When Solidarity Speaks—and Silence Falls Short

It was late Sunday night, before the first flight of my journey to Alabama, the hour when an airline lounge empties out and strangers start talking. Four of us ended up at the bar: a man from Detroit flying from Los Angeles to Chicago, a Black businessman from London on a layover to Hong Kong, a retired senior Army officer with decades of distinguished service, and me, heading to Alabama for a civil rights trip with my community.

The conversation wandered the way late night conversations do. Then the officer, meaning to amuse, offered this: “I don’t mean to say a pejorative, but you know what we used to call NYU? We called it NY Jew.”

I felt it before I thought it. A tightening, then heat, then questions arriving faster than answers. Do I respond? How? Is it worth it, with a stranger I will never see again?

The man from Detroit said, “Oh, my flight is already boarding,” and abruptly left.

The man from London looked at me and asked, “Are you Jewish?” I said yes. Before I could gather a response to the officer, this stranger stood up, came close, and apologized. He told me he could see my anger. He said he stood with me, that as a Black man he understood how normal bigotry can become. He spoke of brotherhood, of the histories our peoples share, and of how much Black and Jewish people have in common.

A few minutes later the officer had a flight to catch. “God bless you both,” he said, and he was gone. Soon the Londoner was too. I was left at the bar with the realization that I had never said a word to the man who said it.

That small preface, “I don’t mean to say a pejorative,” is what the normalization of antisemitism sounds like. It is a respected man who recognizes a remark as derogatory and shares it anyway, as a fond memory and a joke among new friends. He left blessing us, with no sign he thought anything had happened.

That ease sits against a grim backdrop. The ADL recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2025, about 17 a day, with physical assaults reaching a record high.

But an incident tally cannot capture every encounter that makes prejudice feel ordinary. There are also the casual remarks, the familiar jokes, the moments when someone says something degrading and the conversation simply moves on.

And yet the most important thing that happened that night was a stranger with no obligation to me, passing through a country not his own, who noticed. He read my face before I had found my words, and he moved toward me. That is allyship at its most essential: paying attention, and refusing to let someone sit alone with an injury.

I was headed to Alabama, where that kind of solidarity has a history. In 1965, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched beside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma. During my years at Tzedek America, I made this journey many times, leading Jewish teens from across the country through the places where the movement was fought. Before I even reached Alabama this time, a Black man from London showed me what that history looks like in a single, ordinary act.

Here is what I cannot shake. On every one of those trips, I told students the same thing: find your voice and use it. Don’t wait for someone else to speak. And on the night it was my turn, I didn’t.

I was not wrong to receive what the Londoner offered. His kindness filled the space where a confrontation might have gone, and I was moved by it. But I keep returning to a simple fact. The solidarity reached me, the person who was hurt. Accountability never reached the person who said it.

His solidarity mattered. What remained unfinished was a response to the officer.

Any of us still at that bar could have turned to him, calmly and plainly, and asked: “You called it a pejorative yourself. Why repeat it?”

As I write this on my connecting flight to Alabama, that is the sentence I am carrying with me. It is also what I would offer anyone reading this: have yours ready.

Most of us do not stay silent out of cowardice. We go quiet because the moment is fast, the speaker is likable, and the room is already moving on. Sometimes we are simply stunned. Finding the words afterward is easy. Finding them while your face is getting hot takes practice.

We do not need a perfect speech. One sentence can interrupt the ease with which a remark passes. One question can give someone a chance to reconsider what he has just said.

As he said goodbye, the man from London left me with one more line: “They will not break us.”

I am grateful he said it. I am grateful he noticed.

I can give myself grace for the words I could not find that night and still prepare to use them next time. He showed me what it means to stand with someone. I am carrying his example, and a sentence of my own, to Alabama.