Jewish residents in Detroit worry war in Israel could cause damage at home

Jordan Acker has been involved in many conversations between Detroit’s Jewish and Arab communities over the years. As a self-described liberal, center-left and a Zionist who is openly supportive of a Palestinian state that lives in “dignity and peace,” he has participated in what he sees as productive, yet challenging, conversations.

“Having those different conversations without turning people away is really, really important,” Acker said.  

But since the Israel-Hamas war began last month, Acker, who is Jewish, and others in his community have worried about being able to keep dialogue open — and relationships intact. 

As Jewish residents of southeast Michigan see friends and neighbors fearful of Islamophobia and violence against the Arab community, they also worry about antisemitic backlash and having their voices diluted in a complex, nuanced conversation.

“There’s been a lot of work that has been done over the past 10 to 15 years between the Jewish and Muslim communities, and a lot of very positive things have happened,” said Alicia Chandler, co-founder of Nu?Detroit, a digital platform for Jewish residents in the region. “But moments in war always create tension in those relationships, and you hope that the relationships you’ve built up are strong enough to get through that.”

Chandler, an instructor and doctoral student at Detroit’s Wayne State University, said there’s a high degree of fear, tension and anxiety right now.  Metro Detroit’s Jewish community has been thrust into the international spotlight in recent weeks, as a handful of unsettling events – not all related to the Israel-Hamas war – have   stoked concerns about antisemitism and violence. 

Acker notes that in recent weeks, his synagogue has beefed up security amid concerns of safety. “We have taken for granted how great it has been to be Jewish in the United States, and I think there’s a lot of Jews who are waking up in the last couple weeks saying, ‘Who are we? Am I safe here? Do I belong here?’” he said. 

In Detroit, the murder of Samantha Woll, president of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, sent shockwaves through the community. Woll’s body was found outside her downtown Detroit condo days after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, prompting speculation that she was the victim of a faith-related attack and spurring international headlines. Weeks later, Detroit police said it had no reason to believe Woll’s murder was a hate crime. An unnamed suspect was questioned and released.

WATCH: Jewish Americans share views on conflict as Israel-Hamas war continues

Earlier this month, a man was arrested for wielding a pellet gun outside the Jewish Federation of Detroit headquarters; officials said the man was having a mental health episode, did not believe he tried to commit a targeted attack. 

Some Jewish community members were also taken aback when, during one of the state’s most popular annual traditions, the University of Michigan-Michigan State University football game in October, the stadium screens displayed a trivia question with Adolf Hitler’s face, asking attendees to guess the country in which the Nazi dictator was born. Michigan State apologized and blamed a third-party source that supplied the questions.

When hundreds of Jewish Michiganders flew to Washington to attend the March for Israel, they said they were stranded by a bus company at Dulles International Airport.

“From what I’ve heard, the drivers learned about their assignment, and decided not to show up to work,” said Democratic Michigan Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is one of three Jewish legislators in the state and was in the group who attempted to attend the rally, noting, “we’re still trying to figure out what exactly happened.” 

Woll’s death was especially stinging, because, as Acker and several mourners noted, she was an emerging leader in Jewish circles and was crucial to building Muslim-Jewish alliances across Metro Detroit. Those could fracture without her presence, said Acker, who noted that he had known Woll since their teens

“I’ve worked in and out of public policy for 20 years … and nobody knows the idea of moving from one community to another like she did,” he said. “That’s what we really need right now, is for people to feel like they’re heard.”

Police tape blocks access near the scene where Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue president Samantha Woll, was found dead in Detroit,. The politically active leader of a Detroit synagogue was found dead with stab wounds outside her home on October 21. The killing came at a moment of escalating tensions in Jewish and Muslim communities across the United States over the Israel-Hamas war that has taken thousands of lives. (Photo by Sarah Rice/AFP via Getty Images)

More than 70,000 residents who identify as Jewish share the region with one of the largest concentrations of Arab American and Muslim people in the U.S., and the largest Black-majority city in the country. Cross-cultural alliances between Jewish residents in the area and other communities have existed for generations, thanks to community-building efforts across faith, race and ethnicity, according to community leaders. 

“There are two communities who are in pain right now,” Moss said. “Jewish pain and Palestinian pain do not negate each other.”

Continuing the conversations

Today, much of Detroit’s Jewish community is concentrated in Oakland County, which borders the city of Detroit to the northwest. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, members of the community migrated to Oakland County suburbs after first settling on Detroit’s west and near-east sides, having built temples and synagogues in the city that now largely house places of worship for Black Christian congregants. 

Jewish migration to the Detroit area continued well into the 1980s and 1990s, with Soviet Jews arriving in significant numbers from Eastern Europe in the decades after World War II. More recently, according to Rabbi Asher Lopatin, executive director of the Oakland County-based Jewish Community Relations Council, Orthodox Jews have moved to the area from New Jersey because of the strong number of institutions that serve that sect; “We’re seeing the growth in the younger population especially,” he told the NewsHour.

WATCH: How Muslim and Jewish faith groups are coming together during Israel-Hamas war

Many residents say they feel a strong tie to Israel. According to a 2018 survey of local Jewish community members from the Jewish Federation of Detroit, more than half of households had a family member who had visited Israel, and half of respondents said they were “very emotionally attached” to the country.

“I can tell you, from a perspective from someone who is Jewish and is observant, we are inextricably tied to Israel and it is crucial to our identity,” Moss said. 

All of this has helped instill the feeling that Metro Detroit is “a safe space” for Jewish people, Moss said.

