Here’s part of what I wrote a week ago following the first weekend of the American-Israeli attack on Iran, weighing the potential pros and cons of the war from a Jewish perspective:
Paradoxically, while Israel has vanquished all its regional foes, Jews are less safe anywhere in the world than at any time in my lifetime. I do not make that statement lightly. True, I did not live during the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Black Death or the Inquisition. But in my lifetime I can not think of a time when, as a Jew, I felt less safe - anywhere.
I refrained from advising people to stay away from synagogues, because it was Purim and in any event, I just can’t bring myself to do that. It would be giving in to the haters.
Unfortunately, I may need to revise that comment, given what’s happened over the past week, culminating in the terror attack on a Detroit-area synagogue on Thursday afternoon.
Thanks to heroic security guards, the attacker might have been the only one killed. We’ll see. But the fact that every synagogue needs a security guard these days is both obvious and sickening.
CNN is now reporting that a large amount if explosives - described by one source as mortars - were found in the back of the suspect’s vehicle. An early childhood program was in session. A twofer for haters: Jews and kids. This could have been catastrophic.
Just since the beginning of the war, there have been three shooting attacks on synagogues in Toronto alone.
At this point, it isn’t wise to make assumptions about who attacked the synagogue in Detroit and whether there is a direct connection to the war or Iran’s possible activation of terror cells in the US.
But these two things I can say for sure.
Since the beginning of 2025, 1 in 3 American Jews has reported being targeted for antisemitism, according to the American Jewish Committee.
Since the beginning of 2025, Donald Trump has been president.
While Jews already felt unsafe during the prior administration, particularly on college campuses, there was no let-up last year, even as the Gaza War ceasefire took hold and tensions somewhat reduced.
The Times of Israel reports that respondents to the AJC survey were asked if they felt “less safe” as a result of several high-profile antisemitic attacks in 2025, including the arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home in April; the deadly shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, in May; and the firebombing of a demonstration for the Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, in June. About a quarter of respondents said the attacks had made them feel “a great deal” less safe, while 31% reported feeling “a fair amount” less safe and 32% responded that they felt “a little” less safe.
How do you think those respondents feel today? The number declaring “less safe” has certainly risen from that “golden age” of 2025, just in the past hour.
Oren Siegal, the senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence at the Anti-Defamation League, told The New York Times, “The operations against Iran have triggered almost an immediate surge in antisemitism and conspiratorial commentary on various social media platforms, and across the ideological spectrum.”
Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal commented on X:
I don’t think this Detroit terrorist necessarily was a Candace Owens fan, or someone who shouted “Globalize the Intifada” on a collage campus, or someone who might have been more of a follower of, say, the Ayatollah(s) Khomeini. You can pick your poison. Temple Israel just conducted an active shooting drill a few weeks ago and for good reason.
If you read Michelle Goldberg’s current NYT portrait of James Fishback, the openly and proudly antisemitic Gen. Z MAGA candidate for governor of Florida, it is easier to understand how this sickness has metastasized through all segments of our body politic.
She writes of a Fishback campaign speech where he referenced about a half dozen antisemitic conspiracy theories in just a couple of lines:
As he often does, he drew elliptical links between Israel and the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal. Someone recently asked him, he said, if he thinks Israel has a right to exist. “I believe that American citizens have a right to exist in their country without being replaced, without being trafficked, and without being sent to war and distorted and converted by foreign powers,” he said.
When Marco Rubio all but admitted last week that Israel had dragged America to war with Iran — before trying to walk his comments back — it was a gift to Fishback, who presented it as confirmation of his assertions about malign Israeli influence. Unlike most Republicans, he isn’t shy about criticizing Trump for starting the war, demanding that he publicly explain his objectives and plans for getting out. But Fishback puts most of the blame for the conflict on Israel.
Israel’s leader has not yet chimed in with “thoughts and prayers.” Netanyahu just had a news conference where Michigan apparently was not mentioned - nor did he show much empathy for his own people, who are going through hell.1 I wonder whether he, and Trump, thought about the impact of their holy war on innocent bystanders like school children. I wonder whether the terrorist in Michigan was inspired by the massacre of schoolgirls in Iran, which a Pentagon probe indicates was likely perpetrated by the US, to attack a synagogue at a time when it was filled with kids.
I wonder whether the two leaders thought about the economic implications, the human costs, in Israel and across the region and the world and the cost to the families of US servicemen who have died or been injured thus far.
When I entered the rabbinate, I hoped to help invigorate the Jewish people. I did not sign up to be collateral damage in an endless war devoid of clear, achievable goals and the means to achieve them. But that’s where things stand today, especially for the Jews of Michigan and Toronto.
To be clear, no one should be blamed for acts of antisemitism other than the antisemites themselves.
But it would help to have leaders, in the US and in Israel, who possess a sense of responsibility and empathy - and a little wisdom wouldn’t hurt too.
An Israeli poll on Channel 12 this evening shows that Netanyahu’s coalition remains behind as elections approach, and the Trump administration, whose popularity has also decreased, remains clueless and, to all accounts, unprepared.
How were they not prepared for Iran to block the Straits of Hormuz?
I still hope - really, really hope - this war can have a positive resolution, but the strategy of decapitating leaders and praying for a street-led revolution is not showing signs of working out. Bibi is still going for the “total victory” that has eluded him in Gaza and Lebanon. Netanyahu just said at his news conference that he doesn’t know if Iranians will oust the regime, saying, “You can lead someone to water, you can’t make them drink.”
This is an Iranian people that took to the streets in January by the millions and were butchered by the tens of thousands. And now they’re being scolded by the guys who seem to have totally botched their liberation. I hope I’m wrong - but for anyone still believing this is going well, I have a “Mission Accomplished” banner to sell you. If this war’s new name is “Operation Lead them to Water,” we’re all in big trouble.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reports that, today - TODAY - President Trump endorsed Brandon Herrera, the de facto GOP nominee for a Texas congressional district whose past comments about Nazis have drawn scrutiny.
She owns a copy of Mein Kampf - a book that would have felt quite comfortable on Trump’s night table, next to Hitler’s speeches.
That ought to help the moms and dads of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield feel even more secure about the safety of their kids.
I say it again. Jews are less safe than at any time in my lifetime, almost everywhere in the world.
Especially here.
And the rest of America is not too far behind.
Tweet from the opposition leader:
