The Terror Attack at a Michigan Synagogue

Jesse Arm grew up going to Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, where, last week, a heavily armed terrorist attempted to carry out mass murder. The attacker was shot and killed, and everyone inside the temple’s preschool survived.

Arm recalls his years in school, when anti-Israel protesters would demonstrate outside synagogues and the Jewish Community Center. “It became a familiar ritual of intimidation,” he writes, “and the Jewish community’s response was just as familiar: we absorbed it, tried to ignore it, and moved on.”

It’s time for change, Arm argues. “Israel follows a simple rule: when your neighbors begin ratcheting up threats to destroy you, take them seriously—and respond in ways that ensure they fear you more than you fear them,” he writes. “American Jews would be wise to absorb this lesson.”

Read more from his powerful essay.

Earlier this month, Texas Senator John Cornyn, who is seeking his fifth term, squeaked past Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is backed by some Donald Trump allies, in the Republican primary, winning by just 26,000 votes out of the 2.1 million cast. A third candidate, Congressman Wesley Hunt, earned 13.5 percent of the vote.

“It was a clash between the old guard that first built Texas into a red fortress and an insurgent wing eager to raze it and rebuild one for the Trump era,” Charles Blain writes. “The result was surprising: even in a changing party, experience and institutional power still matter.”

Cornyn and Paxton will head to a runoff in May. Read more about the race, the candidates, and what Texas Republicans will be looking for.

The English countryside, known for its rolling hills, grazing sheep, and drystone walls, is celebrated across the globe—except in England.

“Where most people see a rural idyll, Britain’s bureaucrats spy a scandal,” Joanna Williams writes. “The countryside is a ‘white environment,’ they complain. ‘White,’ by their warped logic, means definitionally hostile to nonwhite people, which means racism, which is bad. So things must change.”

Last month, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs reportedly established “diversity targets” for the countryside, with plans to attract more Muslims, recruit “diverse” staff, and release marketing materials that show ethnic minorities. Meantime, Canterbury Cathedral, a place of worship for more than eight centuries, has been hosting silent discos.

“Our cultural custodians have so little faith in England’s heritage that they assume the only way to interest people and attract visitors is fundamentally to alter it,” Williams writes.

Read more on England’s cultural suicide.

In Being Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, Andrew Burstein examines Thomas Jefferson’s life “in his own historical context,” Edward Short writes. “Burstein shows his mastery of the Jefferson archive on every page, but he also brings judicious psychological insight to the task. Archives, after all, do not interpret themselves, and it is the discriminating scholar and critic in Burstein that gives his book its unusual distinction.”

Read Short’s review.

“I wonder if you could draw a straight line between all the stupid things SF does and its declining population. Nah. They’re probably unrelated.”

Photo credits: Emily Elconin / Stringer / Getty Images News via Getty Images