Our children's schools

A note from a Jewish preschool mom

My toddler know the names of the armed men who guard his Jewish preschool. He reaches up his tiny hand for a fist bump when he passes them on his way inside the synagogue every morning before we go through the metal detector that always beeps for him. We call it his lunchbox detector and it makes him chuckle. “Don’t worry!” he says to the giant mechanical arch, with mock annoyance, “It’s just my lunch!”

The guards, the metal detector, the armored door, are all signifiers of safety, and the reminder of the threat.

I send my children to Jewish preschool for the same reason I attended Jewish preschool in the same city. Because I am Jewish. Because in my 30s I remember the prayers and stories I learned when I was three. Because we are a rounding error in the global population and our children are the hope that anyone will sing the prayers and remember the stories and carry them through a world that they make kind and is kinder to them.

The hope feels like wide-eyes idiocy this morning.

When the children in West Bloomfield, Michigan were rushed out of their Jewish preschool yesterday, some holding hands, some looking warily over their tiny shoulders, I saw my child. It bears saying: When I saw the starving children in Gaza lining up for food, I also saw my child. My hands shook with rage and fear for their mothers as I wrote so many words advocating for ceasefire in the name of all children. When I saw the little boy in Iran who would be decimated by American missiles last week, I saw my son. That is how motherhood works. That is how Jewish motherhood works. It is primal beyond empathy. The children are ours. The children are the light, and it is our job to make that light eternal.

The children in West Bloomfield go to exactly the same type of school as my son. My son in his green puffer jacket and orange velcro sneakers he puts on all by himself. My son who walks into that building and fist-bumps the security guard and giggles when his bento box sets off the metal detector. He does not know the metal detector is looking for weapons to kill him for being Jewish. He does not know the guard is ready to exchange gunfire outside a place of worship because someone might kill him for protecting Jewish children. He does not know any of this, because I know this and my job is to guard him from the fear I carry. When I watched him bop through the doors this morning, I saw the grainy news footage of the children in Michigan fleeing the school in their tiny sneakers, holding hands, moving quickly so they would not be killed.

And I thought about the comments under the video of the footage. The comments were cheering the killer, excusing the killer, explaining the killer, mocking the number of police cars, mocking the children, calling it a “false flag,” and what-abouting the children. The comments hundreds of likes. The comment “Flase flag” under the Metro Detroit News Instagram account has, of this writing, 19,000 likes. Nineteen thousand. The comments were normal.

The loudest voices speaking out against antisemitism have so often been poisoned by Islamophobia. It is a shame these uneducated, right-wing, Netanyahu-apologist propagandists have grabbed the megaphone and drowned out progressive voices with it. They have done my child a disservice. In trying to protect Jews, they have turned from empathy when we need it most. They have turned from facts, numbers, information, photographs, human rights organizations, and UN reports when we need to reckon with the atrocity done in the name of protecting the Jewish state. They are not the only voices calling for our safety. I am calling for our safety.

My Israeli family members are in bunkers now because of Netanyahu’s decisions. The antisemitism that is ramming into synagogues in Michigan, and the online chorus of antisemitism justifying ramming into synagogues in Michigan is what happens when terminally online anti-zionism drops its mask.

Anti-zionism is antisemitism when someone is shooting at children in Michigan because of Israel. Anti-zionism is antisemitism when there are hundreds of comments under footage of children in Michigan explaining how the children deserve it. Anti-zionism is antisemitism when Angelina McCahey went on GB News and contextualized the attack incorrectly saying the synagogue was “An Israeli Temple.”

I speak, sleeplessly and unguardedly, for every Jewish person in every group chat I know when I say we felt this coming, the attack and the silence. What you are doing now when toddlers are in an active shooter lockdown because of a hate crime is what your Jewish friends are noticing. We are tired. We are scared and horrified for the children and parents and siblings and grandparents and teachers and friends of the children in West Bloomfield. When the car rammed into the preschool it rammed into every Jewish psyche. It was an act of terror against a people. And we are scared our children will be next. Of course we are. And when and if it happens to my child, I am wondering how many of the people I know will shrug it off as deserved.

It is 2:10 pm. I have thirty minutes before I have to go pick up my child from his Jewish preschool. I will walk past the security guards and walk through the metal detector and I will walk up the stairs and stand at his classroom door with the other parents who are all walking around with the same pit in our already terrible stomachs. And when the door opens and my son sees my face I will smile so big and kiss him on his pudding cheeks and tell him I am so happy to see him. I will smell his hair and squeeze his tiny, pudgy body and hold his hand down the stairs as he natters about his best friend and tells me about gym and anything else wonderful that happened while he was safely inside that building. I will say thank you to the men who would take a bullet for him. They are my heroes. They are my family’s heroes and my ancestor’s heroes. They are the line between my sanity and my bottomless fear.

Today I will walk my four-year-old child down the block away from the school slowly and calmly, and that slowness, that calmness will be a tiny victory march. May I remember that slowness and calmness is an absolute blessing. May every day be so fortunate.

Shabbat Shalom.