I have spent decades as a forensic psychologist and clinical traumatologist who treat traumatized people. Trauma disrupts functioning and well -being. Some assume that traumatic reactions are the reaction to violence or catastrophic accidents, another form of trauma – Stiller, more treacherous and often overlooked – spreads through our schools and campuses: the trauma of anti -Semitism.
Persistent hatred exposure is traumatizing. The American Psychological Association has acknowledged that children who are confronted with bias-based bullying manifest fear, depression and psychosomatic complaints. For Jewish children, the rising anti-Semitism in corridors, classrooms and online chronic stressor has become, with the ghost of hatred that floods the media and the internet, universities and marches in the streets called the self-protecting symptoms of serious need that is seen in other forms of open and objective attack and terror.
From memes to wrong information: Gen Z -Makers fight back against anti -Semitism Online
A recent study showed that one in four American Jewish students experienced anti -Semitic incidents, and more about university campuses, reporting abuse, threats, social rejection and perception that teachers can approve discrimination.
A 2021 study showed that bullying is doubling the risk of clinical depression in teenagers based on discrimination.
Academic disorders: trauma consumes cognitive agents and concentration, leading to falling figures and withdrawal.
Identity confusion: Stigmatizing Jewish identity results in students who internalize shame or hide their heritage. This can break self -image, hinder splinter families and hinder the development of identity.
Generation trauma -transmission
Anti -Semitism also echoes for generations. Jewish families wear echoes from the Holocaust and former persecution trauma – intergenerational transmission – with children who absorb their own experiences and the suffering of their parents and grandparents. Today’s anti-Semitism can cause old wounds in families when the post-holocaust store of “Never again” makes way for “again”, with the reality of today who reactivate sleeping fears.
A 2022 study found increased stress markers in the descendants of the Holocaust survivor, which suggests that trauma is being embedded biologically, so exposure to further prosecution and prejudices stops the sintels of fears that were extinguished 80 years ago. Campus threats and hate messages from “You are not welcome and not safe here” that horror history inflamed.
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Jewish students at El Camino Real Charter High School during a strike that protests against anti -Semitic incidents at the Woodland Hills School on Tuesday 2024. (Sarah Reingewirtz/Medianews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)
Recently a 23-year-old man killed students during the massive shooting in the Catholic Church in Minneapolis, although his MediaRAIL showed that he also hoped to slaughter Jews. A few years ago I treated another campus community where a person opened fire. He too was planning to focus on Jews, but, just as tragically, each of the people he killed was a Catholic. In the court he regretted that mistake and stated that he had hoped that his victims were Jews, as if this would limit his crime to justified murder. I gave intervention to Catholic and Jew, I then trained a team of interventionists whose trauma-induced hope would be prepared for later attacks.
After a shooting at a Jewish school in another community, I provided “Debriefing” at the faculty and students. The husband of a teacher, non-Jewish, insisted that she resigned, for fear that she can be mistaken for a Jew at the next attack.
Access to weapons, internet games that shed blood, massive marches that evoke death to Jews: we are witnessed by indoctrination of Americans and proliferation of violent attacks. Every day I treat old and young Jewish people terrified to leave the house. The risks are real, just like their legitimate fears.
When children cannot talk about what is happening, are not willing to report anti -Semitic incidents, fearing the fault, shame or disinterest, isolates them, deepening trauma. Clinical examination with victims of hatred shows that when need is not suppressed, large emotional, psychological and even physiological symptoms arise. What does not express the voice audibly is communicated in silence, by mental and physical decline.
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What we have to do:
Train trainers to recognize anti -Semitism as a risk of mental health.
Lead parents to listen without rejecting a child’s fears. “Just ignore it” makes invalid, which means they have less chance of seeking help.
Forcing school policy with the same seriousness to other forms of hate speech or discrimination.
Jewish organizations must offer trauma support. Programs such as Chai Lifeline’s crisis services offer coping tools and resilience strategies for victims.
Schools have increasingly become hostility for some Jewish students after the terror attack of Hamas against Israel in October 2023. (Istock)
Prevention is essential. Schools need programs about sensitivity and tolerance. Anti -Semitic Jewish hatred has a lot of accepting that rotated ideology that knows nothing about Jews, other than tropics and stereotypes based on hateful ignorance. Recent statistics indicate that almost two -thirds of American youth who claim anti -Semitic rhetorical rhetoric to support Hamas in his murderous attacks on Jews. An effective prevention model must at least include the humanization of Jews in the eyes of those manipulated by dehumanizing diatribes.
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Anti -Semitism is a social problem and a matter of public health for our children. Every rejecting blemish in a hostile class Fids leads to lifelong scars.
For this generation of Jewish children to thrive – academic, emotional and spiritual – we must recognize anti -Semitism for what it is: a trauma that not only injures individuals, but also communities. The mental health of our children needs protection. The mental health and stability of all humanity also needs this.
