Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001? I do. I wasn’t even living in the U.S. at the time, but I remember the moment in detail. My college friends and I had stayed up all night preparing for an exam when we turned on the news and saw the horrific news. We sat in disbelief, unsure if what we felt was sadness, fear, or both. For me, it also pulled up memories of the terror bombings at the Israeli Embassy and the A.M.I.A. in Buenos Aires. Once again, hate had pierced ordinary life, leaving behind shock and trauma.
This week, I found myself asking that same question—“Do you remember where you were?”—not once, but three times. On September 8, while on vacation and enjoying a playful morning with my daughter, I checked the news and learned of the deadly terror attack on a bus in Jerusalem. The images of bloodied bodies brought the same despair to the forefront of my screen.
Then, days later, the assassination of Charlie Kirk while speaking to students at a university in Utah shook us again. I remember exactly where I was—texting with JCRC’s executive committee—when we heard the news.
Something feels fundamentally broken right now. Hate is distorting our sense of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, safety and danger. My brother reminded me of the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. For the person who hates, the truth becomes false and the false becomes true… Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.”
Hate blinds us. It erodes our shared humanity. But we cannot allow it to define us.
I refuse to accept this as an irreversible fact. And at the Federation, we refuse to surrender to hopelessness. Instead, we will keep building bridges of understanding—within our Jewish community and with our neighbors of every faith and background. We will grow our Student to Student program, empowering Jewish teens to educate their peers about Judaism and stand up to antisemitism. Our JCRC will deepen relationships with civic, political, and interfaith partners. And together, we will keep educating about the risks of hate and misinformation that threaten all of us.
Like Kelli reminded us last week, Jewish joy is not about negating the pain but finding the balance. In that spirit, I would like to recognize two wonderful wins:
Over 215 people registered for the upcoming screening and panel discussion of October 8—including many non-Jewish allies eager to learn and stand with us.
AB715 passed through the Senate Education and Appropriations Committees—thanks to JPAC’s leadership and the support of our JCRC and the Sacramento Countering Antisemitism Committee.
This is what it means to push back against hate: to build, to connect, to teach, and to keep choosing hope. I am not naive, but I’m a hopeless believer!
Mariela Socolovsky, CEO of the Jewish Federation