Guidance for Jewish Grown-Ups: Helping Schools and Organizations Respond to Antisemitism and This Moment
I want to start by being clear: I love being Jewish. I love the way we count time, I love that our days begin when the sun is setting, I love that we celebrate a holiday every single week, I love that a new month is a holiday, too. I love that our year is spiritually and psychologically balanced, holiday by holiday, so that over the course of the year so many of our spiritual and emotional needs get focus and attention. I love that we revel in story and in telling stories. I love being a Jewish storyteller - not by profession, but by just being who I am. I love that we all look different, and are from all over the world, and all - every one of us - “look Jewish” because we are Jewish. I love our ancestors, even the ones I wouldn’t have liked. I love that we invite them into our sukkahs and our lives and our stories. I am Jewish. Being Jewish is central to who I am.
Antisemitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews.
I am 49. I reflected this morning that when I was in 7th and 8th grade my peers in a small town in Missouri said things to me like, “You would fit so well in an oven.” and “The only thing Hitler did wrong is he didn’t finish the job - you’re still here.” and “When did your parents have your horns removed?” and “You can eat the school lunch? I thought you people didn’t have normal stomachs and had to eat special food.” I also sometimes found anonymous notes in my locker with swastikas on them. Hate is rarely creative and is often repetitive. I learned that if I told my teachers or the school guidance counselor I would be told that if I stopped drawing attention to myself kids would stop doing things like this. I should just sing the Christmas songs, they said. And I shouldn’t raise my hand so often in class, whether or not I knew the answer. And maybe I should just eat by myself at lunch. The problem, they tried to teach me, was me. That isn’t what I learned, though. What I learned from them was that the problem was them. Thirty-some years later I am still confident that I was right and that they were wrong.
I am an independent rabbi and Jewish educator. My students and families live and work and go to school all over the world and all over the United States. If you or a child you love is experiencing antisemitism, what you are experiencing is on the one hand happening everywhere, and on the other hand specific to the circumstances of your life and your environment and the particular people with whom you are living.
I’m going to offer some guidance based on my own experience, the research and wisdom of others in the Jewish community, and the research and wisdom of other marginalized and racialized groups who experience discrimination and persecution and hate. I will continue to develop and update this page. I hope it is helpful, and I also recognize that like so many things in life these incidents must be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
First, though, I am also going to say this - and I’m going to say it loudly:
ANTISEMITISM AFFECTS US, BUT IT ISN’T ABOUT US.
Antisemitism is aimed at Jews who assimilate and who don’t, who are very observant and who are secular, who are Zionist and antiZionist, who live in Israel and who live outside of Israel, who are white and Brown and Black, who are wealthy and who struggle financially and who are solidly middle class, who are in positions of power and who are not, who are athletic and who are academic and who are both. Antisemitism comes at us during times of conflict and during times of peace, before and after Israel became a country. The antisemitism problem isn’t me, and if you are Jewish the problem isn’t you, either. It affects us, but it is not about us. Most of the time, we do need to respond to it, at least internally, but we will never solve or end it because it does not live in us. It lives in the people who are antisemitic. It lives in the people enacting antisemitism. It is their problem. In a better world, it would be clear that the people who should be wrestling with what to do about antisemitism are the people promoting and tolerating it. There are some people doing that, but for the most part, that is not the world we currently live in. So, what do we do?
Focus on Jewish Safety and Resilience
Take care of the Jewish person first. You are deciding if you will or how you will respond to the antisemitism you or someone you care about experienced. Before you do that, get whoever is harmed in a safe(r) space, check in with yourself and with the person most affected and care for yourself and for them.
Our lived experience being Jewish in the world will inescapably include encountering antisemitism. Jews should have opportunities to learn about antisemitism in Jewish-experience-centered spaces. Learning about some of our historical experience with antisemitism and some of the ways our ancestors responded to antisemitism can support us in understanding, addressing, and countering antisemitism today. One of our goals should always be critical thinking. We must be sensitive to and wary of simplification. We should strive to think with complexity and nuance and avoid generalization and seek to distinguish instead. For example, there are differences between prejudice and discrimination, armed and spiritual resistance, direct and assumed orders, guilt and responsibility.
If you would like to talk about Jewish-centered learning about antisemitism, please get in touch with me. I have been developing, piloting, and reworking (since summer 2023) a six-lesson unit on antisemitism for Jewish youth.
Identify What Has Happened
Folks have come to me describing the following kinds of situations in the U.S.:
Statements about Israel/Hamas/Palestine/Jews/Palestinians and related that do not call out terrorism, do not express empathy for Jewish people in Israel or around the world, and/or that explicitly or by implication assert that it is not possible to have empathy and compassion for the Palestinian people and also for Jewish people and Israelis.
A Jewish 4th grade student chooses Israel as the country they want to research for a class project and is told by their teacher that they aren’t allowed to because Israel is committing genocide. Other students have chosen Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia.
A Jewish student is told she and her Jewish family should all be dead because Jews kill women and children.
