At a time when public conversation often feels like shouting into separate rooms, the idea of strangers sitting down together can seem almost radical. Yet that is exactly what happened in Denver, Colorado, at Together at the Crossroads: A Congress for Allyship & Unity. This was not a typical conference, where people take selfies, collect tote bags, and leave feeling vaguely inspired but unchanged. It was a national gathering with an ambitious agenda: to fight antisemitism, to build alliances across cultural and religious lines, and to ask a hard question that no community can afford to ignore. How do communities overcome hatred, discrimination, and division? The organizers, the David Merage Foundation for Confronting Antisemitism, designed the event as a working session for people who refuse to accept the status quo. Political leaders came. Educators came. Advocates came. Perhaps more importantly, ordinary citizens came—people of different faiths and backgrounds, some with personal memories of persecution, some who simply could not stand the idea of watching history repeat itself. They came not to perform unity but to practice it. The central message of the congress was both simple and uncomfortable: remaining silent in the face of hatred can allow discrimination and violence to grow. It is tempting to tell ourselves that silence is neutral, that as long as we personally do not use hateful words, we bear no responsibility. The speakers in Denver rejected that comfortable fiction. Silence, they insisted, is not a void. It is a decision. It tells the victim that they are alone. It tells the aggressor that they have room to act. It tells everyone else that hatred is acceptable. No one arrived thinking they could solve this alone; that was the whole point. At the crossroads, the only way forward is together.
The facts presented at the summit made that urgency impossible to dismiss. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the United States recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in 2025—approximately one every 85 minutes. That number is not meant to remain abstract. Behind each incident is a family, a neighborhood, a person who went to work or school wondering whether they would be safe, whether someone would see them as simply human. While the total represented a 33 percent drop from 2024, the ADL also documented a record 203 physical assaults. Violence is not a footnote. It is the sharp edge of a problem that too often begins as a slur, a rumor, or a meme. Consider what happened in Boulder, Colorado, in June 2025. Demonstrators who were peacefully gathered to show support for Israeli hostages were attacked with incendiary devices. Among them was Karen Diamond, an 82-year-old woman whose life was cut short by the attack. She was not a statistic. She was somebody’s mother, grandmother, and friend—a person who had lived through decades of history, with all its hopes and disappointments, and who still chose to show up for others. Colorado Governor Jared Polis addressed the attack directly, reminding the audience that antisemitic violence is not a distant concern. It happens here, in American cities, in the middle of what should have been an ordinary day. The decline in overall incident numbers offered a sliver of good news, but the record number of physical assaults was a warning that hatred still has teeth. The summit’s focus on action, rather than just awareness, made sense in the shadow of that reality. The question was no longer whether antisemitism exists, but what people were going to do about it.
Discussion at the summit went beyond statistics. Participants wrestled with the ways social media, stereotypes, and misleading information deepen divisions and make hatred look reasonable to people who should know better. They drew an important but often forgotten distinction: criticizing government policies, including those of Israel, is not the same as targeting people because of their religion or ethnicity. In a healthy democracy, policy debate should be vigorous. But when criticism becomes a mask for ancient tropes and collective blame, it crosses a line. The summit also considered why those lines are crossed so often. Digital platforms reward outrage. A falsehood can travel around the world before the truth gets a chance to tie its shoes. A blog post, a video clip, or a forwarded voice message can paint an entire people as enemies in the space of a few hours. Education is the best antidote, and it was a constant theme throughout the congress. Holocaust awareness is not about memorizing dates and numbers; it is about keeping alive the human faces behind the horror and asking how ordinary people allowed it to happen. Media literacy teaches students to ask who created a message and why, and who benefits when that message starts a fire. Interfaith dialogue, often dismissed as nice but unimportant, became crucial because it brings strangers into the same room and makes the other into a neighbor. The session titled “From Incident to Action” offered practical guidance for institutions: verify the facts, support the victims, coordinate with community leaders, and avoid empty statements that sound good but change nothing. That emphasis on process mattered, because good intentions do not help a terrified family if the local community does not know how to respond. The call was consistent: learn the skill of allyship as seriously as you would learn any other discipline.
