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