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These are the right-wing extremists we’re watching out for in 2026
There was a cultural inversion in 2025. As Trump took over the country, “woke” concerns were eliminated from major companies’ priorities — topics like transgender rights became taboo, and social media companies eliminated fact-checking. Diversity went from being a good thing to a bad word overnight, and shitposting and trolling turned into the lingua franca of not only the government but of all American society; the Department of Homeland Security took to posting joking videos of ICE raids and even the assassin who shot Charlie Kirk allegedly carved memes into his bullets.
In short, the internet broke containment. Discourse that once remained quarantined in extremist corners of forums like 4chan, places the average person never visited, roared into the mainstream. Hatred and conspiracy theories that were once far too niche and too extreme to make it out of their dark corners were suddenly being imbibed by millions and normalized.
This change has been led, and capitalized on, by far-right live-streamers, podcasters and other online creators. These influencers have become some of the main arbiters of American thought, upending the existing political schema of right and left with the mix of ideologies and conspiracy theories they espouse. They largely appeal to disillusioned young men, an audience Trump courted heavily, and won by a large margin, in 2024.
The impact has been huge, particularly on younger generations who get most of their news and information online. In one recent roundtable discussion of Gen Z conservatives, run by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative thinktank, participants disagreed on questions of universal healthcare, abortion and other former mainstay issues of the American right. But many of them agreed that there were things to like about Hitler, and reasons to fear Jews.
An important thing to note is that many of the players are part of what one might call the Nick Fuentes Extended Universe; many operate in a shared ecosystem, doing videos together and riding each other’s coattails to a larger audience. It’s a type of clout-chasing that pushes the the entire online ecosystem toward antisemitism, misogyny and other forms of hate as a tried-and-true path to virality.
These are some of the online extremists we’ll be keeping an eye on this year.
Nick Fuentes: A neo-Nazi king of extremists
Last year, Fuentes, the avowedly antisemitic 27-year-old streaming host, went from being a pariah on the fringes of the right to the face of its new flank, and his army of conspiratorial followers, known as “groypers,” became the Republican Party’s most-desired demographic.
While Fuentes was deplatformed from Twitter, YouTube and most mainstream platforms in 2020 — thanks to his open endorsement of racism, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, misogyny and other hateful views on his streamed talk show, America First — Elon Musk returned his account to X in 2024. But the real key to Fuentes’ rise was the murder of Charlie Kirk.
Groypers had long shown up to events run by Kirk’s Turning Point USA events as part of what they called “groyper war.” Fuentes and his followers maintained that the young conservative movement headed by Kirk epitomized everything wrong with the party, namely that Kirk was too friendly to Israel and to people of color. Though Kirk was far from a moderate, the two represented opposing visions of the American right for their audiences of largely disillusioned young men.
When Kirk was killed, many experts who tracked the extreme fringes of the right suspected the shooter might have been a groyper. Though that seems not to have been the case, this significantly elevated the profile of Fuentes, who went on Tucker Carlson’s show and ranted about the problem of “organized Jewry in America.” Despite strong criticism from Republicans like Ted Cruz, Carlson defended the interview, as did Trump — “You can’t tell him who to interview,” he said — and Kevin Roberts, the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation, who called Carlson’s critics “the globalist class.”
Fuentes’ increased influence on the mainstream discourse of the right could be seen clearly in this year’s Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference, which took place after Kirk’s death. Fuentes fans and those influenced by his thought — particularly his harsh criticism of Israel — made up much of the audience, even though many also came to honor Kirk.
Key to Fuentes’ appeal is his ironic, trolling tone, which gives him plausible deniability for many of his more extreme statements; he has, for example, denied being a white nationalist, despite making statements like “The rootless transnational elite knows that a tidal wave of white identity is coming. And they know that once the word gets out, they will not be able to stop us. The fire rises!”
This plausible deniability is core to Fuentes’ strategy. “We have got to be on the right, dragging these people kicking and screaming into the future,” he said on America First in 2021. “If we can drag the furthest part of the right further to the right, and we can drag the center further to the right, and we can drag the left further to the right,” he continued, “then we’re winning.”
Candace Owens: A conspiracy theorist with reach
Candace Owens sounds like a crank. Once an employee of The Daily Wire, conservative Jewish pundit Ben Shapiro’s outlet, Owens was ousted in 2024 due to her antisemitism and general conspiratorial thinking, which has included the assertion that the moon landing was faked by Stanley Kubrick and that dinosaurs are “fake and gay.”
This may make her appear unthreatening; who could take that seriously? But her departure from The Daily Wire didn’t slow her down at all; she not only continued to espouse antisemitic conspiracy theories, but went deeper.
In the past few years, the podcaster regularly spread conspiracies about the Frankists, a little-known and long-defunct — though not according to Owens — group of Jewish apostates who supposedly control the government and media.
As was the case with Fuentes, Owens’ influence was buoyed by Charlie Kirk’s murder; she spread conspiracy theories that Israel, along with Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron and Egypt plotted the killing. No matter how absurd these ideas seemed, they gained so much traction that Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, met with Owens in December to attempt to quash these theories. She failed.
Owens’ conspiracy theories run the gamut from relatively random and harmless — her suspicion of France, for example — to virulently antisemitic; she has blamed “Zionists” for everything, including the Trump administration’s recent capture of Nicolas Maduro, and Kirk’s murder, and has also made more nebulous claims of Jewish control.
The rise in anti-Israel sentiment and increased acceptance of antisemitism on the right — JD Vance dismissed uproar over a leaked antisemitic group chat between leaders of the Young Republicans as “pearl-clutching” — has created fertile ground for Owens. With nearly 6 million followers on her YouTube podcast, and several million views on many of her individual videos, the wackiness of many of her ideas only serves to push the boundaries of what ideas enter the discourse on the far-right.
Tucker Carlson: An old-school pundit courting the new right
Tucker Carlson is not exactly a new figure to watch — his show was once a centerpiece of rightwing discourse. But after he left Fox in 2023, he fell temporarily into comparative obscurity. He began to stream his own show on X, but, for a time, ceased generating major headlines.
While he was lying relatively low, he took on a new persona: He revamped his signature look, exchanging his bowtie for a folksier checkered shirt and streaming from a wood-paneled cabin, and began sharing conspiratorial ideas about 9/11 and chemtrails, and offering increasingly harsh criticism of Israel’s influence over the American government that sometimes edges into antisemitic conspiracies.
When Carlson interviewed Fuentes in fall of 2025, he roared back into the discourse as a sort of kingmaker on the right. His outreach to Fuentes symbolically meshed the old guard with the new right’s younger and more extreme audience.
He continues to heavily critique the establishment Republican party, creating fractures that the Fuentes crowd can take advantage of to continue to shift the party’s ideology.
Adin Ross: Gaming streamer with a side of antisemitism
Ross made his name through gaming and video game commentary — largely Grand Theft Auto — on Twitch. He has been repeatedly banned from the platform for hateful and antisemitic comments.
The world of gaming streamers is often dismissed by those who aren’t in it. After all, video game expertise does not have any obvious relationship with news or politics. But many of these influencers talk as they game, and followers come to them not only to watch them play, but also to hear these defacto pundits’ opinions. Acknowledging the power of these streamers on the mainstream right, Trump made a 2024 campaign appearance on Ross’ show, where the streamer gifted him a Tesla Cybertruck.
Despite the fact that Ross is Jewish, he has allowed hateful rhetoric in his comments and has made similar comments himself, regularly rubbing his hands together to imitate the stereotype of greedy Jews. He has repeatedly hosted Fuentes on his show, as well as a slew of other figures who have made antisemitic comments that Ross has either laughed at or let go. He also regularly makes homophobic and misogynistic remarks. In the rapid-fire comments on his streams, his viewers reflect these ideas back at him, using the term “gay” as a slur and sending memes of the “happy merchant,” an antisemitic caricature of a hook-nosed, Orthodox Jewish man rubbing his hands together.
Ross is also kind of an idiot; famously, after someone in his chat called him a fascist three years ago, he looked up the definition while live streaming and was unable to pronounce it, or many of the words in the definition — including “authoritarian” and “ultra-nationalist.” Nor had he heard of the examples of fascists given, such as Mussolini. Nevertheless, Ross has 7 million followers on Twitch and nearly another 2 million on Kick, another streaming platform.
Manosphere podcasts: A broad web of influence
The so-called manosphere of podcasts is nothing new; it includes massively popular creators like Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Andrew Tate who run some of the most-watched video podcasts around. They sit around microphones speaking seemingly off the cuff for hours-long shows, and have massive appeal among young men, who turn to them for advice on dating and finances, and look to them as models of masculinity.
