The world's Jewish population peaked 85 years ago at an estimated 16.6 million. Following the horrors of World War II, that number dropped to 11 million.
In the United States, there are currently fewer than 8 million Jewish adults and 2.5 million Jewish children, most of them living in the Northeast. Only 1 in 10 call the Midwest home. About 2% of Michiganders are Jewish, and most live in the East.
Seventeen-year-old Sam Ostrow lives on the West Side.
Opinion columnist
Granderson Landing Station
LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports, and navigating life in America.
So, among the hundreds of people who made up the sea of diversity that gathered to greet the “second gentleman” earlier this week, Ostrow’s kippah was the only one I saw.
“I can’t vote, but I think Doug Emhoff is a face that a lot of Jews can turn to right now,” she told me. “It’s been a tough year, and he’s always been a consistent voice for us.”
On Thursday morning, as Vice President Kamala Harris was in Georgia preparing for her first interview since announcing her presidential bid, her husband, Emhoff, was with supporters at a brewery in western Michigan.
How important is this state for Harris' campaign?
This is Emhoff’s first public appearance since the Democratic National Convention. After announcing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Harris and Emhoff spent their first two days in Michigan, where they shored up union support.
One of the criticisms of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was that they didn’t bother to visit the UAW union hall. That’s like leaving “I Will Always Love You” off of Whitney Houston’s greatest hits list.
On the contrary, Donald Trump Made Michigan a focus of attention in 2016including three appearances there in the final week of the campaign. Of Michigan's 83 counties, Trump won 12.
Democrats are fighting back. They have evidence to show: Since January 2021, nearly 400,000 jobs have been created in the state, including more than 20,000 clean energy jobs. There are more than 60 clean energy projects underway thanks to the $26 billion Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden pushed through. In fact, a week before Biden dropped out of the race, Harris made a campaign stop about an hour south of where Emhoff began his Thursday morning speech.
Chants of “Doug, Doug, Doug” heard during the convention briefly echoed through the Broad Leaf Brewery. Emhoff, along with “Coach Walz,” used their time in Chicago to show America a version of masculinity that doesn’t sneer or rip shirts off. If Harris breaks a gender barrier by becoming president in January, Emhoff will set a precedent of his own and have a platform.
The topic of “men” is going to be something new for us. The fashion choices of wives of former presidents have led them to appear on the cover of Vogue. What will Emhoff’s fashion choices be? Will fashion lovers care?
Just as President Obama’s election changed the way we discuss race in America, we will have a lot to process as a nation when it comes to gender if Emhoff assumes the amorphous position of “first gentleman.”
And then there's the fact that he's Jewish. For Ostrow, the teenager who attended Emhoff's rally in Michigan, that means more than anything else.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” he said. “Anti-Semitism has increased as the war in the Middle East has progressed. I myself have faced a lot of anti-Semitism, and so have all my friends. It has grown and it has taken us by surprise.”
I asked Ostrow what he had experienced.
“It ranges from ‘why are they killing Palestinians?’ to Holocaust denial, making light of it, stuff like that,” she said of life in high school since Oct. 7. Social media has brought out the worst feelings, Ostrow said, “because you don’t have to say it to the person’s face.”
Ostrow recently traveled to Israel and visited the site of the music festival where Hamas killed nearly 400 people. His cousin was among the 3,000 people who attended. On the day of the attack, he called Ostrow while he was hiding in a bunker to let him know he was alive.
Ostrow said that in a class at her school there was a discussion about the war: “I raised my hand to talk about what my cousin had been through, what I had been through that weekend, and, I mean, I remember almost breaking down in tears because it was so horrible. And I remember laughter from the front of the classroom and laughter.”
Ostrow said he wears his kippah in part to show he is not afraid.
He said watching Emhoff campaign gives him hope that things will get better.
“I’ve always had this connection to Israel,” he told me, “witnessing the horrors that were committed… but also seeing the strength of my people and knowing that we are not alone.”
When Emhoff took the microphone, he playfully encouraged chants of his name, before focusing on Harris’ plan for the economy. He talked about the jobs that have come to the state under the Biden-Harris administration, the investments made in infrastructure and acknowledged the commitment to unions.
“The few times I see my wife, she tells me, ‘Get out there,’” Emhoff joked, because “she knows we have 68 days left and every minute and every day counts.”
He also devoted a brief moment to his faith.
“I didn’t have to explain to her who I was as a Jew,” he said of Harris. “She just knew. She knew who we were, what our traditions were and our values.”
In a speech lasting almost 20 minutes, that was all he had to say on the matter.
He may not know it, but for at least one teenager in the audience, that's exactly what he came to hear.
