a speedy resolution when it was still an active shooter situation, and to mitigate the threat and minimize the damage.
“When I hear a siren, I think of where you need to be in time to make a difference. That was my first thought.”
The shooting was the first fatal attack at a school in Colorado since May 7, 2019, when one student was killed at STEM School Highlands Ranch and eight others were injured.
The assailant in Evergreen, Desmond Holly, fatally shot himself. Two others were critically injured.
Beth Evergreen, 4.8 miles away from Evergreen High School, was on lockdown within one minute of the shooting. An enhanced police presence at the congregation was evident less than 10 minutes after the 911 call.
“We had our regular Hebrew school scheduled on that Wednesday,” Rabbi Arnold says.
“We revamped the plans to hold space for the students to think about and talk about what happened in the context of what we were learning.
“All of the kids, even if they were not Evergreen High School students, either had high school siblings or their school was locked down.
“Everybody was aware to some degree of space for the kids to reflect on what had happened and to have a space to talk about what they were feeling.
“I also invited the parents to stay and talk while the kids were in their classrooms.
“Then we revamped the evening program to invite congregants to come and sit together, feel together, grieve together and try to put what we were feeling and experiencing in the context of the preparation for the High Holidays season.”
Among the attendees at the shul after the shooting was an Evergreen student and her father.
“There was certainly some grieving and deep emotional sharing, across the spectrum of sadness and grief, anxiety and fear and anger, that we keep having to deal with,” says Rabbi Arnold.
“Yeah,” gun violence, too.”
This shooting hit Arnold in a personal way. All three of his children graduated from Evergreen High School.
“Many members of the community who were involved in Jefferson County schools and during Columbine have had firsthand experience with school shootings,” the rabbi says.
“So every time there’s a school shooting, it’s like being re-traumatized.
“We’ve had natural disasters, forest fires, floodings, and then of course, collectively, the acts of October 7.
“All of this has affected the community in a lot of direct ways and indirect ways.”
Scars from this sort of incident take a long time to heal. Sometimes, the healing never ends.
“Our effort is to support one another and to sort of rebuild trust in humanity,” says Rabbi Arnold.
“But whatever the trigger, it does remind people of the importance of how precious life is and the importance of community.”
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