Longtime Jewish Community Leader: "There's a Feeling of Abandonment" After Boulder Attack

Longtime Jewish community leaders hope the shocking attacks on peaceful demonstrators in Boulder on June 1 will lead to more solidarity with Colorado's Jewish community, which is reeling in light of the attack.

“I'm trembling with rage,” says Kathryn Bernheimer, who was a film critic at the Boulder Daily Camera before becoming the cultural director at the Boulder Jewish Community Center and establishing the Boulder Jewish Film Festival. “It has certainly sent shock waves through the community.”

According to the FBI, 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman of Colorado Springs perpetrated the attack, targeting a weekly peaceful demonstration by Jewish people who want 58 reported remaining hostages freed by Hamas after the October 7, 2023, attack that raised the longstanding conflict between Israel and Palestine to a new level.

Federal and local authorities say Soliman yelled, “Free Palestine!” before throwing two Molotov cocktails at twelve demonstrators. He allegedly told police he planned the attack and would do so again. The incident is being investigated as terrorism, and Soliman will face both state and federal charges, including being charged with a federal hate crime that can come with a life sentence.

Those attacked were participating in a Run for Their Lives demonstration. Such demonstrations have been peacefully occurring every Sunday across the country since the October 7 attack. In Boulder, the group meets near Thirteenth and Pearl Streets, which is where the attack occurred.

Both Bernheimer and Rabbi Joe Black of the Temple Emanuel synagogue in Denver point out that those walking in support of the hostages are not polarized, or even taking a definitive side in the overall conflict. "This was not an anti-Palestinian rally, this was not even a pro-Israel rally," Black says. "This was a march for the lives of the hostages."

Bernheimer has participated in one of the walks before, and describes them as peaceful. Everyone who comes out carries a photo of a hostage and walks silently. Bernheimer says sometimes people cheer them on, but others have been “nasty.”

She doesn’t believe the demonstrators did anything to provoke an attack other than simply being Jewish, describing the violence as deeply anti-Semitic.

“For people who feel very helpless and hopeless about these Jewish lives being held in horrible conditions for a very long time, it's a way of trying to keep that in the public mind,” Bernheimer says. “But that, apparently, is not an acceptable viewpoint to have. You can be set on fire for having that opinion. It's traumatic and it's tragic.”

Bernheimer would have attended Sunday if not for having an appointment with Xfinity to fix some issues she was having. In the past, she says, the walks have been a comforting show of community. 

This Sunday, the walk became a scene of terror. When Bernheimer heard what happened, she texted one of her friends to see if she was there. She soon learned that her dear friend was one of those who sustained burns and went to the hospital after the attack.

Boulder police originally said that four men and four women went to the hospital for major burns, ranging in age from 52 to 88. At a June 2 press conference, police said the total number of those hospitalized by the attack was actually twelve.

According to Bernheimer, the 88-year-old who was burned by Soliman “spent her childhood escaping Nazi persecution in the Dominican Republic."

“That she would live in her lifetime to once again be the victim of the same kind of genocidal violence that she experienced as a child is just, to me, unfathomable,” Bernheimer says. “She's a lovely person who's been an incredibly active member of the community and aligned with lots of causes and, like the Jewish people as a whole, really works for the betterment of humanity.”

Authorities have not released the names of the victims yet, so Bernheimer doesn’t want to disclose the name of her friend who was injured, but says she has been active in the Jewish community in Boulder, calling her “hugely beloved.” That friend’s husband also went to the hospital with burns, though Bernheimer says both have been released. According to CBS Colorado, a University of Colorado professor was one of those burned, as well.

Tragically, one woman is in critical condition, according to the authorities and Bernheimer.

“We do not know whether she will survive, and everyone is praying for her survival,” she adds.

The Jewish community in Boulder is active and connected, however.

“It's a very close community. It's a very vibrant community,” she says. “It is relatively small in number, but the individuals in the community have had an outsized impact on life in Boulder in so many ways.”

She points to the work of the Boulder JCC to connect people across cultures and the philanthropic efforts of many Jewish people in Boulder as examples of the impact the close-knit community has had. Now that disaster has struck, they’ll be leaning on each other even more, she adds.

For Jewish people, the attack has been jarring. Black's Denver congregation met in grief on June 2 on what was meant to be a joyous celebration of the Jewish holiday Shavout. Though there are differing viewpoints on the conflict, Black says that most Jewish people he knows feel a sense of fear these days.

"The events of this past Sunday shook every member of the Jewish community to the core," Black says. "The awareness of, and impact of, anti-Semitism on the Jewish community is something that impacts every member of the community, regardless of how they feel about religion, how they feel about Israel."

That anti-Semitism continues to thrive in the modern world is disappointing to Black and Bernheimer. Both say Jewish people expected allyship in the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas and instead felt isolation. "There's a real feeling of abandonment," Black says. "Where are our allies?"

Bernheimer’s parents escaped Nazi Germany to come here. Then, in the early '90s, she participated in protests calling for the rescue of Jewish people being persecuted in the Soviet Union. She hoped she wouldn’t still have to be protesting in defense of Jewish people anymore, but that’s not how the world has worked out.

According to Bernheimer and Black, since October 2023, Jewish people in America have felt less and less safe. Before then, many felt secure in the country — and then experienced a rude awakening about how society values Jewish people, as anti-Semitic incidents have increased in recent years.

“After October 7, a lot of Jewish people are saying, ‘Now I'm unsafe,’” Bernheimer says. “Now I realize I was never really safe. I was never really accepted. I was never really free from that hatred. It just kind of went underground for a while, and now it's back. ...No one can really explain it other than it keeps cropping up, it keeps coming back, and it always looks the same.”

She hopes authorities send the strongest message they can by charging and prosecuting the perpetrator of the attacks so that it serves as an example to others who may want to perform hate crimes or subscribe to the same ideology.

“This is not just some isolated incident,” she says. “This is not just some sociopath who woke up one day and said, ‘Oh, wouldn't it be nice to go kill Jews.’ This is someone who got that idea in his head for some reason. ...Jew hatred is becoming normalized.”

Black calls violent acts like this the logical consequence of the rhetoric around the Israel-Hamas conflict that doesn't leave room for nuance or understanding.

"There is a legitimate difference between calling Zionism racism, criticizing the Israeli government and criticizing the way that this war is being prosecuted, and repeating anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas, pro-terror, anti-Zionist tropes that call for the destruction of the State of Israel and, frankly, the Jewish people," Black says.

But Bernheimer knows Boulder’s Jewish community won’t be intimidated by hate. She plans to keep marching on Sundays and hopes the attack will spur others to join in.

“Everyone in Boulder who condemns this act should come next Sunday and walk for the hostages,” she says, adding that the Boulder Jewish Festival is still scheduled for Sunday, June 8, on the Pearl Street Mall.

“What's our choice? To hide, to let the haters win?” she questions. “The only response is to stay proud and stay strong and stay together and, hopefully, there will be some support. …Hopefully there will be some people who feel like this is not acceptable, that these are not Democratic values, this is not the Boulder they want to be part of.”