October 16, 2023
As we grapple with our horror and grief about the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, we find ourselves looking close to home at the educational spaces where our children spend their days. If you've been feeling a sense of unease, frustration, or even anger about how your children's schools are handling this moment, you're not alone. Whether it's about school messaging, classroom education, or emotional support for students, much can be done right now to create a more supportive, educationally-sound, and empathetic environment for our children.
American Jewish Committee (AJC) recognizes the importance of your role as a parent or caregiver. Join AJC's Director of the William Petschek Contemporary Jewish Life Department, Dr. Laura Shaw Frank, and Aaron Bregman, Director of High School Affairs, for a conversation about tools for engaging in productive discussions and making impactful change in your children's schools at this unprecedented time.
Advocacy Anywhere is a new platform that will enable you to engage with AJC’s leading expertise, content, and advocacy opportunities from wherever you are, using cutting-edge technology.
Go to AJC.org/AttackOnIsrael for the latest resources and explainers about Hamas's unprovoked attack on Israel.
Briefing Transcript
Mara Steine:
Our program will begin in just a moment.
Good evening and welcome to Advocacy Anywhere, powered by American Jewish Committee. Advocacy Anywhere is AJC’s digital platform that enables you to engage with AJC’s global expertise, content, and advocacy from wherever you are.
It has now been over a week since Hamas launched a brutal war against Israel, killing over 1,400, injuring thousands, and taking hostages into Gaza. As we deal with the emotional toll of this traumatic event, AJC understands how challenging this can be as a parent to talk about. Joining us this evening to offer support are AJC Director of the William Petschek Contemporary Jewish Life Department, Laura Shaw Frank and AJC Director of High School Affairs, Aaron Bregman. Moderating today's conversation is AJC Chief Field Operations Officer, Melanie Maron Pell. After we hear from Laura and Aaron time permitting, we will take your questions. You may email your questions to questions@ajc.org. Questions is plural. Or use the Q&A feature in Zoom. Melanie, the floor is yours.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you so much, Mara, and good evening everyone. As we grapple with the horror and the grief over the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel. It's easy sometimes to feel alone in the communities of which we are a part. We can find ourselves looking close to home at the educational spaces where our children spend their days. And if you've been feeling a sense of unease, frustration, or even anger at how your children's schools are handling this moment, you're not alone. So, as a parent myself, I'm really glad you're here to join us tonight. Our webinar, we hope, will give you some tools and information that will allow you to work productively with your child's school and hopefully see the changes that you need to see. So, as Mara mentioned, really grateful to be joined by my fabulous colleagues, Dr. Laura Shaw Frank and Aaron Bregman. Again, Laura is AJC's director of the William Petschek Contemporary Jewish Life Department and Aaron is AJC's Director of High School Affairs. We know that those of you joining us tonight, some of your schools may be public, some may be private, they may be non-sectarian, they may be Jewish day schools, they may be Christian schools. Each school has its own particular needs and values, and each individual school has its own ecosystem. So, we'll do our best to address different types of schools, and there will be time for additional questions from all of you at the end. So, as Mara mentioned, please do use the Q&A function in the chat. So, just to kick us off, Aaron, if you can just help us begin, give us some of the latest updates from Israel.
Aaron Bregman:
Absolutely. Thank you, Melanie. So, unfortunately, I just have to start off with very sobering and sad news. As of a few hours ago, last I checked, more than 1,400 Israelis have been killed. As of this time, 30 American citizens have been killed with 14 missing. There have been 246 IDF soldiers killed and last reported there are 199 hostages. Of course, we haven't mentioned the thousands who have been injured and the 6,700+ rockets have been fired at Israel since the events unfolded on October 7th. As of today, or again just last I was able to check the news report on and certain my fellow colleagues add anything I missed. But last I heard, president Biden is unofficially rumored to maybe travel to Israel in the coming days or weeks ahead, which would be incredibly significant. And the other news item I saw today was that tragically we saw a murder of a Palestinian boy in Chicago the other day, and today in Brussels, a murder of two men apparent retaliation for that homicide.
And so these incidents are clearly a reverberation of the continuous and ongoing impact of what's happening and currently taking place in the Middle East. And as we bring it back home and as we mourn those 1,400 lives, there are people in the streets and across the U.S. and around the world who are celebrating their murder and those who are being, especially not just that, but those who are still being held hostage. Sadly, we are seeing a spike in antisemitism whenever Israel becomes part of the news item. This is really nothing new that we're used to, and as many of you I'm sure have seen, security is being heightened across the globe. And so we call upon our community, our global community, to not just stand with Israel but stand with humanity and to speak out against terror.
