“When a mosque burns, a Texas town defies national divisions”

“Everyone knows everybody, I know several members of the mosque, and we felt for them,” Robert Loeb, the president of Temple Bnai Israel, tells Forward.com. “When a calamity like this happens, we have to stand together.”

“Jewish community members walked into my home and gave me a key to the synagogue,” Shahid Hashmi, a surgeon and one of the founders of the mosque, told the New York Times.

And therein lies the key to defying the divisiveness of America. Everyone knew each other.

By Bob Collins of MPR