The world’s Jewish population peaked 85 years ago at an estimated 16.6 million. After the horrors of World War II, that number was down to 11 million.
In the U.S. today, there are fewer than 8 million Jewish adults and 2.5 million Jewish children, most living in the Northeast. Just 1 in 10 call the Midwest home. About 2% of Michiganders are Jewish, most living on the east side.
Seventeen-year-old Sam Ostrow lives on the west side.
That’s why — among the hundreds of people making up the sea of diversity gathered to greet the “second gentleman” earlier this week — Ostrow’s yarmulke was the only one I saw.
“I can’t vote, but I feel like Doug Emhoff is a face that a lot of Jewish people can look to at this time,” he told me. “It’s been a difficult year, and he’s always been a constant voice for us.”
Thursday morning, while Vice President Kamala Harris was in Georgia preparing for her first sit-down interview since announcing her candidacy for president, her husband, Emhoff, was with supporters in a west Michigan brewery.
How important is this state to the Harris campaign?
This is Emhoff’s first public appearance since the Democratic National Convention. After announcing Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, Harris, along with Emhoff, spent their first two days in Michigan, shoring up union support.
One criticism of the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign was not bothering to visit a UAW union hall. That’s akin to leaving “I Will Always Love You” off a Whitney Houston greatest hits playlist.
Conversely, Donald Trump made Michigan a focus in 2016, including three appearances there in the last week of the campaign. Of the 83 counties in Michigan, Trump flipped 12.
Democrats are pushing back. They have receipts to show: Since January 2021, nearly 400,000 jobs, including more than 20,000 clean-energy jobs, have come to the state. More than 60 clean-energy projects are underway courtesy of $26 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden championed. In fact, a week before Biden stepped out of the race, Harris made a campaign stop about an hour south of where Emhoff started his Thursday morning.
The chants of “Doug, Doug, Doug” heard during the convention briefly echoed inside the Broad Leaf Brewery. Emhoff — along with “Coach Walz” — used their time in Chicago to show America a version of manhood that doesn’t mock others or rip shirts off. If Harris breaks a gender barrier by becoming president in January, Emhoff will be setting a precedent of his own — and he’ll have a platform.
The “guy thing” is going to be new for us. The fashion choices of past presidents’ spouses have landed them on the cover of Vogue. What will Emhoff’s fashion choices be, and will fashionistas care?
Much in the way the election of President Obama changed the way we discussed race in America, there will be a lot for us to process as a nation when it comes to gender if Emhoff takes on the amorphous position of “first gentleman.”
And then there’s the fact that he’s Jewish. For Ostrow, the teenager at Emhoff’s Michigan rally, that means more than anything.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” he said. “The rise of antisemitism as the war in the Middle East rages. I’ve faced a deal of antisemitism, and all my friends as well. It’s just grown and kind of caught us by surprise.”
I asked Ostrow what he had experienced.
“It ranges from ‘why are you killing Palestinians?’ to Holocaust denial, making light of it, stuff like that,” he said about life in high school since Oct. 7. Social media have brought out the worst sentiments, Ostrow said, “because you don’t have to say it to the person’s face.”
Ostrow recently took a trip to Israel and visited the site of the music festival where Hamas killed nearly 400 people. His cousin was among the 3,000 who attended. The day of the attack, he called Ostrow while hiding in a bunker to let him know he was alive.
Ostrow said one class at his school had a discussion about the war: “I raised my hand to talk about what my cousin had been going through, what I had gone through that weekend and, I mean, I remember I almost broke down crying because it was so horrifying. And I remember giggles from the front of the classroom and laughs.”
Ostrow said he wears his yarmulke in part to show he isn’t afraid.
He said seeing Emhoff out campaigning gives him hope that things will get better.
“I’ve always had this connection to Israel,” he told me, “to be a witness of the horrors that were committed … but also to see the strength of my people and to know that we’re not alone.”
When Emhoff took the mic, he playfully encouraged the chants of his name, before turning attention to Harris’ plan for the economy. He talked about the jobs that have come to the state during the Biden-Harris administration, the investments made in infrastructure. And he acknowledged the commitment to unions.
“In the few times I get to see my wife, she says, ‘Get out there,’ ” Emhoff joked, because “she knows we have 68 days left and every single minute and every single day counts.”
He also spent a brief moment on his faith.
“I didn’t have to explain to her who I was as a Jewish person,” he said of Harris. “She just knew. She knew who we were, about our traditions, what our values are.”
In a nearly 20-minute speech, that was all he said about it.
He may not know it, but for at least one teenager in the crowd, that was exactly what he came to hear.