Melanie Pell:
Thanks so much, Aaron. We've heard from literally hundreds of parents in the past week who are hurting, who are frustrated, who are angry about the way their children's schools have responded or failed to respond to the terrorist attacks in Israel. And we know that now the narrative is likely to shift to accusations against Israel. So, in all of this background with all of this context, Laura, can you help us frame what we want to accomplish here in the next 50 minutes or so?
Laura Shaw Frank:
Absolutely. Thank you, Melanie. And thank you to all of you for joining us tonight. What we want to accomplish here is to give you some tools, you as parents, some tools about how to communicate strategically with your school administrators, but also give you some ideas about the types of things that your schools can do in this moment that would be productive, supportive of your Jewish students, supportive of Jewish families and Jewish faculty in your school communities. So, I want to just say that addressing these issues in school communities, I want to own that it's complicated. On the one hand, we feel loyalty to the schools that our children go to. We don't want to necessarily make waves. We understand that approaching administrators with anger won't get us what we need. But on the other hand, we're hurting, sometimes we are very angry. And balancing that can be challenging. So, we're going to talk about that.
And in terms of content, we need strategy and content whenever you're dealing with an advocacy issue. In terms of content, sometimes parents don't feel like they know enough to speak about this very complicated issue. So, tonight I just want to say we're going to mostly be focusing on strategy. We're going to give you places to get contents as well. But the important thing for you to know is you don't need to be content experts. People spend their whole lives studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and still don't feel like experts. You don't need to be experts. We can help you with that. But what is important for you to know is how to be a trustworthy partner to your child's school. How you are able to make change will help you with the content. What we have found, just to summarize, what we have found to be the most effective way to make change in school spaces, is to approach administrators and teachers, not as antagonists, but as partners.
People who share love of the school, people who share a love of the school community and who want the school to be the most inclusive and educationally sound that it can be. Both Aaron and I taught in Jewish day schools for, between the two of us, I think we have 30 years of experience in Jewish day school teaching, and we both have held administrative positions in schools as well. So, we can kind of speak to you from the other side of the desk, so to speak, as well as, as parents, both of us. So, we hope we'll be able to give you the strategy that you will need in order to make that effective change in the school. As well as very specific asks you can make of your school administration in this moment and how to make those asks.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you, Laura. And just sticking with you for a moment, what should the role of the school administration be?
Laura Shaw Frank:
Right. A school administration in this moment needs to lead. They need to lead. It's really important they need to lead. This is not a moment for moral equivocation. This is not a moment for wishy-washiness. This is a moment for clarity. So, I'm going to talk about a couple of things. The first thing is many of your schools have issued statements. Some of them may not. Some of them may never issue statements, and you're not going to get a statement out of them if they never issue statements. But if they do issue statements, you may have been disappointed in the statement that your school issued. We are looking for a few really key things in a school statement. We are looking for an acknowledgement that Israel was attacked, that Israelis were attacked, not some vague country or a passive voice.
Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists causing the loss of 1,400 now lives. The vast majority of whom were civilians. We are looking for an abhorrence of terror in no matter what a clear, clear labeling of what Hamas did as being unacceptable. So, that's about statements. I want to tell you that we are collecting school statements to help schools and also to help ourselves help schools. So, if you have statements that your school issued, send them to us. We put together a database of all the statements. You can send them to highschoolaffairs@ajc.org and we will include them in our database of statements.
Aaron Bregman:
Sorry, Laura, just highschool@ajc.org.
Laura Shaw Frank:
Oh, sorry. Highschool@ajc.org. I'm trying to make the email even longer than it already is. Okay, so that's number one, statements. Number two, a school administrator in this moment should be reaching out to Jewish parents. That can be sometimes a little bit challenging to do because Jewish parents can be sometimes a vague group. And we can talk more specifically later if you have specific questions about how a head of school or a divisional principal can reach out to Jewish parents. One easy way is through a Jewish parent affinity group, but there are other ways too, by reaching out to Jewish parents who are on the board of trustees, by reaching out to Jewish parents who are class parents, et cetera. There are other ways of doing that, and we can talk more about it, but it is important for Jewish parents to hear from their head of school in this moment.
Administrators can organize an assembly or a school-wide gathering. A number of schools have done that. In addition, they could possibly even themselves speak directly to the student body in a moment like that. And what we encourage schools to do in a school-wide gathering, is to focus on empathy and sympathy for those who have been so cruelly attacked. So, we're talking about that aspect of it. And also support for members of the school community who are hurting. We'll talk more about what that means later, but support for Jewish students who are really struggling in this moment, support for Jewish families, Jewish faculty members who are struggling. A couple more things. Emotional social response, any school administrators should be making sure their mental health team knows to be sensitive to Jewish students, put them on call, supporting Jewish students in crisis, expressing solidarity with students and staff experiencing grief. They should be monitoring security. Unfortunately, we are in that world. Things are very, very volatile and hopefully nothing will happen outside of Israel and in the United States. Obviously, hopefully nothing will happen in Israel either, but that's not realistic.
