Trump addresses Michigan synagogue as antisemitism event sparks Jewish community backlash

President Donald Trump addressed a Michigan synagogue by video Wednesday evening as part of an event orchestrated by Leo Terrell, chair of the administration’s task force for combating antisemitism, and the Zionist Organization of America.

Trump’s greeting, which was prerecorded, was met with applause from the estimated 500 Jews who had come to Congregation Shaarey Zedek in the Detroit suburbs amid a pivotal Senate election in the state that has prompted deep anxieties among its Jewish population.

The president told the crowd that Terrell “speaks for our country” and “speaks for a lot of people, a lot of people that love Israel but really, more than anything else, they don’t want to see false and inaccurate statements made about this horrible subject of antisemitism.” 

The event was billed as the first stop on Terrell’s “American Tour Against Hate” and was staged by the US Justice Department, while also serving as a fundraiser and booster for ZOA. Attendees were handed donation forms for ZOA’s Michigan chapter. The organization’s national director, Mort Klein, is close with Terrell and said he intends to participate in all future stops on the tour.

Several other Trump officials, including Terrell and US Attorney General Todd Blanche, would address the crowd over the course of the night to emphasize the administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism.

(L-r) Leo Terrell, chair of the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, with US Department of Labor official Kenneth Wolfe at an event to combat antisemitism at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, on Oct. 14, 2026. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)

A group of progressive-leaning Michigan Jewish leaders denounced the event Wednesday, saying in a statement that it “risks fueling antisemitism and dividing the Jewish community.”

The statement accused the administration of trying to “distract” from its own “authoritarian policies,” called ZOA “a far-right radical group” and criticized the Trump administration for its campus antisemitism policies, including freezing university funding and “kidnap[ping] university students.”

The Trump administration has been criticized for its handling of some anti-Israel campus protesters, including Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was grabbed and detained by masked federal agents last year after co-authoring an op-ed calling to boycott Israel. A judge later ordered Ozturk’s release.

“Trump’s cynical use of antisemitism as a tool for stifling his opponents puts all Jews in danger, ” Rabbi Josh Whinston, of Temple Beth Emeth in Ann Arbor, said in the statement. “We should all be uniting to fight the real issues of antisemitism rather than using it to score political points and stifle dissent.”

Michigan Democratic state Rep. Samantha Steckloff, who represents Shaarey Zedek’s district, said in the same release that the administration was taking advantage of “an extremely challenging time for the Metro Detroit Jewish community.”

“We must continue building bridges with our neighbors to create safer communities, not put up walls,” Steckloff said. “This administration has continued to espouse divisive rhetoric that pits communities against one another and deepens the challenges we face. All of us deserve to feel safe.”

Kobi Erez, director of ZOA’s Michigan chapter, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after the event that the evening was designed to be “nonpartisan.”

“It’s a tour against hate, and we can’t choose one side,” Erez said. “We have to fight antisemitism and hate for all.”

He argued that the event was not a ZOA fundraiser in his view, saying that it was free to attend and that the organization was asking for donations mainly to cover security costs.

He also said that the organization had been in touch with the head rabbi of Shaarey Zedek, Aaron Star, to address any concerns about the nature of the event so close to Election Day. “We had to promise Rabbi Starr that we were going to make a disclaimer that Shaarey Zedek doesn’t necessarily represent all the views of the speakers.”

Terrell did make that disclaimer, midway through the two-hour event.

Starr told JTA that there had been a back-and-forth with ZOA over the Trump video due to “a string of miscommunications and some last minute changes over the course of the day.”

Polls have shown that a majority of Jews nationwide have opposed Trump and his policies since his entry on the political scene. Yet recent fears about growing antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on the left have also alienated many Jews from the Democratic Party.

Some Michigan Jews are preparing to vote for a Republican for the first time over their objections to the Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, a harsh critic of Israel whose prior remarks on Jewish safety have also upset many in the community.

Starr and Whinston, the rabbi who signed the letter denouncing the entire Trump event, are the co-organizers of Nonnegotiable Michigan, a petition urging El-Sayed to agree with a series of statements affirming Jews and Israel.

El-Sayed’s name was not uttered from the stage Wednesday, but the Trump officials on hand took many opportunities to praise their boss’s work on Jewish issues.

“This administration, unlike any other administration, is committed 24/7 to fighting antisemitism,” Terrell told the crowd.

An estimated 500 Michigan Jews applaud Trump administration officials during an event held to address antisemitism at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, Oct. 14, 2026. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)

The Conservative synagogue was billed online as a “co-sponsor” of the event along with Frankel Jewish Academy, a local Jewish day school. But Starr told JTA, “It wasn’t our event.”

