I stood yesterday morning at Haverstraw Bay Park at the Rockland County 9/11 memorial ceremony, as I have every year since my tenure here began. I looked around at the crowd, scanned the river, the trees, and what I could see of the parking lot.
The fact that there were over 30 uniformed law enforcement officers present, and a police boat on the water - all of whom I am incredibly grateful to for their service and sacrifice - didn’t change my habits. As I’ve told my staff, I have been scanning perimeters and rooftops since the first rally I organized almost 40 years ago.
I know that like thousands of my colleagues across the country and the world who publicly represent the Jewish community - as well as each one of you who wears a Kippah, a star of David, who walks into a synagogue or a Jewish school or otherwise identifies Jewishly and publicly - my personal security depends on my situational awareness and the steps taken to safeguard myself, my staff, my family and my environment. I don’t have any illusions left, if I ever did. Vigilance is what our times demand, and it is the cost of enabling a proud Jewish life of values, connection, learning and generosity.
What I have come to understand, to my grave concern and confirming my growing awareness, is that while I had no illusions, I did, like many of us, make some assumptions. In my experience, growing up, and as an adult through the 80’s, 90’s and since 9/11, the proximate threats of deadly violence that I perceived were predominantly from the far right neo-Nazis and white nationalists, or from Islamic fundamentalists like Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hezbollah and Hamas.
As if to confirm this perception, those who moderately but civilly opposed these extremes from the left made the case that the righteous and ecumenical nature of their causes, beliefs, and alliances made it extremely unlikely that their own far left flank would be a source of violence in any consistent manner. Sharing many, though not all of these values, I was inclined to my own confirmation bias, and for a time, it seemed a reasonable assumption to make.
Long before October 7th that assumption began to slowly crumble. I didn’t want to see it, and the steps I took in any case to secure myself and my community would effectively cover all bases. But over time it has become increasingly clear. Violence comes from all sides and at all sides. Justification of violence in the name of “legitimacy” or “resistance”, opposing “genocide”’ or “replacement”, sharing, platforming, or broadcasting false, libelous narratives, celebrating or justifying attenpted murder or murder, whether it is of a liberal congresswoman’s family in Minnesota, a mainstream Democratic Jewish governor in Pennsylvania, embassy staffers in Washington, a group of seniors in Boulder, a Healthcare CEO in New York, or a conservative commentator in Utah, it’s dangerous, disgusting, and it drives further violence.
Almost 2 years have passed since so many illusions about security, allyship, upstanders and solidarity were shattered. There are still some valued, cherished voices who stand out, and who, like Abraham our forefather, make the case for finding the righteous among a city of evildoers. These are some of the best people I know. But I’ve been done with assumptions for many, many months now.
The threats to our community have been described as a horseshoe whose ends bend towards each other. The violence for some time now comes from both ends of the political spectrum, and from religious fundamentalists. We can not, we will not let that horseshoe turn into a noose.
What recent events make clear is that the same forces that threaten us, can threaten everyone. When I called a local Catholic leader in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis at a Catholic school chapel by a radicalized and disturbed young person, I told him that we know the loss of children to violence and terror, and we stand in solidarity. And when I spoke at a vigil a few years ago for the African American community, honoring the memory of the victims of the grocery store mass shooting in Buffalo, I shared that we know the experience of being singled out for terror, even in a grocery store.
It has to stop. We have to do our part to make it so. We can and must engage in respectful dialogue with those who we may disagree with but who don’t repeat, condone, or platform libelous, false, and ultimately violent narratives. We must shut down those who we identify with who allow violent rhetoric to prevail, or, even worse, engage in it themselves.
At the same time, we can operate under no illusions or assumptions. We at the Federation, uniquely positioned in the community, have worked hard to prepare our institutions and our people for these possibilities. We’ve trained over 2000 volunteers since 2022. We’ve conducted over 100 vulnerability assessments, supporting millions of dollars in Non-Profit Security Grants from State and Federal sources. We’re working with over 250 institutions within and beyond our community. We were one of the first small communities to do so, but almost every Jewish community in the country is doing the same.
It falls to us to make it crystal clear. No illusions. No assumptions. No place for hate, and no letting up on the steps we take to safeguard ourselves, our spaces, and our loved ones.