By H. Applebaum
SAN DIEGO –My town was a heavily Jewish suburb of New York City. It had a big synagogue and an even larger JCC. It was a good place to bring up children, or so I thought.
In Junior High School, a book was assigned about Israel in Roman times, when Jesus was preaching. The Jewish heroes of the story turned from fighting the Romans to following Jesus.
I am not for censorship, but this was proselytizing in a public school. I brought it to the attention of other Jewish parents, and one woman in particular on the board of the town’s JCC. “Too busy” was her excuse as well as that of the other Jewish parents I contacted, so I was forced to tackle the issue alone.
All I asked for was choice. Let the students who felt uncomfortable have the option of reading another book. This was adamantly refused. I did win one victory; the school suspended the obligatory reading until the situation was resolved.
It took seven months, but only when the ADL sent a strongly worded letter did the school back down.
For Charles Jacobs, the head of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, the fight has been going on for seven years. He faced not just Jewish apathy, but opposition and attack in his fight against the prejudicial curriculum of Newtown, Massachusetts Teacher training was funded by Qatar and Saudi Arabia and students were taught that Zionism has “little connection” to Jewish history and Israelis are like Nazis in their treatment of Palestinians.
Jacobs was personally censured by the Jewish Community Relations Council, and when he and a group of Jewish parents turned to the ADL, instead of coming to their aid, it actually sided with the perpetrators! The Newtown schools, under threat of a lawsuit, finally agreed to eliminate the offensive material. Soon after though, on May 2, 2018, they partnered with the Boston Palestine Film Festival and showed a film portraying Jews as Nazi soldiers to a school assembly during “Middle East Day.” Had the ADL taken a stand, the situation might have been resolved before Jewish students had to face this.
On March 12, 2019, Newtown parents filed a lawsuit against the Newtown school system to compel it to stop indoctrinating students with anti-Semitism and bigotry against Israel. The case is making national headlines as it mirrors a situation that is occurring throughout the United States. As anti-Semitism grows stronger, though, the response of Jewish organizations seems to grow weaker.
When a Jewish child is shamed for being Jewish, it is not just that child being attacked, but every Jew. When the Jewish community remains silent, it will continue, and it will proliferate.
More than ten years after my fight, parents in San Rafael, California took up the fight against the same book, a Newberry Award winner. It is probably still being taught somewhere in America, because if Jews don’t stand up for themselves, who will?
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Applebaum is a freelance writer based in San Diego.
Thank you very much for this. The fight continues. Jews now know about how bad the campuses are, but most don’t know that the fire has spread to our high schools. And no major Jewish group is tasked with taking it on.
We all need to get more active and DO NOT rely on the mainstream Jewish orgs which have failed us utterly.