Midway through the program, Terrell stated that Shaarey Zedek “is not sponsoring this event,” adding, “The words of the speakers, mine and others, are theirs alone and are not a representation of this great religious institution.”

Terrell stated that DOJ and ZOA were the sponsors — itself an unusual arrangement between a federal agency and an activist group. Klein told JTA following the event that Terrell had contacted his organization to help organize the tour, and that ZOA “really did all the work.”

US Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has been criticized for appearing at campaign events and who recently penned a memo loosening restrictions on political activism for senior federal officials, also addressed the crowd in a prerecorded video.

“In recent years, we have seen a disturbing rise in antisemitic rhetoric and acts of hatred against fellow citizens,” Blanche said. “Hate has no place in America, and this Department of Justice remains committed to confronting it wherever it appears.”

Initially billed as a conversation between Terrell and Klein, the event functioned more as an informational session for Jews to learn how their government is responding to antisemitism.

Flyers from the FBI instructed attendees on how to respond to various categories of threat. A roundtable of local and federal law enforcement officials, led by the FBI Detroit office field director who had responded to the terror attack on Temple Israel in the state in March, sought to assure the Jews in attendance that they had their backs.

Terrell also unveiled a just-launched “American Tour Against Hate” app that, he said, would enable its users to take a pledge to fight antisemitism and “report” antisemitic incidents. It wasn’t immediately clear where the reports would be filed to. The Combat Antisemitism Movement, another activist group, was credited for the app on its download page.

Trump administration official Leo Terrell addresses Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, on the first stop of his “American Tour Against Hate,” Oct. 14, 2026. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)

Still, politics seeped in, and much of the crowd seemed happy about it. Klein attacked another anti-Zionist politician, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, by name in his remarks. He also drew enthusiastic cheers for calling to “fight the open-border policies that we had in the past, which allows unvetted people from countries whose governments and populations overwhelmingly hate Jews.”

Other Jewish speakers alluded to El-Sayed — particularly his initial reaction to the Temple Israel attack, which many Jews believed was equating the attack with Israel’s war in Lebanon. The candidate has since apologized for his initial remarks.

“No conflict overseas can ever justify trying to murder innocent people here at home, and no political candidate should ever excuse terror and hate,” Erez told the crowd.

Later, during an interfaith roundtable, Rabbi Shneur Silberberg of the Bais Chabad Torah Center in West Bloomfield leveled a more direct accusation.

“If you respond differently to a terror attack against a group of Jewish schoolchildren, and your response is any different than it would be to any other group of children, then that’s antisemitism,” Silberberg told the crowd.

During the program, Terrell inveighed against antisemitism with a showman’s flair, often to the delight of the audience, some of whom shouted his name. “News flash: I’m not Jewish. Who cares?” Terrell asked the crowd early on, to laughter and applause. He donned a red hat in the style of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” merchandise, with the lettering instead spelling, “American Tour Against Hate.”

He went after college campuses and K-12 teachers he said were “indoctrinated,” and repeatedly denounced what he called “the Jewish tax,” which he defined as the high security costs the community bears in order to safeguard its houses of worship and other institutions.

Flyers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation laid out on a table during the “American Tour Against Hate,” an event staged by the Trump administration at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, Oct. 14, 2026. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)

“For you to enjoy your right to walk down the street, to enjoy your synagogue, to go to a Jewish community center, to have your kids walk through their school, you have to pay extra security, millions of dollars,” Terrell said. “That’s going to stop.”

Terrell and Klein plan to meet with the head of Detroit’s Jewish federation as well as with rabbis at Temple Israel during their stay in town, Klein told JTA.

Erez said that Terrell’s visit to Michigan also included meetings with the mother of a Temple Israel preschooler who had been in the building during the March attack, as well as with Jewish college students who had experienced antisemitism. Terrell also met with leaders of Frankel Jewish Academy, one of the event’s co-sponsors, as well as the local Jewish Community Center, he said.

A longtime supporter of Trump, Klein said he believed the event demonstrated that more Jews were warming to the president as concerns about antisemitism have grown.

“I think more Jews certainly are more supportive of Trump than they were before, because they see what he’s done,” he said.

Sharon Matlen, a resident of nearby Farmington Hills who grew up in Skokie, Illinois, during the infamous neo-Nazi march of the 1970s, told JTA she had come to the event because “I’m very interested in antisemitism.”

“I really got a lot out of it,” Matlen said, of the talk. She spoke highly of Terrell: “I think he has our back. I’m glad that he’s there for us.”

Of El-Sayed, she said, “I pray he does not get in.”