Moss is a native of Southfield, a majority African American city with a significant Jewish population. He represents that suburb, along with parts of Detroit and some other Oakland County suburbs. Diversity in these suburbs is key to why some residents, regardless of faith, have a greater awareness of the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict – but also, why there are starkly different views. 

Jordan Acker, who is on the University of Michigan Board of Regents, is seen during a meeting. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

On the University of Michigan’s campus in Ann Arbor, home to roughly 6,500 Jewish students and often rated in national surveys as a top destination for Jewish students, Acker, who serves on the University of Michigan board of regents,  says conversations around the long-term Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been tough, as always. But it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be happening.

“Campuses are places for free speech, and that should not stop at the exchange of free ideas — even when we would find them repulsive,” he said.

Chandler often looks to children when thinking about these conversations. 

“I’ve heard reports coming out of the schools of students saying horrific things to some of the Jewish kids there, I’ve heard things from Muslim parents of students saying horrific things to some of the Muslim students there,” Chandler said. “The next generation will solve the problems, but sometimes the next generation, in my view, often repeats from the previous generation.  

“I think we all like for our children to live in a better world than the world they were given, but I do think it’s optimistic to just expect children to know how to handle these types of conflicts when adults can’t model them for them,” Chandler added.

READ MORE: Muslim and Jewish civil rights group report increase in harassment during Israel-Hamas war

Lopatin has also heard similar concerns, and worries about how that might impact future discourse.

“There are ways to show how to express yourself without silencing the other,” Lopatin says, but “the schools aren’t doing a good job of teaching you that.”

In his capacity as a university regent, Acker has received email inquiries from both Jewish and Muslim parents concerned about safety on campus.

“One of the things we’re missing, wherever you fall on this issue, is what I would call an empathy gap,” Acker says. “Students on campus need to be showing each other empathy, and hearing what their fellow students are saying.”

Personally, he said, some of his own relationships with friends and colleagues who are not Jewish were rocky in the beginning of the war, and there was little conversation at all.  He and people in his circle are just now coming to a place “to not inflame, to not scapegoat, to not lie, and look at each other in the eye,” he said. 

“People are starting to retreat from their corners,” Acker said. “We saw that it was really damaging to friendships in the short term, and we finally got into the place where we can start to have those conversations in the first place.”

Politics and social media collide

Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, the state’s first openly gay state senator, speaks to the media on Feb. 9, 2023, in Lansing, Mich. (Kevin Fowler/AP Images for Human Rights Campaign via AP, File)

Moss, who is one of Michigan’s only openly gay lawmakers, said that he has frequently received support from his colleagues on LGBTQIA+ issues. Lately, however, he said he is feeling alienated and drowned out, pointing to comments from Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress and Moss’ own representative.   

”It’s just been really challenging to be a Jewish liberal in this moment,” Moss said.

Moss and other state Democrats have been critical of Tlaib’s commentary on the Israel-Hamas war, using X, formerly known as Twitter, to push back on her positions, like saying that the congresswoman was incorrect about Israel bombing a hospital in Gaza (“that tweet is still up,” he noted) and what he says is a failure to condemn Hamas, which in the public eye is being conflated as an anti-Israel stance.

“It’s very important that there are Democrats in our district that have a full scope of voices reflecting on what is going on in the Middle East,” Moss said. “It is not just one person’s opinion that may or may not be grounded in fact, but there are other viewpoints within our own party on that, and they can do their own analysis.

“I am not targeting the congresswoman because of her background, I am butting heads with her because she is literally my voice in Congress and I don’t agree with her all the time,” Moss added.

READ MORE: Over 20 Democrats join Republicans in House censure vote of Rashida Tlaib over Israel-Hamas war comments

Divisions among elected officials concern some Democratic residents here who warn there is a risk of losing future elections to Republicans. Oakland County was a reliably Republican stronghold until the 2020 election, when the county voted for President Joe Biden.  

Starting during former President Donald Trump’s presidency,  Chandler noted, there was a “rise in white nationalism,” across the country but also in Michigan. According to data from the ADL, the state ranked fourth in white supremacist propaganda — promoting antisemitic, racist and anti-LGBTQ+ views — in 2022. Since the outset of the Israel-Hamas war, however, “it feels like this potential rise of hatred” is looming from other groups, too.

She said that Jews who wear religious attire on a daily basis may be more visible and vulnerable to hatred.

“Often a lot of that antisemitism is targeted at Orthodox Jews because they are visibly Jewish. It’s unfortunate that anyone of any race or any religion has to bear hatred, but within our communities it does tend to fall on those with certain religious beliefs who can be identified as Muslim or Jewish,” Chandler said. 

Jewish residents said they are also fighting the spread of misinformation on platforms like X and TikTok, the latter of which especially vexes Moss. As he arrived back from Washington, he began hearing chatter of a years-old manifesto from Osama bin Laden circulating on TikTok, in which the assassinated al-Qaida chief centered U.S. support of Israel as a primary reason for the 9/11 attacks. TikTok subsequently took action to remove videos related to the topic. 

“That is what sets narratives and can contribute to a rise in antisemitism and a rise in Jewish bigotry,” he said.

Social media, Chandler said, has also contributed to an either/or situation about the war itself. “It makes it easy to oversimplify or demonize people,” Chandler said. 

But keeping everyone’s humanity at the center of the conversation is key to moving forward, Chandler said. 

“The moments like the one we’re in this month feel harder because it feels like the world is pitting us against each other,” Chandler added. “Tempers rise, feelings get hurt easily – it’s more challenging in these times.”