‘Rabbi Charlie’ balances Colleyville fame with one-to-one connection

At Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker’s third Shabbat service in his new congregation, gun safety was uppermost in his mind, as it has been for months now. In his 10-minute sermon on a recent Friday evening at Temple Emanuel, the 46-year-old rabbi spoke of his trip earlier that week to the White House, where he and his wife helped celebrate the signing of a bipartisan gun safety law. It was nearly six months to the day since Cytron-Walker’s life had changed dramatically, when he and several congregants at his previous synagogue, in Colleyville, Texas, were held hostage by a gunman who demanded the release of a person in prison. After 11 hours, Cytron-Walker distracted the invader, allowing the rabbi and his fellow hostages to escape.

Since that January day, Cytron-Walker has been interviewed on TV countless times, testified before Congress and most recently was awarded an exceptional service award from his seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Among American Jews, he is a household name. But on this Shabbat eve, the rabbi talked about his White House visit, describing how he met the son of Ruth Whitfield, an 86-year-old woman killed in a May 14 racist shooting on Black shoppers in a Buffalo, New York, grocery store. “I was so glad to meet him and so sad that we live in a world where an elderly woman can be killed by a gunman when she’s shopping for groceries,” he told worshippers at Temple Emanuel. Cytron-Walker also wanted to let the members of his new synagogue know that safety is a top priority. He wants members to undergo active shooter training and beef up other safety protocols. At the same time, he does not want fear to hold them back. “We can’t be afraid to walk out the door,” he said. “We can’t be afraid to walk into this door.” It’s a natural but difficult subject to lead with for Cytron-Walker, a man of hope whose first and deepest impulse is to build community.