By Matt Winstel in San Diego
My partner and I attended the Interfaith Vigil on Tuesday for the victims of the attack on the Islamic Center.
We decided to go as soon as we heard a vigil was being held.
We decided to wear our yarmulkes; we usually only wear at schul but decided to wear them as a show of interfaith solidarity.
A mixed multitude of people showed up to offer support, so many in fact we had to park deep into the surrounding neighborhood. Not one other person we saw on our way, though, was wearing something visibly Jewish.
We did have one person shout “thank you for your solidarity” towards us and encountered another person who greeted us with “shalom.” Shortly after though, a young man behind us muttered to his friends: “why are they even here?”
We met up with friends there, one of whom also wore a yarmulke.
She walked in from a different direction. Someone behind her also muttered, “Why are you even here?”
The lack of Jewish representation in the crowd was noticeable. We all commented on it, sad there weren’t more people comfortable loudly showing their support as Jews.
We ended up next to some families. The oldest of the children couldn’t have been more than five. Blissful, with lollipops in their mouths, sharing candy and laughs as the women held each other and cried, thankful their children were alive.
At the front, speakers thanked us, the Jewish community present, thanking us for always showing up. For having shown up after the shooting at a mosque in Escondido, how the same crowds stood together after the synagogue shooting in Poway. Our presence, along with the rabbi’s, reaffirming that we will continue to always show up. That our struggle is mutual, our safety intertwined.
But still, the whispers we all had heard behind us lingered in my mind: “Why are they here?”
When did that come into question? Why is that in question? How has that become a question at all?
When we got back to our car, my partner, frustrated, asked why we needed to go out of our way as Jews to signal that we were “safe.”
“This is an interfaith vigil for a hate crime in our community. Of course I’m going to show up as a Jew. I shouldn’t have to wear anything besides my yarmulke to prove I’m here for the right reasons. We aren’t a monolith, and this event wasn’t even about Palestine! .”
And he’s right. Being a Muslim does not mean you support Hamas, being Jewish does not mean you support current Israeli policies, or even Zionism, for that matter. Neither the vigil, nor the shooting, had anything to do with Palestine or Israel. But it had everything to do with the immediate threat to the lives of all marginalized San Diegans: white nationalism.
For our enemies, for those who commit the greatest violence motivated by the deepest hatred, it does not matter if we stand arm in arm or cower alone. We are all on their hit list. If anything, our division makes us easier targets, our silence coming across like acceptance.
The shooters’ car was loaded with guns and ammo, their manifesto 75 pages long. There are many indicators that this was intended to be a shooting spree, that the mosque was not their only target.
I don’t think I need to point out that the Islamic Center is right across the street from Kavod Charter School, (a public school where instruction is in Hebrew.) I don’t want to, but I can’t help but think: what if they had turned right instead of left? What if the security guard, Amin Abdullah, had not risked and lost his life to slow down the murders? How many more people would have died, either at the mosque or elsewhere? Where would have been the next target?
As we debate online about the exact phrasing of statements made by organizations that all want the same thing—to keep our communities in San Diego safe—guns and ammo are being amassed, manifestos are being written, and plans are being made just around the corner.
Perhaps this is something that has been more readily apparent to me as someone who is both Jewish and transgender. A member of two communities listed as targets in the shooters’ manifesto. Perhaps it is because white nationalist propaganda has always connected the two identities, whether the old canard of feminine Jewish men or masculine Jewish women, (or the more modern version: Jews created transgender identity, and the entire queer rights movement is a Jewish conspiracy). But it should not take having intersectional identities to see that our struggles are mutual, that an attack on a mosque just as easily could have been an attack on a synagogue. That no one is safe unless we are all safe, unless we keep each other safe.
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Matt Winstel is a graduate of George Washington University. He is a member of Ohr Shalom Synagogue and has worked as an administrator for a local Jewish non-profit.