Day marked with interfaith service

It was an unusual Thanksgiving story.

To a stilled audience in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Alexander Kaprian recalled that in World War II, his grandparents helped hide German Jews and Russian prisoners of war. Kaprian, the pastor of Pilgrim Slavic Baptist Church, said his grandmother and other women gave food to German soldiers in exchange for the release of men and women about to be executed.

But sometimes, Kaprian said, the soldiers were unwilling to barter. And so when the bullets stopped flying, and the bodies were tossed in shallow graves, the women would search the area for moving soil – a sign of injured survivors.

It is no small irony to Kaprian that when he fled Ukraine in the 1980s to escape the Communist government’s persecution of Christians, he did so posing as a Jewish man.

“Many Christians were able to escape the country thanks to Jewish people,” Kaprian said. The story, he said, was a reminder that “when hard times come, we all become brothers.”

Hundreds of people filled the church in south Spokane on Thursday to hear stories and songs from Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and Jews. The city’s Interfaith Council moved the program to the church after the theft of security cameras from Temple Beth Shalom – the original location.

“We could not feel secure in providing a safe environment for everyone,” said Dennis Twigg, the temple’s vice president. “It is important that we continue to have this, regardless of what incidents do occur.”

The Rev. Martin Wells, bishop of the Eastern Washington-Idaho Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said the crowd “gathered as people of many faiths and none. … This is our community wealth, and it is a force of binding promise.”

Sam Schnall, rabbinical assistant at Temple Beth Shalom, noted that the Spanish, French and English settlers all celebrated different days of thanks and celebration until President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863 officially established Thanksgiving.

“I believe the common thread is a spirit of thanks,” Schnall said.

For Kaprian, the event was a celebration of community, with all its richness and variety.

“Look at how many brothers and sisters we have,” he said. “We all are God’s children.”