By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN

(CNN) — The killing of six more Israeli hostages marks a pivotal new moment for Doug Emhoff, who is standing up for himself and Kamala Harris as only a Jewish American and the wife of a presidential candidate can.

“In light of the retraumatization of the tragedy of the weekend, speaking here, as difficult as it is to do, is a way for me to make my voice heard,” the second gentleman said Tuesday at a vigil for the hostages in Washington, DC.

For Emhoff, it’s a reflection of historical circumstances: He’s often spoken about how he reconnected with his Judaism after seeing the response he got when Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris for the ticket four years ago. As the second gentleman, he then felt compelled, first by the rise in anti-Semitism and then by the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7, to speak out about how much pain he felt.

Now that his wife is suddenly the Democratic nominee and they are both more in the spotlight — and as the world approaches the anniversary of those attacks and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza — friends and advisers say they see a man continuing to search for his own answer on an issue that is at once policy, political and personal. And advisers and campaign workers are trying to match strategy with an executive whose emotions and determination have stirred them in both his private and public remarks.

While Donald Trump criticizes Jews who vote for Harris as self-haters, it was Emhoff who sat in the front row at the vigil Tuesday night — put together by a range of Washington-area Jewish groups and hosted at the Adas Israel synagogue — wiping tears from his eyes and then struggling to speak through his grief as he walked to the microphone.

“This is raw,” he said, telling the crowd of hundreds that he was there “as a fellow believer, a fellow mourner and as a Jew.”

“When Doug talks about how the VP encouraged him to get closer to his Jewish faith and to see anti-Semitism as a problem, that can be affirming for Jewish voters,” a friend of Emhoff’s told CNN. “But it also highlights how they support each other as a couple, the bond of faith that they both have, and that’s important for all voters to know.”

As Biden has ramped up public pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire and a hostage-release deal, some outside allies have suggested that the Israeli prime minister is instead trying to maneuver in Trump’s favor. And with voters on all sides of the issue uncertain about where Harris stands, any turn of events could complicate her efforts to win in Michigan, which has significant Arab and Jewish populations but also several other key battlegrounds where Jewish voters outnumber the margins of victory in 2020.

Several people who know Emhoff said the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin hit him particularly hard. He knew the 23-year-old’s parents. He had just seen them at the Democratic National Convention. The pain of knowing that the hostage, who was only a few years younger than his daughter, had been killed just days before his body was found was overwhelming. It left him raw. Going to the vigil, one person who knew him told CNN, was about standing up as a leader — but also about feeling like he needed to be with his community in the midst of the horror and shock.

“How you all feel right now is how I feel. And how we all feel is something that Kamala hears directly from me almost every day,” Emhoff said Tuesday night. “I share what I feel with Kamala as my partner, as my wife — not just as our vice president. She knows. She gets it. She cares. She’s committed. Hersh’s loss feels so personal to both of us, just as it does to all of you.”

Ted Deutch, a former Florida congressman and current CEO of the nonpartisan American Jewish Committee, praised the second gentleman when he introduced him at the vigil for “reminding the world that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

“He understands the unique anguish of having our cries for justice unheard, and yet he knows that our strength lies in our unity,” he added.

Emhoff has long insisted that he has no policy role in the administration or the campaign, and that remains true. But the perspective has shifted — until six weeks ago, he was married to a leader who had acquiesced to Biden’s policies. But after he became the Democratic nominee, his wife is being closely watched for any shifts in policy toward Israel.

Campaign officials expect Emhoff to continue to play a key role as he travels the country campaigning and fundraising. Tension is already building over how the Oct. 7 commemoration will play out, less than a month before Election Day.

Emhoff says he will not stop speaking out, linking the need to repeatedly remind the world of what happened to the events of the Holocaust.

“If we don’t tell this story over and over again,” he said at the vigil, “we have no hope for ‘Never Again.’”

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