While Tate is overtly toxic, calling himself a misogynist, encouraging viewers to assault their girlfriends as well as praising Hitler and telling his followers to “bring back” the Nazi salute, many of these podcasters are less open about their extremist views.
Some, particularly Rogan and Von, take a stance of “just asking questions,” bringing on guests with extremist ideas such as Holocaust denial, and legitimizing those positions by engaging with them seriously.
Even if these podcasters are not overtly antisemitic, racist or misogynist, or might not personally share the views of their guests, their popularity means new audiences get exposed to ideas like Holocaust denial, making them a sort of gateway drug to extremism. As racism and antisemitism become more acceptable on the right, it’s likely these podcasters will welcome increasingly extremist guests than they already do, bringing their ideas to their massive audiences.
Joel Webbon: Christian nationalist internet pastor
Joel Webbon, a Christian nationalist podcaster and influencer who runs Right Response Ministries, is still slightly niche, but his ideology is on the rise.
His audience is largely devout Christians, but it’s still sizable, with about 150,000 followers on YouTube; he is one of what some many, including myself, have termed the TheoBros, conservative Christian nationalists who combine theology with the sort of life advice on masculinity, women and fitness that made Andrew Tate and Theo Von famous. Webbon’s tone of theological expertise gives him extra influence among young Christian men, who turn to him as something of a religious mentor.
Webbon has recently launched a new channel, New Christian Right Studios or NXR, which he calls “theology in practice” — Christianity applied to politics and society. Webbon has always advocated for ultra-conservative Christian political ideas, such as a Christian government and removing women’s right to vote. But the rebrand is a sign that he intends to engage more in targeted political advocacy, aiming for a larger audience than just the theology obsessives, and hoping to draw in the kind of red-pilled, conspiratorial young men that Fuentes speaks to.
As part of the new mission, Webbon has turned toward open Jew-hatred, Holocaust denial and white nationalism — a step away from an older generation of Christian nationalist pastors who, while extreme, stayed clear of such overt antisemitism. His X account is full of allegations that Jews are “marked by subversion, deceit and greed,” opposition to interracial marriage, and statistics about the declining white population. He also released a book titled The Hyphenated Heresy: Judeo-Christianity, whose subject is solving the “Jewish question” within Christianity, and arguing that the church has moved too far toward Jewishness.
In the past year, Webbon has spoken with open admiration for Fuentes’ ability to connect with young men. And, at the beginning of 2026, he released a 10-part series of videos in which he talked to Fuentes about such topics as “The Inner Workings of ‘World Jewry.’” This crossover with Fuentes, who is a devout Catholic and advocate of Christian nationalism, will likely bring a whole new audience to Webbon, who is ready and waiting with warped biblical justifications for his antisemitism and misogyny.
Clavicular: An appearance-obsessed streamer with confused politics
Perhaps the oddest entry on this list, Clavicular is what is called a “looksmaxxer,” a type of influencer who believes that appearance is the most important thing in the world and the key to success. Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, gives advice to young men hoping to get good jobs and attractive women. But looksmaxxing is not just a lifting routine; it involves routines like “mewing” — pressing your tongue to the roof of the mouth to supposedly improve your jawline — intensive plastic surgery and even taking meth to “leanmax” and get defined abs. This is all in pursuit of a look known online as the gigachad — based off of a meme of a white man with a sharp, square jawline, bulging muscles and a beard.
Despite the obvious absurdity of this subculture, the 19-year-old streamer is on the rise. Both YouTube titan Mr. Beast and internet journalist Taylor Lorenz have said he is likely to be the biggest streamer of 2026.
Clavicular has yet to openly espouse much political ideology. But the subtext of looksmaxxing is white supremacy; that’s part of the gigachad look. And Clavicular also did a chummy hours-long video with Fuentes, exposing his audience to the neo-Nazi and implying a friendliness to Fuentes’ antisemitic and misogynist ideology. In the video, Clavicular said he got into looksmaxxing after being interested in politics in high school under the theory that his good looks would aid his ability to influence people politically. In the same conversation, he said that “saving European culture” requires steroids and looksmaxxing, and modeled his social media strategy on Fuentes’ own.
It’s hard to say where Clavicular is heading. But just as the gaming streamers began to include extremist political ideas alongside their video games, it’s likely that Clavicular will turn to the same tried-and-true strategy to grow his own profile.
