By Connor Hayes
Director of Community Programming 
and Billy Thompson
Digital Marketing and Graphic Design Associate

Four representatives of the Anti-Defamation League came to Congregation Keneseth Israel in late September to talk with concerned families in our community about the continuing rise in antisemitism and what to do about acts of hate. Teens and parents split up into different rooms to participate in respectively appropriate discussions.

Since October 7, antisemitism has been on the rise. Nearly 3,300 antisemitic incidents were reported during just the three months after the Hamas attacks. A lot of these incidents have occurred to Jewish children. The ADL reports that 75% of Jews sense that there’s been a huge increase in antisemitism over the past five years and 45% say they feel more endangered.

ADL presenters Heather Kay and Jen Kugler asked parents to share their experiences with antisemitism in their kids’ schools—some of the experiences were as extreme as threats and physical violence. Adults themselves have experienced antisemitism in their advocacy for Israel.

Antisemitism doesn’t just occur in school hallways, as platforms like TikTok have been co-opted by antisemitic influencers and neo-Nazis to spread misinformation. Parents are then tasked with having difficult conversations about antisemitism—thus the open conversation here facilitated by the ADL.

Kids being fearless and proudly showing their love of Judaism and Israel can be scary for parents. The question of how to support and advocate for a child in these hard times weighs heavy. Breaking into groups, adults were tasked with sharing how they have handled these hard conversations so far, talking about different approaches and tactics, and generally about how to be a Jewish parent nowadays. Be patient, it’s OK if not every conversation ends well.

If your kid experiences antisemitism in their school, the ADL suggests starting with a report directly to their teacher. If the teacher doesn’t respond well, start to escalate to higher authorities. There ought to be a certain degree of trust, because legally, authority figures in schools can’t disclose the punishments they enact on students that misbehave, even in instances of extreme antisemitism. Kugler said to get involved with the student body, attend student-teacher conferences, and meet with the principals. Establishing trust can be very important.

While parents were sequestered in one wing, the teens gathered in another, to take part in a seminar that was part lecture, part social experiment, part trauma sharing. The presentation and lecture portion were led by two ADL representatives who went over a brief history of some of the better known antisemitic myths and tropes, while also fielding questions from the students about how these might crop up in students’ lives. Students were then asked to respond to different common scenarios of antisemitic incidents. Responses ranged from simply moving forward without action to personally investigating the cause of the incident. tudents also shared instances where they had experienced an incident firsthand, ith testimonies highlighting the importance of outreach organizations like the ADL.“When something like this happens,” one eighth grader admitted, “I don’t really ve anyone to talk about it with except my parents.” A 12th grader chimed in, “If I heard an antisemitic joke, I would try to figure out why the person made it, and then teach them how it was wrong.”

Other admissions illuminated why student self-advocacy is critical and sometimes overlooked. In the words of one middle schooler, “I was on vacation at the beach with my family, and it came up that we were Jewish when we were talking with another family. They said, ‘You don’t look Jewish,’ and I was having a lot of fun that day, so I didn’t think about it much.”

Despite that this event was held on a Sunday night before a school week, the students were engaged and took away from the event as much as they gave, exhibiting their own hineini (“here I am”) moment.

The event was organized and run by event chairs Miriam Zager, Tama Tamarkin, Lauren Rabin, Caren Lowrey, and Sara Jane Bub along with the ADL, which has 25 regional offices across the United States that work to combat antisemitism and ignorance or hate that could lead to attacks on minorities. 

If you’ve witnessed an antisemitic incident, please report it to Tim Brooks, the Federation’s regional security advisor, at 872-400-0239 or tbrooks@securecommunitynetwork.org.