I was reading the news in The Washington Post, recently and I came upon a news story about antisemitism. In the first paragraph, the report cited an incident in which someone had graffitied the words, "Jews Not Welcome," over the entrance sign of the Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. I had recently seen stories reporting increasing antisemitism in the U.S. and was angered by what I read. As I read down two paragraphs further, I encountered Rachel Barold, who is fourteen and a freshman at the high school. While being interviewed, she told the reporter that she was not surprised by the graffiti. She said, "We're ridiculed constantly," by other students who make fun of "a Jewish person's nose," or mention how "they are glad not to be Jewish."
Like Rachel, I wasn't surprised by the antisemitism graffitied on the high school sign; but I was by the naked bigotry her classmates cavalierly tossed in her face. Bethesda is a very wealthy and well-educated community, and its schools are among the best in the state of Maryland. In such a community, I would have thought the bigotry of her classmates would have been cloaked or more subtle than that. After all, it's 2022, not the 1960s or 1970s. Her experience made me think about where I grew up and the schools I attended.
When I was young, I lived in a middle-class neighborhood on Long Island, New York, and attended a local Catholic grammar school in the 1960s and early 1970s. My classmates were a mix of average Italian and Irish kids. While there, we learned our lessons in grammar, spelling, reading and arithmetic. We also learned that Protestants, though Christians, were "outside" the true religion, but even worse, that Jews had rejected the "true savior" of the world and consequently were damned to an eternity in hell. For us, reviling Jews was a matter of religion, encouraged by eminent figures we aspired to emulate.
After I finished Catholic grammar school, I had to attend the free public junior and senior schools, since my parents couldn't afford the tuition charged by the Catholic high schools. While there, I encountered teachers who said that it was wrong to be prejudice against other races and religions; that we should not judge people by their appearance; that we should respect all people regardless of who they were or where they came from. Their words and ideas were liberating and inspiring; they made me recognize and reject the bigotry that Catholic school had imparted. Antisemitism became ugly and vile, an evil to be condemned without hesitation.
But not all teachers in that public school were beyond bigotry. One fall afternoon, during high school football practice a teammate missed a tackle. The boy happened to be Jewish, and the head coach thought it clever to motivate him to do better by yelling "K_____, what the hell is wrong with you! Guns for the Arabs, damnit!" Some of the players cringed at the racist rant of the coach; others laughed and joked about it afterwards. It's interestingly to note, the coach's teaching responsibilities included 10th grade European history, which one would think included a unit and lessons on the Holocaust. However, at that time, New York State social studies teachers weren't mandated to teach about the Holocaust. That requirement finally did come into effect in 1994. Even so, I suspect he wouldn't have been terribly effective in communicating the horrors of the Nazi's systematic attempt to exterminate all European Jews.
The antisemitism observable in the friends I had in high school fluctuated between blunt outbursts and whispered remarks. Some friends openly expressed their antisemitism with racist slurs, while some tried to camouflage it by a warped attempt at logic. The latter would say, "I'm not prejudice. I just don't like anyone who is too Jewish." (These individuals would apply the same characterization to African Americans who acted "too black.") Forty years later, I wonder how some of them would react to what Rachel Barold has been experiencing. I am confident that some would feel the same anger and disgust I feel. But some might feel what they felt back then and find those feelings validated by influential individuals such as Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and the like who condone antisemitism from platforms.
Clearly there was something wrong with the educational system when I was a student. Being formally taught about prejudice was rather hit or miss. If we had a teacher who enabled us to get rid of our prejudices, we were lucky. Today, educators should be above any prejudice and bigotry against Jews, black and brown people, Asian, or LGBTQ, since they are trained to prepare and teach lessons about prejudice. As mentors and role models, these teachers should foster in students the decency and respect all human beings deserve regardless of who they are or where they come from.