A Year Later: Reflecting on the Chabad of Poway shooting

A year ago today, a gunman opened fire in a synagogue in San Diego County, killing one person and injuring many others.

That morning, I was having breakfast with one of my childhood friends from synagogue. As reports of gunfire spread on social media, I remember getting texts and calls from all over the country — there was a shooting at a synagogue in San Diego, was I okay, how was my family?

The pit in my stomach as I frantically turned on the news to find out what was going on.

And while the Chabad of Poway was not my synagogue, it very well could have been. And while my family was okay, someone’s wasn’t.

I remember watching in horror as we learned 11 people were killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Fifty-one killed in a mosque in New Zealand months later.

After each one we asked, “When will it be enough? What will make it stop?”

Students tell me all the time that they wonder not if, but when, a mass shooting will come to their school. But despite growing up with mass shootings in the news and going to synagogue and the JCC with ever-increasing security, I continued to believe it would never happen here.

And then it did. Arson at a mosque in Escondido. A month later, a shooting at a synagogue in Poway.

The fear. The feeling of insecurity. Wondering if there is anywhere that you can be safe.

There are those who want to pretend anti-semitism is a relic of the past, but not only does it still exist — there’s evidence that it’s on the rise, around the globe and right here in San Diego. And while Donald Trump did not create anti-semitism, he has certainly given it a platform. The “good people” (in his view) in Charlottesville were chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Those calling coronavirus a hoax marched with signs depicting a rat marked with the Star of David.

I’ve experienced anti-semitism my whole life. Jokes about my big nose, my frizzy hair. Being called a kike while waiting to get a drink at a bar. Kids at school who thought saying “being Jewed” when someone was being cheap was funny. And in the past year since the shooting in Poway, we’ve only seen a continued rise in anti-semitism around the country and around the world.

I don’t point these out to suggest that I overcame great adversity due to my heritage — I was blessed to grow up with so many advantages, which is why I’ve dedicated my career to creating opportunities for those who did not. I mention them because even in polite company (not just the bowels of the Internet), you still routinely hear inferences about Jews and money and control — sometimes in jest, sometimes not — but all serving to keep generations-old anti-semitic tropes alive and well.

The Monday after the shooting, I attended the memorial service for Lori Kaye (z’’l) at Chabad of Poway, then drove to the JCC where I was scheduled to speak to kids in the theater program about what I had learned at the JCC and how it prepared me for a life of service. The kids were warm and polite, but there was a heavy feeling in the room. We all know from an early age what it means to grow up Jewish, but we had never experienced such a violent strain of anti-semitism so close to home.

We need a reckoning of the epidemic of gun violence and white nationalism in this country. Of the pathways that young men take through misogyny and hatred that leads them to mass shootings. We need leaders who will call it out. Leaders who will unite us, instead of divide us. Who recognize that we are all linked, and that if one of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed. A new generation of leaders who aren’t afraid to do what needs to be done.

A year ago tonight, my community gathered at a nearby church. We prayed, and we cried.

We promised that we wouldn’t give into fear. That we wouldn’t let leaders divide us. Linking arms, we found hope. Hope for a better tomorrow, and hope that together, we can overcome hatred and white nationalism. Fear is easy, hope is hard. But we must fight for hope. We must do better. And we will.

“May the source of strength, who blessed the ones before us, help us find the courage, to make our lives a blessing, and let us say, Amen.”