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A gunman attacked a Michigan synagogue. Here’s what happens to the community next
On Thursday, a driver rammed his pickup truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a large Reform Temple about 25 miles from downtown Detroit. Blessedly, there were no casualties besides the shooter, whom security guards rapidly engaged. One guard was injured. Aside from that, everyone who was inside the synagogue, including 140 children attending school there, was unscathed.
“There’s hopeful news and there’s sad news about the aftermaths of these shootings,” said Mark Oppenheimer, author of Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood, a methodical, lyrical look at what happened to the Pittsburgh neighborhood shattered by the Oct. 27, 2018 shooting that left 11 people dead.
The hopeful news is that older, established Jewish communities can rely on close, long-established bonds within and outside the community to get them through.
The sad news is that people unaffected by the shooting tend to move on and forget.
“So whereas this will haunt the Jewish community for years,” Oppenheimer told me in a phone interview, “most people outside the Jewish community will quickly move on to whatever the next horrible incident is.”
What happens next
Authorities have not confirmed the attacker’s motive, although he has been identified as a Michigan man who was born in Lebanon. But among all the unknowns, we do know a few things for certain.
We know that a great tragedy was averted due to the guards’ bravery and expertise, and due to the planning and preparation of synagogue leadership.
We know such attacks have gone from being extremely rare in the United States, to being more frequent.
And we know that what happens now, in the aftermath, matters a great deal.
That’s why, in writing about the worst mass shooting in American Jewish history, Oppenheimer spent most of his time researching what came after the atrocity.
“When the cameras and the police tape were gone, what stayed behind?”Oppenheimer, who teaches at Washington University’s John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, wrote in the book’s introduction.
The power of connection
Both the Tree of Life synagogue and Temple Israel are older, deeply entrenched congregations with close ties to a number of local communities — Jewish and non-Jewish alike.
In one chapter of Squirrel Hill titled, simply, “Gentiles,” Oppenheimer chronicles how non-Jews came to the aid of the stricken congregation, including clergy, politicians and neighbors.
Emblematic of that was the capacity crowd of 2,500 people that came together at Soldiers and Sailors auditorium on the one-year anniversary of the shooting, where law enforcement, politicians and Christian, Muslim and Jewish clergy all spoke.
“There are usually people in government, in community organizations, in neighborhood organizations, who reach out, who want the Jews to know that they’re not alone,” said Oppenheimer.
Evidence of such connection was already on show in Michigan on Thursday. One reporter interviewed a woman praying outside the synagogue, who said, through tears, that the “Holy Spirit” had told her to turn her car around once she saw police cars racing past her to the scene, and go lend support.
In Pittsburgh, the 2018 shooting was also a time for the Jewish community itself to come together.
Squirrel Hill’s close-knit Jewish community crossed denominational divides to show support. An Orthodox rabbi organized a spreadsheet to manage the 24-hour vigils Jewish law prescribes over the bodies of the dead prior to burial.
“In Squirrel Hill, one of the nice things is there is a lot of community and solidarity across denominational lines and levels of observance,” said Oppenheimer, “and that’s pretty rare in American Judaism. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out in Detroit.”
A new reality
Iin recent years, the need for solidarity and resilience in the face of such attacks has become, unfortunately, more apparent.
When Oppenheimer wrote his book, he was able to state the shooting was “a unique event” in American history. It’s true that until the Tree of Life massacre, antisemitic violence had claimed just 26 lives in U.S. history. The U.S., more than any Western country, and far more than Israel itself, had truly been a safe haven for Jews.
Since Squirrel Hill, six more people have died in four attacks. The previously well-earned sense of safety has been shattered.
“While the odds that any given Jew will be attacked remain quite low, it is obviously pretty terrifying,” said Oppenheimer.
Some critics of the national focus that fell on Squirrel Hill after the Tree of Life shooting argued that the tragedy got far more attention than similar mass shootings that had befallen non-Jewish communities.
But it’s the very rarity of these attacks that makes them so shocking and, at least for American Jews, so memorable.
In this new normal, it’s even more important for Jews to form strong, mutually supportive bonds among themselves, and with others.
And the world moves on
Those bonds are especially crucial because while the victims of violence don’t soon forget and move on, the world does.
“It’s a short burst of solidarity, and then people leave. Understandably so,” Oppenheimer said.
