More than 1,100 people gathered Monday night at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., for an event organized by local Jewish groups featuring Reps. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) alongside commentators Dan Senor and Bret Stephens, discussing the rise of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in political life.

Though the Michigan Senate race wasn’t directly addressed, the event came ahead of the election in less than a month, in which Israel and the Jewish community have been central topics of discussion. During the event, Scholten and Gottheimer discussed the rising antisemitic and anti-Israel trends in their party and why they’ve remained outspoken against them.

The event was jointly organized by the the Jewish Federation of Detroit, the Anti-Defamation League’s Michigan office and the local American Jewish Committee chapter, billed as exploring “some of the most urgent questions facing the Jewish people today from the rise of antisemitism and the meaning of Zionism to the increasingly challenging climate for political discourse in the United States.” 

Temple Israel was the site, seven months to the day before Monday’s event, of a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack. Scholten told the audience, during a Q&A session alongside Gottheimer moderated by Senor, that she felt “emotional” arriving at the synagogue, according to clips of the event reviewed by Jewish Insider.

“I want to say to this Jewish community here tonight that we’re with you,” she said. “It’s so important for us to communicate to you that we are with you in this moment. … People are scared right now. I hear from our Jewish community, especially our young people who have experienced the horrors of a post-Oct. 7 moment on their college campuses.”

She said that the Jewish community feels outnumbered, “and that is one of the main reasons why I have felt so compelled to not be shy in speaking out in this moment. … I want American Jews, Michigan Jews, to feel like they have an ally and a champion.”

Scholten is the only sitting Democratic member of Michigan’s congressional delegation who hasn’t yet endorsed Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.

Asked why she’s staked out such a strong position, in such a difficult political environment, Scholten said, “I’m not a radical. In fact, I am radically not radical, and it almost seems like in today’s politics, to be not radical is almost a radical position. Everyone is trying to pull you farther and farther to the extremes, but it is actually a very bold and noble position to stake out this position in the center.”

She said that she wishes there was “more respect across the board from our colleagues to say, ‘I was elected to serve my constituents with the values that I bring to this position,’ and more intellectual curiosity, instead of just an immediate rejection or retribution of the position that we have taken out.”

Scholten said she believes the Democratic Socialists of America and DSA-aligned candidates are gaining steam because they are emphasizing issues like healthcare, jobs and fighting corruption, “and people don’t even recognize the underlying current of the U.S.-Israel relationship or the antisemitism that is a part of that. I know we see that across Michigan.”

Scholten said that she sees First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as a model for how Democrats can respond in a moment when a growing DSA bloc is set to enter Congress. Roosevelt, she said, “really took on communism” without resorting to McCarthyist tactics, staking out a position in defense of strong New Deal-era social programs while rejecting radicalism.

Scholten applauded Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), in whose district the event took place, and Stevens’ likely successor, state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who Scholten said was in the audience Monday evening.

Gottheimer praised Scholten for having the “courage” not to cower in the face of “major blowback” as support for Israel has become highly unpopular among the Democratic base, particularly as a lawmaker who’s not Jewish.

He attributed the shifting tides on Israel policy among Democratic elected officials in part to pressure and harassment from vocal anti-Israel activists, which can be particularly effective with lawmakers for whom the issue is not top of mind and don’t have Jewish or other constituents invested in it. Other pro-Israel colleagues have offered a similar diagnosis.

“All you had to do is say this magic word [genocide] and it would all go away,” he said. “That’s how this thing started. And then the disinformation gets out there and, of course, it’s everywhere.”

Gottheimer described socialists as a separate entity trying to hijack the Democratic Party by playing on real anxieties about the economy, and then, “in a crafty way, [they] threw the Jewish thing into there, and they kind of melded it together” — blaming economic problems on U.S. aid to Israel.

“But this is not about money to Israel when you protest outside a temple, or boycott a Democratic member of Congress from buying coffee at his coffee shop in his own district,” Gottheimer continued. “It has nothing to do with your position on Israel. That’s just finding a great scapegoat.”

Ultimately, he said, it became easier for Democrats to stay silent. “You’re kind of nuts right now in Democratic politics for running around and talking about this stuff in the way that we do. It’s not popular, right? You get harassed for it. People cancel fundraisers.”

He said that some once-dependable allies have said they’ll stick with him on key votes, but have been unwilling to speak up boldly and publicly.

He warned that the same trends are growing in the GOP.

Gottheimer emphasized the need for the Jewish community to remain strong and optimistic even in the face of hardship.

He said that the current environment has shown the community who its friends and allies are, as well as bringing the Jewish community closer together. He said that figures like himself and Scholten are “not going quietly” and intend to fight back in the face of attacks from socialists.

“We [the Jewish community] know we’ve got to look out for each other, and that only we can overcome this by working together. We got to stay focused. [Enemies of Israel and the Jewish community] spent a long time — decades — focused on how they’re going to tear it apart,” Gottheimer said. “We were a little asleep at the switch, I think, but now we’re up and we’re focused and we know what we need to do to actually overcome it — overcoming socialism and overcoming antisemitism.”

In a statement to JI, Gottheimer thanked Scholten for inviting him to the event and emphasized that “silence is not an option” in the face of antisemitism.

“This is a moment of consequence, and we all have to stand up, speak out, and say plainly that hate has no place in our country. I’ll always stand with the Jewish community against antisemitism, and I’m proud to be in the room with so many others who feel the same way,” Gottheimer said.

Prior to the Q&A with the two members of Congress, Senor delivered prepared remarks and then conducted a separate Q&A session with Stephens. In his opening remarks, Senor pushed back against the accusations of genocide against Israel, describing them as a modern iteration of the ancient blood libel.

The genocide accusation has been deployed, Senor said, to attack every Jew and Jewish institution, including the preschoolers at Temple Israel, and to declare Israel’s existence fundamentally illegitimate. And, he said, political leaders have joined in by parroting the genocide accusation.

Brian Hermelin, the president of the Detroit Federation, told JI that the idea for the event came from a conversation between himself and Senor.

“He wanted to come have a conversation with the community, not to advocate for any particular candidate, but to talk about the seriousness of the issues that we’re facing around antisemitism, around the blood libel of the genocide lie and put it in historical context for the community to understand,” Hermelin said. “This has a lot of historical precedent that hasn’t bode well for the Jewish community, and we should be paying attention.”

Hermelin said the event was “really well received” and that it was particularly poignant to host it at Temple Israel on the seven-month anniversary of the terrorist attack, marking the first time that some attendees had returned to the synagogue since the attack happened. “For the community, it was important, it was meaningful to be there,” Hermelin said.

Bringing together the Federation, AJC and ADL to host the event provided a “united front” among the major Jewish advocacy organizations and demonstrated that “everybody realizes the seriousness of the decisions that we have in front of us,” he continued.

He said that Senor and Stephens had discussed the “obsessive focus on Zionist participation in political life” in the current moment, and how that is a unique facet of the current electoral cycle.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the state, the pro-El-Sayed coalition Michigan Jews for Democracy held an event night with Brad Lander, the progressive Jewish Israel critic expected to join the House next year, and former Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI).

Decky Alexander, the chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish caucus and one of the hosts of that event, said that the goal of the event was to create an intimate space for traditional Democratic Jewish voters who are unsure how to vote to talk through their feelings and concerns.

The coalition, which is not formally affiliated with El-Sayed’s campaign but issued a recent petition in support of him, also recently held a similar event with Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), another progressive Jewish House member.