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<\/a><\/p>\nU.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks at a MAGA Inc. Super PAC event on Aug. 31, 2026, in Sterling Heights, Michigan. (Saul Loeb-Pool\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Vance\u2019s Monday meeting with representatives of the suburban Detroit synagogue that had been attacked by a terrorist in March came as the vice president has upped his outreach to Jewish voters ahead of a likely 2028 presidential run. He also invited a rabbi and security guard to a rally Monday in the Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights, where he called them out from the podium and said he was \u201chonored\u201d to have them attend.<\/p>\n
The Reform synagogue\u2019s clergy later offered more details about his outreach, telling JTA that he had met with one rabbi, as well as with a security officer who had stopped the assailant from harming anyone at the preschool that was in session.<\/p>\n
The meeting was held at Vance\u2019s request, Rabbi Jen Lader told JTA, and the vice president did not visit the synagogue itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was an important opportunity to ask for the Vice President\u2019s support in the fight against antisemitism, and for additional security funding through the Jewish American Security Act,\u201d Lader wrote in an email to JTA, referring to a bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. House this summer to increase federal funds for both Jewish organizations and synagogue security. <\/p>\n
Lader continued, \u201cWe\u2019ve made the same requests to elected officials on both sides of the political aisle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later that day the vice president traveled to Las Vegas, where he met in a closed-door session with members of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who have been riled by his close relationship with podcaster Tucker Carlson and other points of contention.<\/p>\n
Vance sought to draw a contrast with Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan\u2019s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, who spent the weekend offering apologies for his earlier comments about the temple attack, when he appeared to describe the attack as a response to Israel\u2019s incursion in Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Some Michigan Jewish leaders are publicly mobilizing against El-Sayed, a harsh critic of Israel: As of press time, more than 400 Jews in the state, including some who hold prominent community positions, have signed a petition pledging to vote for the GOP candidate, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, in the Senate race. <\/p>\n
A representative for Vance did not respond to a request for comment on the vice president\u2019s Temple Israel meeting or for his views on the Jewish American Security Act.<\/p>\n
At the RJC meeting, where he also received a standing ovation but did not address his Carlson ties, attendees told JTA that Vance highlighted his outreach to Temple Israel. <\/p>\n
The nation\u2019s largest Reform synagogue, Temple Israel was attacked in March by a man who had recently lost family in an Israeli strike on a Hezbollah position in Lebanon. In two statements following the attack, El-Sayed initially condemned it outright. He then changed his wording to include what he now says was \u201ccontext\u201d about Israel\u2019s war in Lebanon, including the phrase, \u201cHurt people hurt people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking with the state Democratic Party\u2019s Jewish caucus at the party convention on Saturday, El-Sayed apologized for those remarks, saying, \u201cI made a mistake.\u201d He also attended the caucus\u2019s \u201cSummer Simcha\u201d fundraiser the next day, where he repeated his apology and asked for forgiveness. He told JTA the \u201ccontext\u201d he\u2019d sought to include in his initial remarks was related to \u201cviolence in all its forms, in all circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Temple Israel clergy have declined to comment to JTA on El-Sayed\u2019s two apologies for his past comments. Lader had penned an op-ed in The Free Press criticizing his response.<\/p>\n
Vance\u2019s Michigan visit also included a rally in Sterling Heights, where he discussed the synagogue attack and called it \u201ca terrible, antisemitic terrorist attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could have been so much worse, ladies and gentlemen,\u201d Vance told the crowd, who had given the Temple Israel personnel a standing ovation. \u201cThat guy showed up at that synagogue, at that school with a desire to kill a lot of children, and he killed precisely zero children because of the brave security guards who did their job and did it very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance also called El-Sayed, a progressive and a Muslim, \u201cvery, very evil\u201d from the podium. <\/p>\n
\u201cAbdul El-Sayed made an apology for the very people who would perpetrate violence against hundreds of innocent American school children,\u201d Vance told the crowd. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to ask yourself, if he\u2019s willing to empathize, not with the children who almost had their lives destroyed at the most innocent and what should be the safest place in the world, their school, what is he going to do when he goes to Washington, D.C. when the cameras aren\u2019t on?\u201d<\/p>\n