I suspect that even though prayers of gratitude and deliverance will echo through the sanctuaries of Detroit — and in Jewish hearts everywhere — the attack will haunt its intended victims long after the police tape comes down.
What will make the difference in how the community faces those fears and moves forward is the amount of support it receives from those outside it. If the broader Bloomfield and Detroit community refuses to forget this awful incident, it will change the course of healing.
I asked Oppenheimer what lesson he learned from the Tree of Life aftermath could apply to Temple Israel.
“In Pittsburgh, there was a long history of people showing up for each other,” he said Oppenheimer. “The relationships, or lack of relationships, that exist become more noticeable when something goes wrong.”
“Where there are strong ties before a shooting, there are strong ties afterwards.”
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Political standoff causing DHS shutdown delays security grants for synagogues
(JTA) — A shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security since Feb. 14 is halting the review of millions of dollars in security funding for nonprofits, leaving Jewish institutions and other vulnerable groups in limbo at a moment of heightened concern about antisemitic threats.
The most recent threat came Thursday when an armed assailant rammed his vehicle into a large synagogue in suburban Detroit, where trained security forces shot at him and he was killed before he could injure anyone.
The closure stems from a political standoff over immigration enforcement: Senate Democrats are refusing to fund DHS unless the bill includes new oversight and limits on ICE operations, while Republicans and the Trump administration insist on passing funding without those changes. The dispute intensified after the killings of U.S. citizens during recent immigration operations.
Applications for the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which helps synagogues, schools and community centers pay for security guards, cameras, reinforced doors and other protections were due Feb. 1 But because the program is administered through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a component of DHS, the ongoing shutdown has frozen the process before applications could be reviewed. An effort to end the shutdown failed in the Senate on Thursday.
That means organizations that spent months preparing proposals are now waiting indefinitely to learn whether they will receive funding, at a time of rising anxiety and threats.
The grant program has become a cornerstone of security planning for Jewish institutions across the United States, especially in the wake of sometimes deadly attacks. Demand for the grants has surged in recent years as antisemitic incidents have climbed and security costs have soared.
According to data from the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents in the United States have reached historic highs in recent years, with Jewish institutions frequently targeted with threats, vandalism and harassment. Community leaders say the uncertainty surrounding the grants is arriving at precisely the wrong moment.
The NSGP is designed to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars annually to nonprofits considered at high risk of attack. Organizations submit detailed applications outlining their vulnerabilities and the security improvements they hope to fund, which FEMA then reviews and awards through state agencies.
But during a federal shutdown, most DHS personnel responsible for reviewing those applications are furloughed. As a result, the process has effectively stalled.
For many nonprofits, the delay creates practical and financial uncertainty. Security upgrades such as surveillance systems, bollards, access-control systems and trained guards often depend on the grants, and institutions typically plan their budgets around the expectation of federal support.
Jewish communal security groups say the program has been one of the most successful federal efforts to help protect religious institutions. Michael Masters, CEO of the Secure Community Network, a Jewish security nonprofit, said Jewish organizations rely on federal funding to cover essential security needs, saying that it was “a challenge” that DHS was currently not processing security grant applications.
“There’s no other faith-based community in the United States that needs to spend $760 million a year, at a minimum, on security that we do,” Masters said. “That’s a reality of the threat environment that we have to adapt to, that we have adapted to.”
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A gunman rammed a Michigan synagogue. Its security preparations may have saved lives.
(JTA) — The suspected assailant, armed with rifles and smoke bombs, who rammed into Temple Israel on Thursday encountered a synagogue that was well prepared for just such an attack.
He hit and injured the congregation’s security director with his car as he plowed through the synagogue’s doors and drove down a hallway. But he didn’t manage to harm anyone else as he was found dead after trained and armed security guards shot at him
And because the rest of the staff knew exactly how to respond to an active shooter threat.
“We always worry that you can plan and plan and plan and practice and practice, and it won’t matter, because it will be something else, but it feels like a miracle that everything worked the way it was supposed to, that our team was so incredibly brave, local law enforcement’s been amazing, and that everybody’s OK,” Rabbi Jen Lader of Temple Israel told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard and West Bloomfield County Police Chief Dale Young also immediately praised the security response in the wake of the attack.
“I am deeply proud of the response, not only from the security that was on site, but also of all the police officers and the firefighters that are here right now, we train on active shooter events a lot,” Young said during a press conference outside the synagogue on Thursday. “I think that training certainly helped to mitigate what happened here today.”
