Jewish journalist fueled by responsibility to readers
Last fall, the feelings came fast, and ran deep for many metro Detroiters. As the seasons changed, the intensity got worse.
On Oct. 7, 2023, the militant group Hamas killed an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an attack in southern Israel , the deadliest in the country's history, and took another 250 people hostage. Nearly 100 Israeli hostages remain in captivity, the American Jewish Committee says .
Israel's retaliatory war on Gaza has now killed more than 41,700 Palestinians over the last year and wounded more than 96,700 others, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said last week .
How has life been for those with strong ties to Israel, Gaza and the Middle East? The Free Press interviewed six local people from our communities to understand, a year later, how Oct. 7 has changed their lives. Here is the story of Andrew Lapin, a senior reporter for Jewish Telegraphic Agency who lives in Ypsilanti.
It was a day of infamy and it was also Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday whose commemoration includes dancing with the Torah in the streets.
Reports were still arriving about the Oct. 7 slaughter in Israel. But tradition called for dancing, said Andrew Lapin, so outside the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue in Detroit, "that's what we did."
Peering back a year later, he described it as "a dance of resilience" — a reminder from the participants to themselves that Jews had overcome tragedy before, and the best thing they could do was what they would have done anyway.
The next morning, Lapin, 35, was back on the job. Back on the phone and the computer from his home in Ypsilanti. Back where he has been, seemingly nonstop, trying to make sense of an increasingly muddled world as a reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).
Someone who had relished his life as a University of Michigan student has spent most of these turbulent 12 months on college campuses, in an atmosphere he never could have foreseen when he was an editor at The Michigan Daily and a trombonist in the marching band.
The experience has changed where he does his job, changed how much of it he brings home, and even changed how his friends see him, though that is based in grace.
"They understand that this is hard," he said, "and they want to know if I'm OK."
The answer is mostly, most of the time.
"I had done stories on campuses before," Lapin said, about arguments regarding what Zionism means and what Israel should be. But the colliding among visions "hadn't been the central breaking point of American life, the way it has become."
The JTA, founded in 1917 and based in New York, is the world's most widely read news service for Judaism and Jewish-related topics. Even as most of its employees practice Judaism, it practices journalism, which makes Lapin a neutral player.
"I have a lot of conversations with people on all sides of the issues," he said, leaving him at least somewhat unique, and also somewhat convenient when somebody needs to unload.
"I often feel like I'm being asked to hold their pains or their concerns," he said. "Or, I'm a place to vent frustrations with whatever the other side is doing."
He has learned, he said, that the American Jewish community is more divided about the war than most people recognize. He has learned as well that the coffee shops where he liked to work before Oct. 7 are no longer so ideal; If he's having a conversation about Jews or Israel, he'd just as soon avoid being overheard.
And, he has learned, he needs to be careful about dragging his tensions through his front door.
With their first child due in March, Lapin said, "My wife would tell me, 'You're bringing the war home. It feels like some sort of boundary has been violated.' "
She's right, he said. At the same time, he has responsibilities — to his readers, to his employer, maybe even to history.
If the need arises, he'll go into his home office and make sure to shut the door. Then he'll soldier on.
