How do you process a world in which doing the right thing, the kind thing, opening your doors and offering warmth and tea to someone in need, could result in someone holding a gun to your head and taking you hostage? How do you process a world in which synagogues around the country go through security trainings about evading shooters and deescalating terrorist attacks as a matter of course? A world in which our kids are so accustomed to active shooter drills, and so inured to the possibility of sudden violence, that they take news of this trauma in stride. They are not shocked.
And how do you process a world in which someone could decide to fly across the world to find Jews to use as pawns for his hateful aim? A world in which someone is so stewed in antisemitic tropes that he believes that Jews run the world and would be able to pull some strings to make his hateful wish come true? How do you process a world in which Jews, who constitute less than 2% of the population in this country, are victim to almost 60% of religiously motivated hate crimes, according to the FBI? And how do you process the fact that our FBI, which produced the report on religiously motivated hate crimes, refused to acknowledge that the hostage situation was an act of antisemitism until Thursday, calling it instead a “terrorism-related matter”?
For us, this was not unique. But it was uniquely heartbreaking.