Indeed, it was a situation that Jewish institutions across the United States have trained for, as antisemitism and threats of violence have ticked up in recent years, especially following the 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that killed 11 Jews during Shabbat services. The rabbi of a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, credited a security training with enabling him to respond when a man took him and three congregations hostage in 2022.
“Everybody flees danger, and our team went straight toward it, and they were the ones who neutralized the terrorist and saved everybody,” said Lader. “And our teachers followed, you know, to the absolute letter, our active shooter training and lockdown procedures, and saved every kid.”
Beyond the synagogue’s full-time director of security, Lader said Temple Israel also has a full team of armed security guards on the premises at all times as well as a remote security system that is able to secure different areas of the building during threats.
In late January, FBI agents also visited Temple Israel to train clergy and staff about how to respond to an active shooter.
According to a social media post from FBI Detroit, the Active Shooter Attack Prevention and Preparedness course “combines lessons learned from years of research and employs scenario-based exercises to help participants practice the decision-making process of the Run, Hide, Fight principles and take necessary actions for survival.”
Michael Masters, the national director and CEO of the Secure Community Network, an organization that coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, said that the outcomes of the attack Thursday reflected the preparedness of Temple Israel.
“Investing in security is an investment, it’s a down payment on the Jewish future,” said Masters. “The community that made up the synagogue, the larger Detroit Jewish community, has been making that investment for years and years, and today, that investment paid off and lives [were] saved.”
Among the security measures that Masters said his organization recommended were “bollards or fences or natural obstructions” to the building, controlling access to the facility through reinforced doors or windows and having a security presence.
“What we hope this reaffirms is that security needs to be an ongoing investment in order to allow Jewish life, faith based life, to thrive,” said Masters. “And very much that investment can result, and did result, in Jewish lives being saved, and so we all need to recognize that and commit ourselves as members of the community at every level to be a part of making that investment at whatever level we can.”
In the wake of the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington D.C. in June, the synagogue hosted a town hall on hate crimes and extremism.
Among the speakers at the town hall was Noah Arbit, a lifelong congregant of Temple Israel who represents West Bloomfield in the Michigan House of Representatives. Arbit said in an interview on Thursday that after he first learned of the attack while working on the state house floor, he immediately began to cry and raced down to his home synagogue.
“I campaigned on taking on hate crimes,” said Arbit. “To be working on these issues, and then to see it come home to roost in my own community, in my own synagogue, in my hometown that I represent is, frankly, just like my worst nightmare.”
While Arbit praised the response by security and law enforcement as the attack unfolded, he said he was “outraged and enraged and deeply pained that it was necessary in the first place.”
“Jewish communities across the country and world have watched, you know, for the past decade, as our institutions have congealed into fortresses,” he said. “We are now forced to live behind, basically, you know, militarized, institutionally securitized institutions, and what a shame that is. It’s not just a shame, It’s unfathomable, it’s unforgivable.”
For Rabbi Mark Miller of Temple Beth El, another Reform synagogue a 20-minute drive away in Bloomfield Hills, the attack on Temple Israel served as a stark reminder of why security infrastructure was essential for Jewish institutions.
“This is one of those moments when, for years and years, we have bemoaned that we have to put so much time and energy into security for our institutions,” said Miller. “And this is one of those days that reminds us that we don’t have a choice.”
Miller’s synagogue had a recent security crisis of its own, when a man drove through its parking lot in December 2022 and shouted antisemitic threats as parents walked their preschoolers into the building. The assailant, Hassan Chokr, was sentenced to 34 months in prison in September for illegally possessing multiple firearms inside a gun store after leaving the synagogue.
“It’s a terrifying day, obviously for a lot of people, especially for parents with their kids at not only Temple Israel but at ours and other temples and Jewish institutions,” Miller said.
Lader said that among her congregants, two competing sentiments had jumped out: Those who “never, in a million years, in our heart of hearts, thought it was ever going to happen to us” and others who “knew it was only a matter of time before it knocked on our door.”
But another feeling was even stronger, she said.
“I think the overarching sentiment, and the one that I want to make sure gets out there, is our absolute gratitude to our internal teams, our amazing staff, local law enforcement and our teachers for really, like, a building full of absolute heroes, who were able to keep us safe,” Lader said.
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