And lastly, just actually three more quick things. Administrators need to revisit their social media policies in this moment, particularly in private schools where they kind of have a little bit more control and can be a little bit more censorious in these moments to ensure that they comport with this new reality. And they should be speaking to advisors and faculty about paying special attention to social media at this moment. Both what faculty themselves might be posting on social media, but also how to talk to kids about it. Similarly, revisiting bullying and harassment policies to ensure that Jewish students are safe in school emotionally and physically. A little later we'll talk a little bit about dress code issues. Hopefully I'll be able to give you a little bit of guidance about that.
So, definitely important to revisit those bullying and harassment policies. And lastly, talking to teachers. And Aaron will be talking a lot more about that in a minute as a truly, truly incredible educator. But talking to teachers about how to handle these things in the classroom. Teachers feel really unequipped in this moment. And again, when I said at the beginning, administrators need to lead. Part of that leadership means talking to their faculty and helping their faculty know how to address this in the classroom.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you so much, Laura. And Aaron, let's turn to you and let's make sure you're also close to the microphone.
Aaron Bregman:
Yes, sorry about that.
Melanie Pell:
We had a request, please. Thank you. So, you came to AJC directly from the classroom.
Aaron Bregman:
Yes.
Melanie Pell:
So, what else can you add about the role of administrators, but also what about the role of individual teachers?
Aaron Bregman:
Absolutely. How is that? Is that better, Melanie, in terms of voice?
Melanie Pell:
I think so. Thank you. And our audience will let us know if it's not.
Aaron Bregman:
Absolutely. I expect nothing less. Thanks again for the question. So, my first thoughts and inkling is that these administrators, they need to reach out to their Jewish student community groups, whether it's a small cohort or a very large Jewish student population, they need to reach out. They need to tell them that they're here for them. They need to tell them that they're being heard, that they have an open door to those administrators offices if they need. And really, they need to feel like that there are people there for them that not only just goes for administrators, but also educators as well. But certainly the administrators need to show that sort of presence in the school. Certainly, I also recommend that when it comes to educators that, and Laura mentioned this, we'll talk more about, but just not being shy, that we don't have to all be experts on the conflict in order to be able to discuss these issues.
And certainly whether it's applying civil discourse style methods or socratic seminar methods into a classroom. And we have certainly resources that can help educators if they haven't usually used those materials. But these are types of things that administrators need to make sure, educators, even if they don't talk about issues happening in the Middle East, whether they aren't history teachers in the sense of talking about larger contemporary issues, these are resources that are certainly available that are widespread, that I certainly recommend. And also tell educators that, in the end, there are different ways of going and talking about this. There's a lot of ways, something that's going around the internet right now, particularly in Jewish community spaces, is this thing called the three H's. So, one H is the head. What immediate questions do these students have about the events unfolding? Is there anything they're confused about?
Is there information that they're missing? So, that's one way that an educator can at least frame some of the issues that they feel comfortable. The second H would be the heart. How does this make you feel? Is there anything in particular that you find yourself grappling with? And yes, at times, and I have stories that are in my inbox about Jewish students who have heard their Muslim Jewish student peers or other types of peers talking about difficult conversations, to be quite frank, that they don't feel comfortable either hearing or addressing. But as a school, students certainly have to have a voice as well. But our Jewish students need to also recognize that they have a powerful voice as well, and they need to have their peers hear how they're feeling. And then lastly, the third H is hands. What can you do now? What are your options again for Jewish students, students who support the State of Israel, students who support stopping terrorism from happening, what can students do, whether in their communities regionally, nationally, to get involved?
Melanie Pell:
Thank you, Aaron. And as Aaron and Laura know, I spoke today at my son's school to fifth through eighth graders, and I was so glad to have the three H's as a reference because it actually was really helpful to think through the kinds of questions that they were asking about, are these factual questions, is it emotional questions or is it an action item? What they can do. Aaron, I have another question for you, and I'm going to ask you to get even closer to your microphone.
Aaron Bregman:
Oh gosh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Melanie Pell:
Yes, thank you. That's better. If you speak up and speak closely, I think it will help. So, Aaron, we've talked now a little bit about administrators, about the role of teachers, and what about the students themselves? What are the roles and what are the responsibilities of students and what is it we should be asking of them, and what's maybe too much to ask of them?
Aaron Bregman:
Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, certainly with students in their roles, we recognize that outside of the classroom, we all know, especially high school students have an enormous amount of extracurriculars that they're grappling with. They're trying to just balance everything. But to me, the biggest and most important thing is to speak up and to speak loudly. If comfortable, engage with a peer about, if they have questions, talk to them about how they're feeling. Talk to them about some of the things that you're seeing in your, whether it's social media feed or just your general inbox of the news that's happening. And especially those students and peers who aren't as familiar with the region or don't have enough knowledge about Israel itself. And certainly if students have visited Israel, tell them about your experience. Tell them about your trip. The more that you can give that personal connection to other peers, the better.
