We have been that couple walking out of that museum. Our synagogue has held its annual fundraiser there for the last two years, a new museum in a very old building, a modern addition to the one-room synagogue from 150 years ago that you can still stand in, imagining the way things once were. I find myself thinking: if only people knew. If only they could walk through the small, humble exhibits about our lives here, about our institutions and our contributions, but also about how we stood side by side with so many others to fight for a better city, a better region, a better nation. Perhaps then they could see our humanity.
This bothers me of course, but the thing I’ve really been dreading is telling my six-year-old son. I don’t often shy away from answering his questions, no matter how hard or complex or nuanced, but how could I ever explain this? There is no explanation. There are no reassurances.
Today, it turns out, was the day. I let my son stay as the rabbi talked about Sarah and Yaron, words in their memory, words about what it means for us to be in this time and place.
“Why are we here?” my son asks.
“Ahh, yeah, something really bad happened this week. Someone shot and killed two people here in DC.”
“Jewish people?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” he says, his face scrunched up in the forced smile he makes whenever he’s surprised or confused or slightly alarmed by something I say, “That’s really bad.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did they do it?”
“Ahh, I don’t really, I can’t explain it. He was just a bad guy.”
Eventually we find ourselves in the back of the room, my son reading the dates on the name plates on the wall, each with a little light illuminated in an annual remembrance. I sit on the floor, stare down the long aisle before me, and listen to the rabbi speak as if we were living in another time and place. Except it’s not another time and place, it is here, 2025 in the United States of America, and I feel as if I will remember this moment for a long time, the day when I truly understood how much things had changed, how much they had begun to resemble centuries upon centuries of troubled history.
Suddenly my son whispers, in an assertive, slightly defiant tone, “He said we’re living in dangerous times. But we’re not in danger!”
“It’s good to feel safe, right?” I say, affirming without agreeing.
“Yeah.”
We eat lunch, hundreds of us together as we are every week. My children run and play with their friends, I hold a baby, comfort a friend, catch up with someone else. We leave, shove kippot into our pockets, and walk to the Metro.
I tell my husband about the talk as we ride home, my son helping with the part about the parable of the fox and the fish. “But it’s not just a story, H. It’s a story to tell a bigger story.” I cannot explain to him why antisemitism exists, I cannot reassure him that he is safe from its grasp. All I can do, I think, is to keep showing him the power and joy in togetherness and tradition.
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