Macon sends a message to haters: You’re not from here

The names of Marian and Gus Kaufman Sr. now hang in blessed memory on the wall of Temple Beth Israel in Macon, but years ago my wife and I attended a memorable Seder in their home. Memorable for the tomato aspic, and most of all, the Southern fried gefilte fish.

They were devoutly Jewish and deeply Macon, as Ms. Kaufman’s Passover menu suggests. Those were also the qualities that marked a service Sunday, organized in response to a demonstration by a small group of antisemitic grifters, up from South Florida on a tear through Georgia, with other stops in Warner Robins and Marietta. At Temple Beth Israel, located in the heart of old Macon, they hung an effigy with a skull cap and a rainbow flag from a street sign outside the synagogue.

“Temple Beth Israel has peacefully coexisted with its neighbors for 164 years, and, to my knowledge, it has not experienced anything like what happened on the steps of the temple, just before Shabbat on June 23, when hate came to call,” Temple President Simon Becker told a crowd of more than 900 which filled the sanctuary at Mulberry Street United Methodist Church and spilled over to the fellowship hall.

This was not the first response to this provocation. Some 300 people showed up the day after the incident for a counter-demonstration and had a nonviolent face-off with some of the haters who had come back to the temple. Later that day, the haters moved on to stage a similar demonstration at the Chabad of Cobb Synagogue in Marietta.

The original plan had been to hold Sunday’s “service of love and unity” at Temple Beth Israel, but it was moved to the neighboring church when it became clear the event had mushroomed into something bigger. Sen. John Ossoff and U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop were among a number of religious and political leaders who attended, along with a contingent from Atlanta’s Congregation Bet Haverim, whose choir got a standing ovation.

“This is Macon, where an attack on any one of us is an attack on all of us,” said Macon Mayor Lester Miller.

Macon runs a close race with Atlanta when it comes to self-congratulation, but the robust response to this provocation backs up the mayor’s words. It was a theme that ran through many of the speeches Sunday.

“I believe the response from this town would have been identical, no matter who was being hung,” said Temple Vice President Mike Kaplan, who had a brief confrontation with the leader of the hate group on the day of the incident.

Kaplan said he asked the man why his group chose Macon and was told it was just picked randomly.

“I told him, you randomly chose wrong,” Kaplan said.

Whether the haters would agree with that is debatable. They’re out for the cheap publicity and the chance to make a few bucks off hate merch, so it likely makes little difference to them where they go, as long as there are people to yell at. But there’s no doubt that in their expedition up I-75, they ended up in a much different place than the one they came from.

There aren’t nearly as many Jews in Macon as there are in South Florida, but their families go back five or six generations in some cases. They are rooted in their community in a way that has provided solace at this troubling moment. More than might be the case elsewhere, when the haters went after the Jews of this city, they were viewed as attacking Macon itself.

Though they were few and feckless, however, the haters who showed up outside Temple Beth Israel are riding a rising tide of reported antisemitic incidents. Ossoff reminded the audience Sunday that the swastika is not simply a symbol of hate, but one of murder, genocide and all that hate brings with it.

“For middle Georgia’s Jewish community, these aren’t abstractions or ancient stories. These are the experiences of beloved family members with whom we were raised,” said the state’s first Jewish senator.