On March 12, my 4-year-old daughter and her little brother, who was 2 at the time, were at their preschool at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., when a terrorist drove a pickup truck loaded with 35 gallons of gasoline and thousands of dollars’ worth of commercial-grade fireworks through the main entrance.
As he drove down the hallway, he fired an AR-15-style rifle into the classrooms. He struck the head of security with his truck, eventually getting the vehicle stuck a mere 30 feet from where a group of children was sheltered in the gym area. The security team engaged him as the truck caught fire and thick black smoke poured through the building.
The terrorist did not survive. Every one of the 140 children and staff did, but they will never be the same.
A question for JD Vance
A few weeks ago, I told my story at a town hall with Vice President JD Vance. I then asked him a simple question: Would he confront people in his own coalition, people like Tucker Carlson, who keep spreading antisemitic rhetoric?
He firmly denounced antisemitism, but he could not fully answer the question. He could not commit to confronting hate when it comes from his friends and his own party.
Afterward, I made the mistake of reading the comments under the video. One person commented, “It was too bad this guy’s kids survived.”
That hate did not stay in the comments section. It has seeped into our schools, our workplaces, our group chats and our politics. This midterm season, especially here in Michigan, has been one of the ugliest I can remember.
I was raised a Democrat. My mother protested the Vietnam War in Ann Arbor while she was in college. We held multicultural dinners around Hanukkah and Kwanzaa with her co-workers in the Detroit school district. We volunteered with kids with disabilities from all walks of life. I still believe in the values that drew me to the party.
But for the first time in my life, I do not feel at home there. I feel like I am being asked to choose between my Jewish identity and my liberal values, as if caring about my children’s safety and caring about justice for others cannot live in the same heart.
They can. In mine, they always have.
Holding two truths at once
Too many people have forgotten how to listen to one another. How to disagree without dehumanizing. How to argue about a war without reaching for the kind of antisemitic rhetoric that handed the man who drove into my children’s school his justification.
Whatever happened to nuance? To embracing the complexity of a heartbreaking situation? To holding two truths at once?
Since so many have forgotten how, let me hold two.
The Oct. 7 massacre, in which more than 1,200 people were brutally murdered, was an atrocity, and the surge of antisemitism that followed is unacceptable. That is true.
The suffering in Gaza that followed the Hamas-led attack is unbearably heartbreaking to witness. That is also true.
I can say both in the same breath. So can you.
Demand more from our leaders
We must also demand more of our leaders on both sides of the aisle. At a recent town hall at the University of Michigan, an Iranian student told Abdul El-Sayed how the regime had harmed his family and asked whether El-Sayed would denounce the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
It should have been the easiest answer of the night: Criticize the war and condemn a terrorist regime. Like the vice president, El-Sayed could not bring himself to do it, because it may have cost him something more important than the truth—political points with his base.
Condemning hate should never depend on which side the hater is on. Failing to condemn hate should never be a foundation on which to build.
Now, the world has moved on from that horrible attack on my children. The cameras left West Bloomfield almost as quickly as they came. The story slid off the front page, then out of the conversation.
But we are still here. Our children are still here.
And unfortunately, so is the hate.
Whoever is elected on Nov. 3, we must do better.