20 | JANUARY 27 • 2022

F

or 18 years, a group of
protesters has gathered
every Saturday outside
one of this city’s synagogues
during Shabbat morning ser-
vices, brandishing signs with
slogans such as “Jewish Power
Corrupts.”
Last week, for the first time,
the city council of Ann Arbor
issued a formal resolution
condemning the protests as
antisemitic.
The resolution answers
the pleas of members of
Beth Israel Congregation, a
Conservative synagogue just a
few blocks from the University
of Michigan’s Hillel center, as
well as the synagogue’s neigh-
bors. They have appealed to
the city for years to take deci-
sive action against the protest-
ers, whom they say are target-
ing Jews at a house of worship
and harassing members of the
community.
The protesters’ stated pur-
pose is to critique Israel policy,
but members of the group fre-
quently bring antisemitic signs
and chant antisemitic slogans.
The group’s de facto leader,
Henry Herskovitz, identifies

himself as a former Jew and
has spread Holocaust denial
and praised neo-Nazis in blog
posts.
A congregant, in addition
to a local Holocaust survivor,
sued the protesters and the city
in 2019, alleging that the pro-
tests violate worshippers’ First
Amendment rights to safely
practice their religion and that
the city has not enforced local
ordinances that the protesters
are violating. That lawsuit was
dismissed in September, with
the U.S. Court of Appeals rul-
ing that the protesters had a
free-speech right to continue
their activities.
For years the city declined to
get involved in what was hap-
pening on Washtenaw Avenue.
That changed during the city
council meeting on Jan. 18,
three days after a rabbi and
his congregants were taken
hostage during services by an
antisemitic assailant in Texas.
“The Ann Arbor City
Council condemns all forms of
antisemitism and, in particu-
lar, the weekly antisemitic rally
on Washtenaw Avenue,” states
the resolution, which was

approved unanimously by all
voting council members. The
resolution also “calls upon the
persons who rally to express
antisemitism on Washtenaw
Avenue to renounce extrem-
ism, disband, and cease their
weekly show of aggressive
bigotry.”
The council further
“declares its support for the
Beth Israel Congregation, their
guests, and all members of the
Jewish Community in Ann
Arbor, each of whom has the
right to worship, gather and
celebrate free from intimida-
tion, harassment and fear of
violence.”
“I was just elated,” Beth
Israel Rabbi Nadav Caine told
the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
noting that, in the wake of the
failed lawsuit that had targeted
the city directly, “it would be a
lot easier not to say anything…
I really thought it was bravery
and an awareness on their part
that, in this time, leaders have
to speak up about the hate that
happens to people who are not
in their group.”
Caine had moved to Ann
Arbor in 2018 after previously

serving as a rabbi in Poway,
California — the site of a 2019
deadly antisemitic shooting
at a Chabad house. Seeing the
council’s resolution come only
three days after the synagogue
hostage crisis in Colleyville,
Texas, Caine said, “was the
yin-yang of extreme emotions.”
The hostage situation had
gripped the world’s attention
and renewed focus on antise-
mitic threats targeting Jewish
houses of worship. The rabbi
held hostage in Texas, Charlie
Cytron-Walker, is himself a
graduate of the University of
Michigan.
But the resolution, which
did not mention the events
in Texas but did reference
antisemitic signs seen at the
U.S. Capitol building during
the attempted insurrection on
Jan. 6, 2021, had actually been
in the works for months, Caine
said. Most notably, he said, it
was spearheaded by the mayor
of Ann Arbor himself.
“This did not come from,
like, ‘Jewish friends,’” Caine
said, adding that he and the
congregation had been cau-
tious about not appearing to
fit “the Jewish stereotype of
the person who’s making my
leaders do something they
don’t want to do. In fact, that’s
kind of what we’re accused of,
which is using ‘Jewish power.’”
Reached for comment, Ann
Arbor Mayor Christopher
Taylor said he couldn’t recall
the exact origins of the res-
olution but that it had come
out of “conversations” with the
Ann Arbor Jewish Federation.

OUR COMMUNITY

Ann Arbor City Council
condemns weekly synagogue
protesters as antisemitic.

At Last

ANDREW LAPIN JTA

A protester stands outside Beth
Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, in 2020 flanked by
anti-Israel and antisemitic signs.
On Jan. 18, 2022, the Ann Arbor
City Council formally condemned
the weekly protests, which had
been going on for 18 years.

ALEX SHERMAN/JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY