My father came to America from Berlin in 1941. He had spent months with other children from his German-Jewish orphanage, hiding out in France, waiting to be smuggled to Portugal through the auspices of Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants — the Children’s Aid Society, known as OSE — one of the most remarkable rescue networks of the Holocaust. Like his peers, my father knew what it felt like to be hunted. He knew hunger, and the cold of a French winter, and the fear that attended every day — because he was a Jew.
He never told me any of this directly. I pieced it together years after he died, fragment by fragment. And it left a deep, lasting mark on me — as the son of the sole survivor of the Stern family, as a Jew, and as an American.
Six years ago, in Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacists marched with lit torches, chanting *Jews will not replace us.* They wanted to frighten us. They wanted to assert their dominance, to drive us back behind locked doors and shuttered windows. Beneath their chant was an old and ugly theology: that Jews are a superseded people, that we have been cast aside by history, that we are nothing. They were, in their way, echoing arguments that serious philosophers once made — that Judaism had no living future, that we were frozen relics of a dead past.
Our history has always had other ideas.
I became a rabbi with an unwavering belief in the destiny of the Jewish people. We have survived empires that tried to erase us, ideologies that tried to philosophize us out of existence, and violence that tried to finish the job. We are not only here — we are alive, generative, and irreplaceable. This is my inheritance. This is my truth.
When the torchbearers shouted Jews will not replace us, I knew my answer: No. You will not replace us.
After centuries of fear and coercion, we will not knuckle under to threats and epithets. We will not hide. We will not make ourselves smaller. We will not be silent. We will not live by the rules of ignorant, hateful people. We will continue to embrace life, dignity, and the hard work of hope — because hope is stronger than fear, and always has been.
The attack at a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan last week was sickening. It is a reminder of how quickly hatred moves from ideology to violence, and of how the twisted logic of antisemitism links Jewish lives everywhere to events in Israel, as though we are collectively guilty, collectively exposed, and collectively responsible for whatever grievance the hater carries. This is the oldest lie. It is also, still, a dangerous one.
I won’t pretend I know how to cure the world of antisemitism. I don’t know how to reach people who have no interest in understanding Jewish life, Jewish history, or the complexity of Israel and the Diaspora. It feels large and ominous. I won’t minimize that.
What I know is this: we are not passive. TBA has security in place every time we gather — not because we live in fear, but because we refuse to be naive. Our team is trained to respond. Our doors are secured. After the Michigan attack, Newton Police reached out promptly to reaffirm their commitment to our safety, and I am grateful for that partnership. We will continue to review and strengthen our procedures, as we always have.
But security is not our identity. Community is. Hope is.
My father was hidden by strangers, smuggled across borders by people who risked their lives because they believed Jewish lives mattered. He made it. He came to America and he built something. His story is my story. And his survival — partial, painful, improbable — is the reason I stand here, writing these words, refusing to be afraid.
So yes, I am sad. Yes, I am angry that we are navigating this in 2026. But I am not afraid. I am more committed than ever to our presence in this world — visible, strong, and full of purpose.
We stand together. No one will ever force us into hiding again.
Before Shabbat 