I’ve spent years as a journalist covering difficult stories in Detroit and across Michigan. But when an active shooter situation came to Temple Israel in West Bloomfield — a synagogue in my hometown, in my community — I froze.
In many ways, I’d been preparing to tell this story my whole life. It feels like the entire Jewish community in Metro Detroit has been bracing for something like this for as long as I can remember.
Eli Newman is a health reporter for Bridge Michigan.
But when the time came, I didn’t know what to do.
The day started typical enough. I walked into the newsroom slightly after lunch, preparing to meet with our executive team about parental leave — my wife and I are expecting a baby girl in June. One of our reporters was in a flurry gathering her things for an assignment, but I wasn’t paying attention.
As I sat down with our benefits committee, our CEO started by saying she appreciated our time given the breaking news. “What’s going on?” I asked. I hadn’t seen our staff messages since I stepped into our office. “You may want to check Slack,” she said, referring to our inner-office communications software. “There’s an active shooter situation at Temple Israel.”
Related:
Temple Israel is not my synagogue, but it’s one I know well. I grew up in West Bloomfield, and Temple Israel was a frequent destination for the bar and bat mitzvahs of my youth. But on a Thursday afternoon, it was not the Torah services that congregations hold in the morning on those days that became my immediate cause for concern — for the most part, Temple Israel was a daycare for Jewish families like mine.
Sitting in Detroit, I watched a flurry of messages from those at the scene — a mile-long row of police cars, crying parents, a synagogue under attack. I couldn’t focus on our discussions about 401(k)s and PTO. Everything else was white noise.
I was stuck. I didn’t know how, or if, I could be helpful to the team. Could I offer context? Background? So I did what many in my field do in a moment of crisis — I started typing some background information and offering personal observations that I thought would be helpful: yes, the synagogue had security like most Jewish centers. Yes, they do active shooter drills just like I did at my Jewish day school.
It felt like I was watching from the sidelines, offering little things to help, but never quite sure if they actually were. And as I wrote, the reporting on the ground continued without me. I stared at my screen for the next few hours, wondering if worse news would come, if kids, teachers, congregants or rabbis had been harmed or worse.
It wasn’t hard for me to imagine being on the other side of the story.
My son attends a different Jewish daycare in metro Detroit. Earlier this week, he was there celebrating his 2nd birthday alongside his classmates. If it were a different place, could it have been his playroom that was targeted?
My wife, mother and other family members were at Temple Israel the night before the attack for an event. On another day, could it have been them hiding and running for safety?
It was a series of near misses. I couldn’t say that for others in my life.
A supervisor messaged me: I know you are in journalist mode, but this is your community. If you need anything, let me know. I wasn’t really sure what I needed. I responded: Appreciate it. Just want to be helpful in telling story with what I can offer.
Even after it became clear people were generally safe, I couldn’t focus on anything else that day. I just wanted to go home, hold my kid, and check up on people. I told my editors I wasn’t in the right headspace to do anything of substance and I was thankful they understood. I logged off.
Later that night, as I looked at the photo galleries and videos taken by the outlets on the scene that day, I was met with a surreal feeling. In America, we’ve grown used to the format of viewing the aftermath of mass casualty events through a detached media-informed lens — children, held closely by their parents and loved ones, fleeing down a street by police escort as sirens ring by, all captured in writing and footage.
But studying the photos taken by my peers in the Detroit press corps, that distance closed. I recognized old friends and acquaintances — people I knew through Jewish schools and summer camps. People who appear on my social media feeds, who I bump into at coffee shops and holiday parties, whose kids may someday play and learn with mine in the same venues where I once knew them. The gap between reporter and subject collapsed.
It was a reminder of the naked truth of our profession: though reporters may try their best to remove themselves, the stories we cover are never as far away as they seem.
Related
Republish This Story
