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I woke up like I would any other Thursday morning. Made the bed. Got my coffee. Tried to catch a few minutes of news before the kids woke up.
That’s when I saw it — Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky had been killed at a gathering at the Capitol Jewish Museum.
A couple of minutes later, I found myself doing something I’d never done before: calling the local police to request extra patrols around my children’s Jewish day school. That morning, I stood in my kitchen with my phone in one hand and a growing, familiar anxiety in the other. Was it too much to call? Was it reckless not to? I wasn’t sure. But I knew I wasn’t alone.
For me, the attack hit especially close to home. Before moving to Cincinnati, I worked at a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. The event Sarah and Yaron attended was like so many I’d been to. These weren’t rallies or protests. They were conversations. Thoughtful, quiet, usually with some degree of security.
Elias Rodriguez didn’t know Sarah Milgrim or Yaron Lischinsky — not the work they did, not that they were about to be engaged. All he knew was that they were Jewish. Not Israeli — just Jewish. He waited outside, pacing on his phone, until he saw people who looked like us and decided they were the enemy. He didn’t kill Sarah at first; she tried to crawl away. He reloaded and deliberately ended her life. His actions weren’t impulsive. They were targeted, cold, and rooted in ideology.
You think evil is going to come to your house in big black boots, shouting orders, waving flags.
But this time it came in a hoodie, scrolling on a phone. It looks like a regular guy standing on the sidewalk. It speaks the language of liberation — but it drips with dehumanization.
This attack didn’t feel random or distant. It felt like the logical end to a pattern we’ve been watching. The chants, the protests, and the harassment didn’t feel like background noise anymore. They felt like warnings. When Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine” and pulled out his keffiyeh after murdering Sarah and Yaron, it didn’t sound any different from the people yelling outside the Matisyahu concert. Same slogans. Same rage. Just carried to its inevitable, horrifying conclusion.
I wondered if other Jewish moms in Cincinnati were feeling the same way — if the tension I’d been carrying was something they recognized too. So I asked. I reached out to mothers with kids in public schools and Jewish day schools, in Cincinnati and beyond.
What they told me wasn’t always fear, not in the dramatic sense. It was more like a quiet calculation, the mental math of safety and identity:
A mom with children at Rockwern Academy told me she woke up to the news just like I did. “The news was awful. This is what we’ve feared might happen with all the hate out there. But I am grateful they go somewhere where they can feel proud of being Jewish.”
Like many parents whose children attend Jewish day schools, she said the physical security measures made a real difference, not just practically, but emotionally. At drop-off, there’s a police car out front. The building has bulletproof windows. “It’s not that it erases the fear,” she said, “but it helps.” Inside the school, her kids sing Jewish songs in the hallway. Everyone celebrates the same holidays. If her son wears an IDF shirt, no one bats an eye. “They can just be Jewish — openly, fully,” she said. “And that means everything to me.”
She worries about the future, knowing her kids can’t stay in that sheltered environment forever. “They will have to face antisemitism when they leave,” she said quietly. “I just hope the school prepares them well for that reality.”
A mom of teenagers told me she wasn’t particularly concerned about safety at Sycamore schools. “There are a lot of Jewish kids at Sycamore,” she added. “It’s a good place.” But what shook her was how close the D.C. shooting hit home. “It felt like it could have been me.” The night before, she had been at a Jewish Federation of Cincinnati event held at the JCC. “At first, I thought the police presence was too much,” she said. “But then I heard the news, and I was grateful they were there.”
An Israeli mother with a daughter at the Greene School in Sycamore told me that Israelis have a different relationship to danger. “Most of us [Israelis] send our kids to school,” she said. “It’s scary, but we’re used to scary.” Her daughter wears Hebrew t-shirts to school and feels fine. But the randomness of the violence gave her pause. “It was too easy,” she said. “It’s not like war. It’s here.”
Still, she told me she feels safe sending her daughter to school. “I do feel safe, even though hatred is everywhere all the time.”
