Just three weeks ago, Butler County’s only synagogue swelled to contain what was probably its largest gathering ever.

The occasion was a memorial vigil for 11 people shot dead five days earlier by a madman inside the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

That night, a diverse and distracted community became one people. Faith, ethnicity and politics took a back seat for once and a village found solace in the company of each other.

What happens next? — or rather, what must not happen next — in our community?

Look what’s happening elsewhere. This week, two Jewish police officers in Philadelphia filed a federal lawsuit against the police department, claiming a pattern of anti-Semitism by colleagues in their Franklintown-based district.

Officers Stacey Gonzalez, a 21-year department veteran, and Pavel Reznik, a Russian immigrant with 12 years on the force, allege racist comments and anti-Semitic acts by a supervisor, Cpl. Karen Church, and more than 10 fellow officers turned the precinct into an unsafe working environment and violated their civil rights.

They claim the supervisor sanctioned an anti-Semitic environment and told them, “Why doesn’t the United States just take a missile and blow up Israel?” And on Reznik’s patrol car, he found etched in dirt a Star of David and the words “Hebrew Hammer.”

The lawsuit alleges the locker next to Reznik’s was defaced with the SS symbol and the German word “Totenkopf” (“death’s head”), an apparent reference to a Nazi battalion that guarded death camps during World War II.

Officers also allegedly had anti-Semitic conversations. One officer said, “Hey look, there is some matzoh on the table!” Another officer responded, “Don’t be a racist.” “It’s not racism,” a third officer responded,” it’s anti-Semitism.”

Reznik was routinely denied time off for Jewish holidays, the lawsuit says.

In Durham, N.C., vandals painted a swastika overnight Sunday on a mural at the edge of Duke University’s freshman campus. The mural had been created to honor the same synagogue shooting victims that we honored here in Butler.

The mural initially included the names of the 11 people killed by Robert Bowers in Pittsburgh three weeks ago. Next to the names was a golden Star of David and the phrase “We must build this world from love” in both English and Hebrew.

It’s not the first swastika to pop up this month on the campus. Two weeks earlier, a pumpkin with the crooked cross carved in it was found near the freshman housing; the same night, students came across a flyer with the words “It’s OK to be white.”

About a month ago, Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, speaking in Detroit, compared Jews to termites, joking that he was not an anti-Semite but rather an “anti-Termite.”

On Nov. 1 — All Saints’ Day on the Christian liturgical calendar — we stood as a community and condemned anti-Semitism. We stood in solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters against senseless hatred and bigotry.

We must continue to hold this posture — remembering, of course, that defense of a neighbor puts a burden on all of us. It’s a burden well worth accepting.