An incident at a shopping plaza

Several weeks ago, a few kids from our school had a very unpleasant incident.  While hanging out on a shopping plaza, they run into a number of kids from a local middle school who apparently started shouting antisemitic slurs at them.  That is all I know about the incident, except our kids went back to school, complained about it, and parents and teachers got involved.  The process of understanding what happened and how it could happen at this day and age had begun.  The principal of the offending school was informed.  The principal of our school addressed the issue with kids and parents.  A person from Anti-Defamation League was invited to school to speak to the kids about the proper response to the situation.

We the parents had a long and meaningful discussion about the incident and what to do about it in the future.  During the course of discussion, we split into two basic camps - those who believed that our kids should hold their heads high and walk away, and those who insisted on immediate action such as calling the local police or at least finding a mall security guard.  I expressed my support for the second half, deciding not to reveal that I was in a category all by myself.  I wished that there was among our kids someone big and strong or at least someone who knew enough martial arts to confront one of the offenders and give him a bloody nose.

Ok, I agree, that is not a popular position.  Nor it is rational, probably.  It is the kind of response that may put our kids in actual physical danger, providing that among the offenders there might've been someone who knew martial arts also.  But walking away, even with the heads held high, sounds a little defeatist to me.  I mean don't our kids have the right to be at the shopping plaza without being insulted?  Why should they walk away?  Why not the offenders?  I understand that our teachers, and even Anti-Defamation League counselors have to take a politically correct position and advise the kids to stay away from violence.  But we the parents - that's another issue.  Is it not our responsibility to teach our kids how to stand up for themselves, and for justice, and there are, there really are some causes worth fighting for?

And that brings me to the argument I've been having with my son ever since the accident happened.  Naturally, I wanted to discuss it and see what his feelings about it were.  To my great disappointment, he dismissed the whole thing as unworthy of attention.  He called the offenders "stupid", he said that "they have already been punished", and "since they were not using violence, that was no big deal."  He further concluded that walking away proudly thinking that they are much bigger than the offenders was the best idea.  I had to respond that the cases of antisemitism, or any other hate incidents, often start with words, and escalate to violence, and we might walk away one time, but knowing that they got the upper hand, the offenders will follow us to our houses and start breaking windows and slashing our car tires, what then?  To that my very wise son had a response that totally blew me away.  He said that he was not involved in the incident, nobody knows he is a Jew and he is not going to advertise it, and that way nobody is going to follow him anywhere.

That brought back the question that I ask myself more and more often these days.  Where did I go wrong?  Not only I did not raise a fighter, not only my son will not defend justice even if it means getting a bloody nose - he was never a fighting kind and would rather walk away from a confrontation.  But his solution to the problem is actually "not advertising" that he is a Jew and that "would not provoke" the stupid kids in the first place.  "Are you ashamed of being a Jew?"- I asked.  No, he is not ashamed.  But he is smarter than the offenders, he is bigger than they are, and he is not going to engage in the confrontation.  He will walk away.

Ok, so we have a significant difference of opinion here.  Lucky for me, the school is holding a workshop on how to deal with antisemitism this weekend, and I requested that we both attend it, present our points of view, listen to the views of others, and arrive to some kind of solution here.  Most importantly, both of us attending the workshop would bring this issue on a forefront and hopefully my son can see why it is important to me and to the community.  Again, I was in for more disappointment.  My child stated that "he already had the lecture about it in school," "he knows how to handle the situation," and most importantly, "he is not wasting his Sunday on a two-hour lecture on a subject that is unimportant."

I think the workshop would be good for both of us.  Maybe people will be able to persuade me that physical confrontation is not the answer here.  Maybe I can ask a question why should our children walk away and the offenders stay there and feel good about their "victory."  Maybe I can ask if calling the police would be a good idea and how the police will even respond to a situation like this.  There is a lot of questions I would like an answer to.  My problem is my son doesn't have any questions.  He doesn't consider the issue important, or even that it is of concern to him as long as he "doesn't advertise that he is a Jew."  Where did I go wrong?

I come from a country where antisemitism ran rampant.  We often had to hide the fact that we are Jewish, just for our own protection.  We changed our last names, we lied about our ancestors, just in order to get ahead in life - if you were Jewish, you would not get very far.  I guess that's why when we came here and finally had the freedom of expressing our religion, many of us do so proudly, and won't have anything stand in our way.  Our kids, however, being raised in a little safe bubble of a Jewish school, where being Jewish is nothing more to them than learning such unnecessary subjects as Hebrew and Jewish studies, and saying a little prayer before lunch, see things differently - antisemitism is not a scary concept for them.  It starts with "stupid kids saying stupid things" and ends with these kids being suspended from school for a few days and does not go any further.

So, maybe the real question is: "Where did our school go wrong?"  With the antisemitism being alive and well for centuries across the globe, our kids did not know anything about it until they met it one day at a shopping plaza.  Why didn't our school, being a Jewish school, devote some time, starting in 3rd grade, to discussion of antisemitism?  Age-appropriate of course, but serious nevertheless?  Why does a Jewish school devote several months each year to study of Native Americans, but does not devote even a few days to discussion of antisemitism and how to confront it?  Why did our kids have to encounter it face to face without having any clue on how to respond so that our school started having discussions, workshops, and counseling, instead of proactively teaching the kids before the incident actually happened?  I have to give it to our school - they study Jewish values, Tzhedakah, the Holocaust, even Jewish cooking.  But with antisemitism, they really blew it.  And so did I.  I had to be pro-active too.  I, too, was immersed in my own safe American bubble where antisemitism rarely ever happens, and is almost never reported.  I never imagined my son encountering it at a shopping plaza.  Why then am I so surprised at his reaction?  Why should I expect that he would react the same way as I do?  Why do I expect that making him go to a workshop that he already hates the idea of will change his mind more than having an eye-to-eye conversation about how each of us feel, where our feelings are coming from, and how to solve our differences?

In recent months, I find myself being mad and disappointed with my son more and more often.  But when I think about it, I find that I am disappointed with him not because he does something unworthy, but because his views and opinions are so much different from mine.  His ideas about friendship, love, justice, and even about being Jewish are so much different.  And since spending time having a conversation with a family member is not lately his idea of fun, understanding each other and finding a compromise is so difficult.  And frustrating.  And makes me want to disparage his opinions and snap at him and fire a hurtful remark, instantly transforming myself into an enemy whose points of view are not worth any consideration.  Not wise.