The police officer took the pamphlets from my hand and began flipping through them while another stepped away to call the station. I stood on the sidewalk waiting as they discussed city ordinances and whether what I was doing violated any of them. The pamphlets themselves were about antisemitism.

Even now, a few days later, that detail still strikes me as absurd.

A few weeks after Berkley residents woke up to find antisemitic propaganda distributed throughout the city overnight, I found myself standing in the same city explaining to police officers why I was handing out literature about antisemitism.

As I waited, I found myself looking around more than listening. My son’s soccer practice is held on that block. I’ve stood there countless times. Like most places that become part of the routine of family life, it had long ago faded into the background. It was simply one more familiar piece of the geography of home. Yet standing there that day, watching police officers review pamphlets and discuss complaints, I kept asking myself the same question:

The obvious answer is antisemitism, but that answer feels incomplete. Jews do not have the luxury of being surprised by antisemitism. If that were all this was, I doubt I would still be thinking about it. What has stayed with me is something more difficult to articulate. The entire interaction felt strangely out of place, not because I felt like an outsider, but because I didn’t.

My family has been in Michigan since the 1880s. My grandfather was an American veteran. My great-grandfather was an American veteran. This is not a place I moved to. It is not a place I adopted. It is home.

Perhaps that is why I have spent the last few days thinking........

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