Twice, the mezuzah on my front door was ripped off.

The first time, I was shocked. The second time, I made a decision that still pains me. I did not put it back up.

This was before the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.

That is the part I keep coming back to. The fear did not begin after the Hamas attacks. It was already there, intruding with the quiet calculation of whether a small Jewish symbol on my home made me less safe.

A mezuzah is not a political statement. It makes no argument about a government or a war. It is a sacred object, a marker of memory, a tiny declaration that says: Jews live here. I thought about that mezuzah again recently when the Anti-Defamation League released its annual audit showing that antisemitic physical assaults in the United States reached record highs in 2025. That increase reflects something many Jews already feel in daily life: the slow erosion of ease, the daily calculation of whether to speak up or stay quiet — things I have felt since the first time my mezuzah was violently torn off my doorframe.

Since then, the realm in which I feel safe as a visibly Jewish person has been shrinking from all directions.

After the Oct. 7 attack, the bulletin boards in my apartment building began filling with calls to boycott Israel. Campaign flyers for a Jewish political candidate who came to speak there were defaced with Hitler mustaches. I learned to scan the walls before I scanned my mail.

This was not happening on a campus quad or in some distant place. It was happening where I live.

Then, among my mother’s things, I found a Star of David necklace from the 1930s — marcasite set against black onyx, delicate and old. A boyfriend had given it to her when they were both 14.

I put it on in Florida, where I spend much of my time caring for my mother. I loved wearing it. It felt like more than jewelry. It felt like inheritance, memory, and a small way of carrying my family with me.

But when my mother knew I was going back to New York, she told me to take it off.

My mother is 102. She is not easily frightened. She has lived long enough to know when the temperature in the room has changed. She was not making a political argument. She was trying to protect her daughter.

I still wear that Star of David. But I admit I am selective. In New York, there are moments when I leave it visible and moments when I tuck it under my shirt. That calculation itself tells me something about the world I am moving through.

Recently, in a private Facebook group for women essayists, I shared a personal piece I had written for the United Kingdom-based Jewish Chronicle about how Oct. 7 changed life for my mother and me. It was not a political manifesto. It was a reflection on fear, Jewish identity, aging and visibility.

And still, I was attacked by other writers.“What about Gaza?” I was asked. The message was clear: even my personal Jewish pain had to pass a political test before it could be acknowledged.

That is the narrowing.

This ugliness is coming from more than one direction now. It stems from old conspiracy theories on the right and newer moral certainties in some of the progressive spaces where I once felt most at home. Different language brings about the same result: Jews become less human, less particular, less entitled to fear.

That collapse is what frightens me most: the definitional collapse between Jew and Israeli; Israeli and Israel’s government; Jewish symbol and political provocation; mezuzah and target.

As Jews like me reckon with that collapse, we must reckon with how much we’ll go along with it.

Right now, too often, Jews are being asked to choose between our own safety and our compassion for others. We should be able to prioritize both. I am a Zionist. I believe in the right of the Jewish people to a homeland. I also believe Palestinians are human beings who deserve freedom, dignity, and protection from suffering.

These beliefs should not cancel each other out. They should make us more careful, more humane, more committed to truth.

Yet now we must choose between speaking about antisemitism and being accused of indifference to other hatreds. That is no way to live.

Since Oct. 7, I have found myself going to synagogue on Shabbat, something I never did before. I was a High Holiday Jew. Now I seek out rooms where I do not have to explain why this moment feels frightening. I have learned where I feel seen. I have learned who can hold my fear without turning it into an argument.

The mezuzah I did not put back up is small. It fits in the palm of my hand.

But what it represents is not small: memory, faith, survival, home, and the right to be visibly Jewish without fear.

When I did not put it back up, I told myself I was being practical. But now — after Oct. 7, the bulletin boards, my mother’s warning, and the explosive allegations I’ve seen travel through respected media without sufficient care or verification — I understand it differently.

I was not just protecting a doorframe. I was learning to shrink.

The post How can I live freely as a Jew in a world where strangers rip my mezuzah off my doorframe? appeared first on The Forward.

ס׳איז לעצטנס אַרויס אַ פּאָדקאַסט מיט דער באַליבטער אַקטריסע אין ישׂראל, ליאַ קעניג, וועלכע איז הײַנט צום בעסטן באַקאַנט ווי די ייִדיש־רעדנדיקע באָבע פֿונעם פּערסאָנאַזש שלום שטיסל אין דער ישׂראלדיקער טעלעוויזיע־סעריע „שטיסל“.

אינעם שמועס באַטייליקן זיך אויך יניבֿ גאָלדבערג — דער מחבר פֿון אַ נײַער ביאָגראַפֿיע וועגן איר אויף ענגליש; דער איבערזעצער און דראַמאַטורג מיכל יאַשינסקי, און דער ייִדישער זינגער און קולטור־טוער חיים וואָלף. דעם פּאָדקאַסט האָט טראַנסמיטירט די באָסטאָנער ראַדיאָ־פּראָגראַם „דאָס ייִדישע קול“.