The conversation extends beyond Colorado. It lands with particular weight in South Florida, where the region’s diversity is not an abstraction but a daily fact. Palm Beach County is home to thriving Jewish and Hispanic communities that contribute enormously to the cultural diversity, economy, and civic vitality of the area. Synagogues and churches, community centers and schools, businesses and cultural institutions often sit side by side. The potential for partnership is obvious, but it requires effort. Local schools, religious organizations, and community advocates have opportunities to strengthen bonds through bilingual education, student engagement, and initiatives that promote mutual respect. Imagine a classroom where Jewish and Hispanic students learn about one another’s histories and heroes, where a holiday is an opening for curiosity rather than discomfort. Imagine a neighborhood event where families share food and stories instead of remaining separate. That kind of connection is not naive; it is practical. Prejudice thrives in isolation, and it weakens when people are given a chance to recognize themselves in one another. But the challenge for South Florida, as for every region, is to transform national conversations into meaningful local action. It is one thing for leaders in Denver to deliver inspiring speeches. It is another thing entirely to sit in a school board meeting and make sure that bullying policies, curricula, and community partnerships reflect those values. The work happens in the details, in the unglamorous moments when no cameras are rolling and no hashtags are trending. It happens when a Jewish family and a Hispanic family become neighbors who know each other’s names, when a crisis draws a community together instead of splitting it apart.
Yet a single summit, no matter how heartfelt, cannot solve hatred. The harder work begins when attendees pick up their bags and return to their communities. Fighting hatred requires more than words; it demands education, cooperation, and the courage to speak up when someone else is being targeted. This is not romantic. It can be awkward to correct a family member’s joke, exhausting to attend yet another meeting, frightening to stand between an aggressor and a victim. Allyship is not a title a person gives themselves. It is a series of small choices: noticing that a colleague is being excluded, asking “Are you okay?” when a friend becomes the target of an online mob, bringing a meal to a family whose place of worship has been vandalized, showing up at a vigil even when you do not personally know someone who was hurt. It means calling out misinformation even when it would be easier to scroll past. The conference made clear that those choices are not optional extras. In a democracy, communities tend to get the future they tolerate. Bystanders are not neutral; their inaction is part of the story. The good news is that bystanders can become upstanders. They can learn the difference between sympathy and solidarity. They can practice using their voices even when those voices tremble. The room in Denver was full of people trying to learn exactly that. They were not pretending to have all the answers. But they had made a crucial decision: they would not let silence do the talking. That decision, repeated over months and years, is what turns a conference into a movement and a movement into a safer world.
So the question remains: Can communities turn dialogue into lasting change? It is a fair question, and the summit did not dodge it. Change is slow, fragile, and often invisible until it suddenly becomes obvious. It will not be found in a single speech or a newly formed task force. It will be found in classrooms where Holocaust history is taught not as an old tragedy but as a living warning; in interfaith meetings where people do not just talk but plan; in streets where witnesses refuse to look away; in elections where inclusion is treated as a test of moral health rather than a talking point. For South Florida, for Denver, for every other city, the crossroads is now. The word “crossroads” suggests both danger and possibility. A community can choose the road of dehumanization, or it can choose the road of solidarity. The people who gathered at the congress made a choice about which road they wanted. They carried home a conviction that hatred can be confronted and divisions can be bridged, not through magic but through persistence. They also carried the memory of Karen Diamond and the faces behind the statistics—a reminder of what happens when everyone looks the other way. Maybe her death will not be in vain if enough people learn to interrupt hatred before it becomes a weapon. Maybe all those incidents will matter if they stir conscience rather than numbness. The question remains, but it is no longer just a question. It is a summons. The answer begins with the next person who refuses to stay silent, the next organization that moves from words to plans, the next community that decides that some futures are worth fighting for. At the crossroads, the first step is simply choosing to move.