To Claim Our Hero, We Must Also Own Our Hate

by Jay Saper

While we as Michiganders may take pride in Ann Arbor-educated Rabbi Cytron-Walker having heroically helped his fellow congregants held hostage at his Colleyville, Texas, synagogue escape on Saturday, January 15, 2022, we must also confront our state’s contributions to the hatred that created the crisis. 

While leading his weekly Shabbat service at Congregation Beth Israel, Rabbi Cytron-Walker, who previously worked with community organizations in Detroit, turned toward Jerusalem to pray. At that precise moment, the man Cytron-Walker had boiled a glass of tea for, had invited in off the street to find warmth and shelter, clicked his gun, setting a nightmare in motion.

My own rabbi, Amy Bigman, of Congregation Shaarey Zedek, in East Lansing, rushed to the home of our fellow congregant Judy Walker, Rabbi Cytron-Walker’s mother. Rabbi Bigman sat at her side to console her through the inconsolable.

The gunman had made a calculated decision to target a holy Jewish space on a holy Jewish day because he believed, “Jews control the world. Jews control the media. Jews control the banks.”

By taking Rabbi Cytron-Walker hostage, the gunman wanted to gain access to “the Chief Rabbi of the United States,” who, being all powerful in his estimation, could release the prisoner he wanted set free.  

While it is tempting to dismiss the gunman as deranged, we do so at our own peril. The antisemitic beliefs he subscribed to are not unusual. They have a long history that has made them commonplace. We cannot put an end to the uptick in antisemitic violence, from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh, Poway to Colleyville, without confronting the ways our own culture condones and cultivates hate.

Decades before Hitler carried out the Holocaust, there was a Detroit businessman who made the aspiring architect of the genocide proud. Hitler longed to one day be able to accomplish as much as he had in addressing the “Jewish problem.” This titan popularized the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, through publishing his version as The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. It became a seminal text in Nazi Germany and remains popular in online message forums frequented by those who have carried out the recent wave of attacks.    

Hitler celebrated this business leader’s 75th birthday by bestowing upon him a special medal, the highest honor ever given by the Nazis to a foreign national. 

In Michigan today, we do not take this man for shame, but instead continue to embrace him as our pride and joy. In doing so, we are responsible for normalizing the virulent antisemitism for which he stood, and for which far too many have fallen. 

Our roads and our hospitals, our sports stadiums and our schools, all continue to venerate this man by proudly carrying his name. 

As the gunman grew more belligerent on that day of terror, Rabbi Cytron-Walker recognized the urgency to act. He harnessed his adrenaline to pick up the chair in front of him, instruct his congregants to run, chuck the chair at the gunman, and dart out the door. At that moment, Rabbi Cytron-Walker didn’t know if he would ever get to kiss his wife and daughters one more time. But he believed that by taking action his dear congregants might have a chance at living to see another day. 

This selfless act of courage is a story for us to honor for generations to come. 

Michigan has a new hero. A hero who preaches not hate, but love.  

It is time for every last Ford Road to be renamed Cytron-Walker Way. 

Jay Saper is a congregant of Rabbi Cytron-Walker’s childhood synagogue, where his mother is still a member, Congregation Shaarey Zedek in East Lansing, Michigan.