ליאַ קעניג גיט איבער אירע זכרונות במשך פֿון איר לאַנגער קאַריערע אין ייִדישן טעאַטער, ווי אויך אינעם העברעיִשן טעאַטער, טעלעוויזיע און קינאָ. כּדי צו הערן דעם פּאָדקאַסט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.

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AIPAC is not shy about raising money for congressional candidates, emerging as one of the largest political spenders in the country. But as the Israel-boosting organization’s brand becomes toxic in many Democratic primaries, it has adopted a new fundraising method that hides its involvement in steering funds to favored contenders.

In competitive races where Israel has become a wedge issue, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is pointing donors to online portals that it controls but that funnel money directly to candidates’ campaigns — erasing AIPAC’s fingerprints in public data.

That’s what’s happening in Michigan, where Rep. Haley Stevens is locked in a three-way race for an open Senate seat and facing heat from rival Abdul El-Sayed over her campaign’s financial support from AIPAC, charging the funds have bought her support for U.S. military aid to Israel.

The Detroit News dug in and estimated that AIPAC raised several million dollars for Stevens, as judged by receipts from individuals who recently donated to both AIPAC and Haley Stevens for Senate.

AIPAC played its part by parking a fundraising page on its website steering funds directly to Stevens’ campaign, “Paid for and Authorized by Haley Stevens for Senate.” Stevens’ campaign made payments to a company called Democracy Engine that provides the AIPAC donor portals, the investigation found.

That’s not the only instance in which AIPAC appears to be steering donors to give directly to campaigns, instead of funding AIPAC’s own big-dollar spending groups.

AIPAC sent emails to donors last summer and fall directing them to use candidate-specific links to pages on a website called Pro-Israel Network.

“Use the link below to contribute to one, two or all three pro-Israel candidates,” Cari Toppel, an area director, wrote in a September email that directed readers to pages on the website where they could donate to Stevens, Fine or Angie Craig, who is running for Senate in Minnesota.

The portals run by AIPAC allow the organization to collect information about donors, including how much they contributed, and then share that information with the candidate — emphasizing AIPAC’s work on their behalf while shielding it from public view — which would not be possible if AIPAC supporters made donations through the candidate’s own website.

After the Forward contacted AIPAC about the website, its content disappeared, replaced by a placeholder page.

AIPAC has not responded to a request for comment for this story, but quickly condemned the Detroit News article. “The obsession with tracking how individual American citizens support candidates of their choice is outrageous,” AIPAC wrote on X.

Obscured donors

AIPAC’s new efforts to obscure its support for Democratic candidates, which have also included creating political action committees with names that obscure their origin, underscore the extent to which support from the organization has become a liability on the campaign trail.

Only 13% of Democratic voters hold a positive view of Israel.

In Michigan, AIPAC’s support for Stevens came up during a debate Thursday night, when the moderator asked “what that money means and what it buys.”

After Stevens largely avoided answering the question, her opponent El-Sayed interjected — it “buys $3.5 billion sent to a foreign military that could be used here.”

In March, Sen. Ruben Gallego, the Arizona moderate considered to be a rising Democratic star, said: “I wouldn’t take AIPAC money because you have to basically be endorsing what’s happening right now and it’s not good.”

The group remains a prolific spender seeking to influence Democratic primaries and block or slow down the party’s drift to the left on Israel. It has scored notable wins in Democratic primaries: in 2021, it helped elect Shontel Brown in Cleveland and in 2024 it helped defeat Cori Bush in St. Louis and Jamaal Bowman in Westchester County.

But in the 2026 election cycle, progressive candidates and groups are pushing aggressively to make an official endorsement — or a major advertising spree on a candidate’s behalf — political poison for candidates getting AIPAC support.

Track AIPAC, an organization that monitors contributions from the group, has drawn attention — and generated controversy — for graphics showing how much money candidates have received from pro-Israel donors, and many prominent Democrats have rushed to announce that they will not accept support from AIPAC.

Groups like Track AIPAC draw their information from public information campaigns and political action committees report to the Federal Election Commission, whose online databases make both candidates and donors who work with AIPAC targets for attack.

AIPAC has been adjusting course to keep its name out of the public eye.

The United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s main political spending arm that can take unlimited contributions, focuses its advertising on domestic issues voters are attuned to — immigration, for example — while avoiding any mention of Israel.

In a competitive primary for a House seat in suburban Chicago, AIPAC created a political action committee called “Elect Chicago Women,” timed so that it did not have to disclose donors until after the primary election date. That spending aimed to defeat Daniel Biss, the Jewish former mayor of Evanston who identifies as a progressive Zionist and seeks to put conditions on U.S. aid to Israel. Biss prevailed in the primary.

Speaking to the Detroit News, a campaign finance analyst called AIPAC’s tactic of anonymously steering money to campaigns a “loophole” in campaign finance disclosure rules — a label that AIPAC rejected.

In its response on X, it compared its use of Democracy Engine to the popular payment processor ActBlue, which most Democratic campaigns use to accept online donations:

“Is money raised for candidates through ActBlue a ‘loophole’ or is it only considered a loophole if pro-Israel Americans are involved?”

The post AIPAC is funneling pro-Israel money to candidates and covering its tracks appeared first on The Forward.