Doug Emhoff navigates dual empathy in Israeli-Palestinian tragedy

US Second Gentleman Dough Emhoff said one of the greatest moments in his relationship with Vice President Kamala Harris was how easily she understood who he was as a Jew.

“She understood who I was. I understood who she was,” Emhoff said during his appearance on Uncomfortable Conversations with Emmanuel Acho.

Acho co-authored this year’s New York Times Best Seller Uncomfortable Conversations With a Jew alongside activist Noa Tishby.

Emhoff noted how Harris has pushed him to speak out against antisemitism and hate and to “try to make those connections between all the different coalitions and all the different communities,” a responsibility he said he has felt as a Jew since October 7.

“And being in this position, I’m highly accountable to the community,” Emhoff said. “So again, with her pushing for me to get out there, even when it’s hard, even when I don’t want to do it, to go ahead and do it and have those hard conversations [is important].”

Emhoff described the “rawness and trauma” that remain in the Jewish community after October 7.

“The fact [is] that people were murdered, dismembered, raped, left on the side of roads, and hunted down. These were kids at a music festival,” he said. “These were, you know, grandmothers and moms. These are grandfathers, people just living their lives who were just brutally murdered in cold blood in a way that Jews haven’t seen since the Holocaust.”

He also acknowledged denialism about the events of October 7.  

“There’s distrust, disbelief,” Emhoff said. “So that is all true.”

But Emhoff said what is also true is the loss of Palestinian lives, “which is horrific.”

“And so, as a Jewish person, I’m able to say both things at the same time, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the policy in Israel,” Emhoff said. “And I think that’s where this conversation gets mixed up a little bit, where, you know, several of these things can all be true at the same time.”

When asked when he last cried, Emhoff said it was when he and his family hung a mezuzah on the Vice President’s residence.

The mezuzah itself came from an Atlanta synagogue where Martin Luther King Jr. had preached, a nod to Harris and her family’s activism in the Civil Rights Movement.

Emhoff noted that Harris wanted to make sure there was a mezuzah on the residence.

But it was his father’s tearful reaction that struck him.

“My father is a man of few words and doesn’t exactly show his emotion all the time,” Emhoff said. He added that what got his father teary was “watching his son, me, hammer the mezuzah into [the home of his] daughter-in-law, who happens to be the Vice President of the United States... It was intense.”

'People still need to find what they love about being Jewish'

Emhoff further explained his father’s reaction.

“I just think he’s a Jew in his mid-80s – he was born in 1937. His family came from Europe in the 1900s, half of whom died in the Holocaust,” he said. “So, to see the journey of a Jewish kid – himself – and being the father of this Jewish kid, who is now the Second Gentleman hammering a mezuzah into the Vice President’s residence, I mean, that’s the American dream.

Later in the interview, Acho asked Emhoff if, as a Jew, he feels epigenetic fear for his safety “based upon the trials and tribulations of your ancestors, which have led you to here.”

Emhoff said he has always tried to live “proudly and openly and joyfully and not be afraid,” but a lot of what Jews felt after October 7 was because of the Holocaust.

“There’s always that feeling. And it’s traumatizing. It really is,” Emhoff said. “But again, I want to just make sure [that] whatever is happening, people still need to find what they love about being Jewish. And we wanted people to learn about it, demystify it, and again, to tone down the hate and the antisemitism.”