DENVER — “I’m scared.”
Those were two of the first words I heard come out of my loved one's mouth when I got home from work yesterday.
The hug I offered felt different. It was longer, tighter, and I could feel the weight of my loved one's pain as two silent tears rolled down her cheek.
We looked at each other and I said, “It’s ok. I’m scared, too.”
I never thought I’d say those words. I grew up in the northeast, went to Syracuse University — at the time, one of the most Jewish universities in the country. I never felt like a target. Frankly, I never felt anything other than completely accepted.
But that was before Oct. 7, 2023 — before curiosity started to feel like skepticism and conversations started to feel like interrogations. That was before my last name started to matter.
It’s not a hunch to say this feeling is shared by most Jews in our country. It’s a fact. And it’s discussed every time a Holocaust survivor and others are attacked with Molotov cocktails, or shot outside a Jewish museum, or made the breathing symbol of the word genocide.
My mom sent a text to my family group chat the day of the Boulder attack.
It read, “I keep thinking about Bubbe’s vigilance and how she was simply out of touch with the ‘new’ world. It is a humbling lesson to my younger self that I understood so little and was dismissive of the wisdom of my elder.”
She’s talking about my late grandmother who spent her life warning us of the hate harbored against Jews.
We’d laugh because we thought she was simply — as my mom put it — out of touch.
We thought antisemitism was fringe. We thought it was outdated. We didn’t know it was always bubbling under the surface, waiting to rear its head, as it has for centuries.
If she was alive today, I’d tell my dear Bubbe we were out of touch.
Accepting this is where we are in America is humbling. It’s upsetting. It’s infuriating.
And this will make some people angry, but I do not care what your feelings are about the Middle East. In the context of Sunday's Boulder attack, they do not matter.
You’re entitled to those feelings — whatever they may be. But you aren’t entitled to use them as justification for antisemitic cowardice disguised as activism.
So, check in on your Jewish friends — even if you disagree with them on the Middle East — because I guarantee it will make them feel loved, valued, and maybe even a little safer.