In Mason, one mother told me that when she first heard the news of the D.C. shooting, her mind immediately went to her own child. “My first thought was, ‘That could be my daughter,’” she said. “It is terrifying as a parent of young adults to know that their independence is a two-sided coin. We can’t protect them as much as we think we can.”
Mason City Schools have long been considered academically strong, but the experience of being Jewish there, this mother said, has been fraught. “We’ve experienced racism and antisemitism in ways I would have never imagined,” she explained. Sometimes it was a student yelling a slur. Other times, a teacher’s inappropriate remark. When her oldest daughter once proposed starting a Jewish student group at Mason High School, she was told she could “join in with the African American student group.” The message was clear: there was no space carved out for Jewish identity.
Still, she and her family remain visible. “We don’t hide who we are,” she said. But she admitted she sometimes finds herself watching the world more carefully, more warily, thinking about which of her children might be most at risk. One of her daughters, now in college, has pulled back from Jewish campus life entirely after a protester entered her university’s Chabad center. Another daughter, attending a different school, has leaned in more deeply, actively seeking safe spaces and strong allies. “The trauma that our children experience is unimaginable as a parent,” she said. “Even when these young adults seek out safe spaces and relationships, they are vulnerable.”
Her youngest, just sixteen, is heading to Israel this summer. “I did feel more anxious about the timing,” she said, “but we strongly believe in supporting Israel and feeling connected to the Jewish state.”
When asked what might help her feel more secure, her answer wasn’t about metal detectors or patrol cars, but education. “I wish mandatory history and Holocaust education were in place in all schools, beginning in grade school,” she said. “We’re moving in the wrong direction — increasing bigotry and encouraging hate.” She no longer expects administrators to respond meaningfully to antisemitism, but she still believes in teaching critical thinking and empathy. “Without that,” she said, “students only know what they learn at home, which sets the tone for future beliefs, words, and actions.”
A grandmother of children in Washington, D.C., told me she texted her daughter the moment she saw the news, terrified her son-in-law had been at the event. “My first fear was that he had been killed. Not because he worked at the embassy, but because he was Jewish,” she said. “I got the school email about safety procedures, but it didn’t make me feel better. I just feel like it’s everywhere.”
For one Ohio mom whose son attends Ohio State University, the news brought an all-too-familiar dread. “After hearing about the shooting, I was horrified and deeply saddened by how much hate and evil exist in this country,” she said.
What came next felt even closer to home: discovering that Guy Christensen, an OSU student, posted videos glorifying the shooter and spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories, accusing Jews of orchestrating violence against themselves.
His posts quickly gained national attention. One chilling video showed Christensen celebrating the murders, saying, “My boy just bodied two IDF soldiers.” Neither victim was a soldier; both were Jewish civilians attending an event at a museum.
Like many Jewish parents, she finds herself walking a painful line, encouraging pride in identity while constantly strategizing for safety. “We always advise our son not to get into arguments and to be polite and respectful, as he always is,” she said. “If someone asks if he’s Jewish, we told him to say, ‘I don’t believe in any religion.’ He doesn’t need to answer personal questions.”
Despite the fear, she finds comfort in her son’s quiet resilience. “He studies once a week with a rabbi and is proud to do so,” she shared. “I don’t believe he feels shame about who he is or where he’s from.”
Though the recent weeks haven’t changed her assessment of campus safety, the anxiety remains constant. “As a Jewish and Israeli mother,” she added quietly, “I worry 24/7.”
Jewish parents have always carried a quiet anxiety — it’s woven into the caution we pass down like an heirloom.
As one mother put it: “It’s not panic. It’s pressure. It’s always there — like a hum in the background.”
There’s a quote that keeps popping up on my feed, from Elica Le Bon: “Sometimes humans have trouble understanding that society doesn’t collapse at the inception of a moral virus, but at the height of infestation. The Nazis came to power in 1933, but the Holocaust didn’t begin until 1941. So what was happening in those eight years in between? This.”
This — the silence, the rationalizing, the normalization of hate. Just loud enough to be audible. Just quiet enough to ignore.
