Parents band together to combat systemic anti-Semitism in America’s classrooms

The Anti-Defamation League recently published an online toolkit on “decoding and disrupting” problematic messages in primary and secondary education. It aims to teach parents how to identify and address biased curriculum in their children’s schools. When I saw it, it felt like a punch.

The toolkit cites a well-known example: a 2017 Vox video titled “The Israeli-Palestine Conflict: A Short, Simple History.” It’s the same biased video that my friend’s daughter had to watch in seventh grade in 2018 — the video after which a classmate shouted, “F— Israel.” The video that local Jewish leaders, including the ADL, assured my friend had been treated by the district, only to reappear two years later in her daughter’s ninth-grade social studies class. So much for it being ‘handled’.

Then it was October 7, and a flood of distorted stories flooded primary and secondary school classrooms. As a result, anti-Semitism, disguised as political rhetoric, took over the halls of our children’s schools. Parents quickly became concerned. It was clear: disinformation had been raging in schools for years before, but it was tackled quietly, episodicly and in isolation (or sometimes not at all), never systemically. And it was this passivity that laid the foundation for the systemic hatred of Jews that is embedded in our primary schools today.

Parents across the country quickly realized that no one would address the systemic problem, and classrooms became more hostile by the day. Many community leaders did not have children in the schools; the threat felt abstract. They did not understand hyperlocal district dynamics, had no relationship with school leadership, and were discouraged from engaging in political advocacy. Worse, they were unwilling to admit that an ideological takeover was fueling the problem.

But we as parents saw it immediately. We felt it viscerally. And so we took the plunge and began swimming upstream against the ideological current that told teachers, administrators, and school board members that our children were not entitled to the same “inclusion” as other marginalized students.

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School choice has become increasingly popular in states across the country, including recently in Arizona, Utah and Iowa. (iStock)

When this toolkit was released last month, we had already identified the problematic curriculum, developed a plan, and got to work. We organized locally, influenced school board elections, formed nonprofits, and built parent networks from the ground up.

But we are underfunded, isolated and exhausted. Our so-called allies sometimes push us aside or “pour water back into the boats we just took water from.” The role of the established Jewish community is not to be late and tell parents what to do. Instead, the idea is to humbly listen to the parents who are already doing the work and use their resources to help scale what is already working.

We don’t have exorbitant PR budgets, communications teams, paid social media strategists and in-house lawyers. We need money. We need infrastructure. We need connections. Connections with each other. Links with the media to fight the battle in the court of public opinion. Connections with government officials at the federal, state and local levels. And connections with lawyers who can help us fight in court. And ultimately, we need to know that our leaders will support us when our enemies inevitably come after us.

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There are promising examples of parental empowerment, such as the Bay Area Center to Counter Antisemitism and the North American Values ​​Institute (NAVI). At NAVI, we empower parents by listening to them and providing resources like our White Paper, When the Classroom Turns Hostile.

Parents did not choose to become advocates; we were forced to do so when our children were targeted. This moment calls for humility, partnership and urgency. Parents are a critical part of the solution that is being overlooked. What we need now is real and serious partnership, real resources and real power.

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