Pam Kancher opened the front door to her Winter Park, Fla., home for a brief moment to check if the weather was cool enough for a sweater. She got a chill, alright. But it didn’t come from the Florida air.

Someone left a red, white and blue swastika flag under her welcome mat.

This happened in 2017.

“I was in shock,” said Kancher, who is the executive director for the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida.

Kancher’s late mother moved with her family to America from Poland in 1932 to escape the country’s growing Anti-Semitic climate.

On Oct. 30, 2018, Kancher’s husband, Michael, hosted thousands of community members to his synagogue, where he serves as the executive director, just days after the Tree of Life Pittsburgh shootings — which is believed to be the deadliest killing against the Jewish community on American soil according to the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that tracks Anti-Semitic incidents.

Where will we be with race relations in 2028?

Or 2048?

Hell, what about next year?

Hopefully, our children can call acts like this unimaginable one day. Right now, we’re still just as entangled in the realities of racial and religious persecution today as we were 60 years ago when the African American and Jewish communities protested discrimination together during the Civil Rights Movement.

“I’ve grown up with (anti-Semitism),” Kancher said. “I grew up in a time when Jews nor blacks could belong to country clubs. When covenants existed in neighborhoods that said no Jews and blacks could live there. Are we going back to that?”

Last week, a Pittsburgh synagogue and predominately African American Baptist church in Kentucky were targeted by white male terrorists. The latter was spared — but only if you consider the two elderly black lives taken at a Kroger grocery store some version of a victory. The terrorist murdered Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vickie Lee Jones, 67, after he was unable to gain entry into the church.

Our country hit a new low in race relations after 11 souls were brutally taken at the hands of a home-grown terrorist at the Tree of Life Synagogue.

All of these victims were elderly — the oldest being a 97-year-old woman. Any one of these people could have been our parents or our grandparents.

I wish I had answers for how to make the world a more kind and loving place overnight.

Right now, all I have is the memory of Tuesday night at the Congregation of Reform Judaism in Orlando.

Well over 1,000 people came to the synagogue to show their support for the Jewish community. There were so many people, in fact, that the building had two overflow areas to listen to the “Stop the Hate” vigil.

People, some pushing walkers, some young enough to sit in a loved one’s lap, some black, white, Muslim, Christian, Islam, Methodist and Baptist lined the synagogue’s walls.

That visual represents the America I want to live in all the time — not just during times of tragedy.

One rabbi put the message of the vigil best with these words, “I ask that this not be the last thing that you do, but rather this be the first step to bring about change.”

As far as steps go, let’s start with electing leaders who respect their words because words have the power. The Christian community should know this better than anyone.

Proverbs 18:21: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”

Shannon Green writes for the Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.)