I was an early childhood educator before retirement. Working with young children and their families was a rewarding and wonderful life. I taught preschool for a while, directed four different centers, consulted with dozens of childcare programs, and finished my career teaching Child Development for fifteen years at a Midwest university.
The March 12 attack on Temple Israel and on the preschool that was housed in the building, 140 children, hit me hard.
“…Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a naturalized US citizen from Lebanon, armed himself with a rifle and loaded his truck full of fireworks and gasoline before ramming his truck through the doors of the synagogue while children were in the building.”
Three days after the attack, photographs of the scene were published. I heard the temple leadership were hesitant to do that, worrying that the visuals might add to the trauma of those involved. Eventually they decided that the story needed to be told. Here’s the link to the pictures, but I was stuck on the one I posted at the beginning of this article.
When I see that photo, I look at it and visualize a classroom of preschoolers being lined up by calm but terrified teachers and evacuated from the building. It must have been lunchtime, and in the hurry, the children left behind their Gogurts, their little cups of peaches, a chocolate chip cookie. Was the preschooler who had to leave that cookie on the table indignant, as only a four-year-old can be? I imagine the teachers had had training on what to do should their building be attacked. They barricaded the doors. Everyone got out uninjured, at least physically. Who knows what the nightmares of those children, their parents, the teachers are these days.
In my professional lifetime, there have been at least three major terrorist attacks in the U.S. in which childcare centers were targeted, directly or indirectly. When Timothy McVey blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1996, nineteen children were killed, sixteen of whom were in the American Kids Daycare Center at the time. In 1993, when the World Trade Center was bombed a first time, all the children and teachers escaped safely from the Children’s Discovery Center, 100 yards from the towers. In the much larger explosion in 2001, when the planes hit, the children and teachers also escaped safely, though the chaotic descriptions of the day are haunting. Teachers carried an infant on each hip, and the older children grabbed on behind as they navigated the streets of lower Manhattan, trying to reach safety. Eventually someone gave the teachers some shopping carts. Again none of these children were killed (though there were kids on a couple of the planes who died.)
So here we are. Sadly and fortunately, in 2026, a Jewish synagogue is better prepared for an attack than ever before. Security is hired by most Jewish synagogues and programs these days. The guard here was armed and stopped the terrorist before he could kill anyone. The guard himself was the only one injured, except for the assailant who shot himself. Thank whatever God you pray to for the lack of loss of life.
Some have politicized the attack on these small children. Many people, instead of expressing outrage over this potential massacre, turn to “what-aboutism,” not quite to justify it…but almost. Some blamed the fact that part of the terrorist’s family was killed in Lebanon recently. We hear that the brother was part of the terrorist network Hezbollah, but even if that’s not true, targeting small, Jewish children in retaliation is…brutal antisemitism.
That’s one sorrow that’s haunted me this week, in this week of much suffering around the world.
I can’t think of an appropriate song to share, but this picture of me (from several years ago) is one of my favorites, many fond memories, and it makes me happy.
If you can be with small children, do it! My granddaughter and her dad have taken to calling me on WhatsApp most mornings to “say hi to Nana.” Makes my day every time.
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