A Jewish 6th grader goes into the bathroom at school to find swastikas drawn on the walls. After telling an adult, the child is told the students in the school don’t know what those symbols are, and they aren’t about them.
During recess non-Jewish students surround a Jewish student and tell them they’d look good in an oven. Another Jewish student tells the teacher. The teacher says the kids were just joking.
At a school event another parent comes up and says to the Jewish parent of a Jewish student something about how it must be nice to have so much money. Confused, the Jewish parent asks what they are talking about. ‘Well, you know, your people all do, don’t they?’
After getting to a safe(r) space, taking a step back, discerning what actually just happened, and talking with someone we trust about it can help identify the incident, the extent of the incident, who is involved, and who should be.
If as you are thinking about what happened you find yourself saying, “I’m sure they didn’t mean to,” please pause and take a breath. Intent is what we mean by our words or actions. Impact is how those words or actions are experienced, felt or understood by either the person they are directed to, or others. Whatever someone’s intent was or whether their actions were on purpose, the impact of what they did or said is still harm. The ADL has a helpful page I really appreciate about Impact vs Intent. We can love a school, respect a teacher, care about one of our kid’s friends and also work to create a community and a world in which we all do better in part by being honest about when we have caused and when we have experienced harm.
Identify & Connect with Allies, Partners, Collaborators, Sympathizers
After you have identified what happened, know that it’s not the responsibility of Jewish parents and grown-ups and certainly not the responsibility of Jewish children to resolve these incidents or to figure out what to do about them alone. Make a list and reach out to other adults - parents, teachers, or other administrators, whether Jewish or not. If it feels important, you don’t need to wait for a school or organization to create a specific Jewish affinity group. You can initiate it in an official or unofficial capacity and find ways to gather and support one another. Look for connection and support in the larger Jewish community, too. Local synagogues, federations, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and Jewish Community Relations Council all have experience responding to antisemitism.
I also recommend making a list, even if it’s a list with only one name on it, of who you will go to not to solve anything but to have feelings with. You are going to have feelings about what happened and about the aftermath. Invite someone to hold those feelings with you, to listen, and to hear you and care about you. That’s their whole job. Tell them that’s their whole job. Make sure your child has someone like that, too. Someone in addition to you. Neither of you has to hold these feelings alone.
What is Your Goal?
Okay, so a thing happened, you know what happened, you have clarity talking about it, you have people to work with to work toward repair, and you have someone who is just going to support you - and your child has someone just to support them.
Now what?
What is your goal?
What do you want the school, organization, or group to DO?
Here are some possibilities for what your goal(s) might be:
use clear language that names and condemns antisemitism, terrorism, physical and verbal violence
offer continued support to the Jewish members of the community
adjust the curriculum and teach about Jewish experience beyond teaching about the Holocaust in Israel
include antisemitism in their DEI work (which many organizations and schools do not currently do)
put books with Jewish characters by Jewish authors in the library and in classrooms
acknowledge Jewish holidays on the school calendar
opportunities for teachers and staff to learn about intent vs. impact, teaching media literacy, approaching complex topics with nuance and empathy
find ways to incorporate intentional teachings on how to be anti-racist, anti-antisemitic, anti-islamophobic, anti-homophobic, and so on in this school, organization, group, or community
There is no unbiased curriculum for schools to purchase and implement on current events in Israel/Palestine. Few schools or organizations are going to have experts on staff to teach about or speak to Israel’s history, the history of antisemitism, or other related and charged issues. What it is imperative that these places and spaces do is help everyone in their communities approach one another with empathy, and approach complex topics as the complex topics they are.
Then What?
You take a deep breath.
Then you work toward your goals. You have hard conversations. You build relationships. You get hopeful. You get disappointed. You have some wins. You help build a better world. You get tired and go home and take a nap. You try again. You make new connections.
None of this is easy. Not for you. Not for me. Not for our kids.
Knowing you aren’t in it alone will help.
Having a clear plan will help.
Building partnerships for the long term will help.
Teaching our Jewish kids about antisemitism in Jewish-experience-centered ways so they aren’t surprised when it happens and have a plan for how they’ll keep themselves safe(r) and respond in ways that fit who they are and what they need will help.
Everything you do will help - including going home and taking a nap.
It feels hard right now because it is hard right now. It’s real.
I’m here to help however I can.
And Then?
And then enjoy being Jewish.
Love being Jewish.
Make a list of what you love about being Jewish.
Actually do it.
Make. A. List.
This afternoon I asked one of my 12-year-old students his in-this-moment top three favorite things about being Jewish. Here’s what he said, in this order:
Latkes. Because potatoes. Everything is good, he said, about potatoes.
He speaks the truth.Purim. Because the spiel. Because it’s fun and silly and clever and a way to be not-serious-about-a-serious-story.
Matzah. Because his dad makes THE BEST fried matzah in the whole wide world. Ask anyone.
Which brings me to what I love the very most in all the world about being Jewish.
My students. Our kids.
I love that I get to be one of their teachers and one of their rabbis and love them fiercely.