Lisa Turnquist of Louisville, Colorado, lays flowers and a flag at the site of the attack outside the Boulder County Courthouse on June 2 in Boulder, Colorado. Photo by Chet Strange/Getty Images
When I started working as a rabbi at my current congregation just outside of Boulder, Colorado, six years ago, I saw the job as a part-time opportunity to wind down before retirement. But as the old Yiddish proverb goes, “mann macht un Gott lacht,” or “man plans and God laughs.”
Almost as soon as I started, the COVID pandemic broke out. Next came devastating wildfires, which destroyed the homes and changed the lives of many of our families in December 2021. Then the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war.
So much for a quiet job before retirement. But none of the many challenges that have touched my community during my tenure prepared us for what we have faced most recently: an increase in human hatred that reached a new height with Sunday’s Molotov cocktail attack on demonstrators in Boulder raising awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza.
I am a second-generation Holocaust survivor. My mother escaped the Nazis and their collaborators in Poland and Hungary. I grew up hearing snippets of her tale. As a child obsessed with adventures, I was most intrigued by how she and a friend found shelter along their route by hiding inside a locomotive, having bribed the engineer sufficiently not to give them away.
But behind the adventure I clung to was a legacy of violence and terror. She grew up threatened by other children, who made throat-slashing motions when they saw she was Jewish. She escaped from the line formation boarding an Auschwitz-bound train, and, three times, from Nazi jails. In the end, she found a relative who worked for the British, who prepared entrance papers for her into the land that the world at the time called Palestine.
For years I had recurrent nightmares of my own escape — as real to me as if they had actually happened.
Most every Jew I know has a story like this. Now, for the first time in my life, that legacy of fear doesn’t just feel like a relic from the past, but also, tragically, like an emblem of our imperiled present.
Boulder is a mere half hour drive from my synagogue. Sunday’s attack, by an Egyptian national who told authorities he aimed to “kill all Zionist people,” left my congregation and community grieving, terrified and full of rage. Yes, rage. Because despite the messages of support and condolence that arrived from concerned neighbors, law-enforcement agencies and government officials who assured us that there was no room for hate in our state, we now know better.
This was the second time in two weeks, after a shooting that killed two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., that violent acts struck the heart of the Jewish community in the United States.
It didn’t matter to that shooter that his victims’ shared passion was bringing people together, and that the focus of their work was building bridges between Israelis and Palestinians. He attacked outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, saying “I did it for Palestine.”
And it didn’t matter to Sunday’s attacker that his victims were taking part in a peaceful demonstration, held with the purpose of raising awareness on behalf of the remaining hostages still languishing in Gaza tunnels, more than 600 days after they were kidnapped on Oct. 7. He never asked them for their political opinions. That didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was that the group expressed some sympathy for some Israelis, somewhere.
This blind hatred for any person or entity that appears to be connected to Israel in any way is the latest incarnation of the world’s most ancient prejudice — antisemitism.
The stereotypes deeply embedded in that hatred — that all Jews operate as a single, obscure entity; that Jews control world governments; that Jews are greedy, rich and oppressive to the poor — have been entrenched in literature, art, music and, yes, other religions’ scripture for centuries. Passed through the generations, they have become so set in people’s minds that simple codewords or images resurrect them, with predictably violent results.
We are seeing, now, that a new set of ideas are resurrecting them. Ideas summoned by phrases like “globalize the Intifada” — a call that pro-Palestinian protesters may insist only reflects their dream of a free Palestine, but which actually invokes an extraordinarily violent history, in which a series of horrific terror attacks waged by Palestinians resulted in the deaths of about 1,400 Israelis.
Yes, many of the people who hear those words won’t be prompted to antisemitic violence. But Sunday’s attack on a community so close to my home shows that we cannot assume that the worst thing American Jews will experience as a result of this swell of anti-Israel rhetoric is exposure to uncomfortable phrases.
What does this mean for us, if the state of affairs in the Middle East continues to be unsettled for the next five, 10, or 50 years — as it has been unsettled since Israel’s founding?
Some answers can be found in Jewish culture and tradition, which teaches us that revenge is not the answer, no matter how rage-filled or grief-stricken we might feel. The Torah teaches, “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” and that has always been one of the most prominent values Jews have upheld. We must maintain our faith in our justice system, despite its flaws, and rely on it to keep us safe.
We must build strong relationships with the larger communities around us — neighbors, government officials, churches and Islamic centers. These organizations have shown up for my community after Sunday’s terror, and we must respond to them with equal kindness and appreciation. Strong, pluralistic ties make us all safer.
We must continue to demand political support from all wings of government. Our leaders must make clear, without exception, that antisemitism in words or deeds cannot be and may not be tolerated or excused.
We don’t have to agree with Israel’s politics; Israelis themselves are increasingly split on just about every issue. But we must never give in to calls for Israel’s destruction. While showing compassion for the pain and suffering of all the innocents who have become casualties of this painful war, we also need to stand for Israel’s right to defend itself, and to deny any and all who would delegitimize our identity, our existence, and our connection to our homeland.
Many of us are, at this moment, feeling dismayed and afraid. Some of us are considering canceling events, staying away from public demonstrations, or hiding symbols of our Jewish identity — our Stars of David and yarmulkes. Yet, despite the acts of hatred and violence, we must not give in in these ways to those who would love nothing better than to see us disappear. Our confidence in our Jewish identity is our strength.
These principles, I hope, can help guide us through this uncertain era. Like so many of us, I have been taken by surprise at how quickly the safe status of Jews in the U.S. appears to have changed. June 1, the day of the Boulder attack, marked the first day of the last month before my retirement. For whatever reason, I thought it might be a smooth transition. But—how does that Yiddish proverb go again?
