Community officials and local politicians are responding after an attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield on Thursday.
Elyssa Schmier is a congregant of the synagogue and also serves at the Michigan Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group that fights anti-semitism.
Schmier said her family has been worshipping at Temple Israel for four generations.
“It's just a home,” she told Michigan Public’s Stateside. “Everyone from the secretaries at the front desk to the security, who really are the heroes for the entire community.”
Schmier said Temple Israel, like many synagogues in the country, has armed security guards, and she is grateful to them for their work on Thursday. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said no staff or children were hurt, and one security guard was being treated for injuries.
“This could have been much worse if we didn't have armed security guards there,” Schmier said. “And I think the fact that we have armed security guards and that's such a normal thing for the Jewish community, it's very foreign to a lot of people, when I talk to them, that are not Jewish.”
Schmier also said she was grateful for the synagogue’s teachers, who helped the students remain calm.
“The children, for the most part, just thought that there was some sort of like drill or alarm happening. They were not aware of the danger that they were in, and that's in large part to the teachers who, fighting through their own anxiety and fear, kept it light and safe for the little ones,” Schmier said.
She said her work at the ADL, which has been tracking the increase of anti-semitic incidents in the U.S., makes her more wary of these sorts of incidents. She said rising anti-semitism makes these kinds of attacks more likely.
“It makes it so someone could drive their car into a synagogue where there's a bunch of people working and children learning, and that, you know, they think that is something that they're able to do,” she said.
The ADL has criticized both Republican and Democratic politicians in recent years. Schmier said politicians from both sides of the aisle need to work to combat anti-semitic rhetoric.
“I don't think that there's a single side in the political spectrum that is more responsible for this than the other side. We're seeing it from across the board. I think this normalization of anti-semitic rhetoric in politics today, it's something that even 10 years ago would have been a major issue for an elected official to say some of the things that they're saying,” she said.
But Schmier said the Jewish community in Metro Detroit is resilient.
“I know that we're going to come out of this with our heads held high. We are going to continue to practice our faith. We're going to celebrate the Jewish joy of our culture, and I know that we're going to move forward from here.”
