When I was a boy, an armed attack took place at my family’s Moscow synagogue. In those early post-Soviet days, my mother wouldn’t let me leave the house wearing my yarmulke, fearful I would be the target of slurs, or worse, against “dirty Jews.” 

As the son of the chief rabbi of Moscow, I personally felt the effect security concerns have on communal life. For centuries, persecution, expulsion, pogroms and mass murder left Jews around the world with the quiet expectation of antisemitism — a sense that hatred was an inevitable part of life. History taught my ancestors that reality meant being enslaved, denied rights and citizenship, and marched to gas chambers.

I was told, though, that it wasn’t like that everywhere. That there was a place where all people were free and protected. Where Jews could walk the streets proudly without looking over their shoulders in fear. We all viewed America as the shining city on the hill: a place where Jews lived in peace, prosperity and more importantly — where they lived free from fear. 

When I moved to the United States and later became a rabbi on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I tasted freedom — but it was fleeting.