But the thing I'm seeing the most honestly, is whether, certainly for non-Jewish day school students, but this can even apply certainly to Jewish day school students, is that we are seeing more and more, and I mentioned this on the top of the conversations, that there is certainly a certain blend of when we talk about the issues happening today in the Middle East, that it's more and more blending into antisemitism, the anti-Zionism, anti-Israel rhetoric is now certainly creating that difficult balance with students. Don't know if our peer or someone is calling or saying something that's antisemitic. And my point is, if you even question it, if you think it is antisemitic, call it out. Some peers might be ignorant, don't know any better. Other people might be doing it deliberately. But the more you can make your voice heard, the more other people around you will hear that and hopefully resonate with that.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you, Aaron. And Laura, what about you? Is there anything you want to add about the role of students?
Laura Shaw Frank:
I do. I want to say something about our non-Jewish students in this moment, which many of you may have contact. You may yourselves be parents of non-Jews or may know a lot of non-Jewish students who are in K-12 spaces. This is a moment for allyship. This is a moment for empathy. This is a moment for our non-Jewish friends to be particularly sensitive to Jewish students, to Jewish families, to what is being posted on social media, to being particularly careful, for example. Maybe this is not the time to post some of the political things that they might otherwise post. Let's wait for things to calm down before we post those things again.
So, I would definitely call upon that extra empathy, ask how people are doing, give your Jewish student friends some more attention than you might otherwise. And I'm going to say one other thing to Jewish students. I've been in touch with a lot of family and friends in Israel many, many, many times every single day. And the one thing that every single one of them has said to me again and again and again, and this isn't just for our kids, this is for us too. The more we reach out, the more we say we care about you, the more we send them a WhatsApp message, send them an email, call them for five seconds, it means so much to them. So, that's definitely something very concrete that we can all do.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you. Laura, let's talk a little bit about social media. So, we know that there are many different social media platforms and that it's kind of all over. It's a little bit hard to keep kids away from it in some ways. But what is your advice about how we should be guiding our kids and how we should be advising students about social media, especially during a moment like this?
Laura Shaw Frank:
Absolutely. So, the first thing I want to mention that you probably have seen a lot of calls that even your schools may have sent out calling for you to uninstall TikTok, uninstall Instagram from your children's phones. I'm going to tell you right now, I have four kids. My youngest is 18, so I'm kind of out of the K through 12 space. My youngest is a freshman in college. But I can tell you that from my experience as a parent and my kids are really goody goodies, even though they're goody goodies, from my experience as a parent, the minute you uninstall it, that's when they're going to go look at it even more, right? They're going to find a way to go look at it. So, this is the moment for really open conversations with your kids about social media, even if you're too busy to usually have those conversations.
And I get it, we're all too busy to have those conversations. Now is not the time to be too busy. Now's the time that you have to sit them down and say, "Look, there's going to be a lot of terrible stuff on social media," and particularly with younger kids, we have to have those conversations. Kids have phones younger and younger now and have access to social media and other things online. This is the moment to say to them, "Don't click on links that you don't know where they're coming from. Be prepared that you may end up clicking on something that's very, very gory and very upsetting. Please feel free to put your phone down when you see that. And if you do see something, whether it's gory and uncomfortable, or whether you just are confused about it, please come to me. Please talk to me about it. I'm here to answer your questions. I won't punish you. I won't take away your phone. I won't do those things."
This is a moment for us to just have those lines of communication very, very open with our kids. I would tell kids, don't engage with people they don't know online. I mean, obviously that social media 101, bears repeating in this moment. Just don't engage if you don't know them. If you do know them, if there's a friend who has posted something upsetting, who has posted something like Israel is to blame for the death of the 1,400 people who were murdered in cold blood on October 7th and the day after that. That's not a moment to engage in a fight in social media. That's a moment to think about how to engage with the person in person.
And that's something that adults in your community, say that it's your child, that's something that I can help you with as a parent. That's something that your advisors in school can help you with, that trusted faculty members can help you with or mental health professionals can help you with, thinking about how to have that conversation. Older kids may feel like they can have the conversation without assistance, without adult intermediaries. Definitely talk it through with your kids. This is not a conversation to be having online. It's never going to go well, never, never. But having those conversations in person can actually be very, very productive.
Aaron Bregman:
And if I could add something, Melanie, if it's okay, certainly there's everything Laura said I 100% agree with on the social media front. But I also want to say after the terrible events that happened, I reached out to a psychiatrist who deals with post-conflict trauma and just a few additional recommendations sort of within the social media space, but also outside of that as well is that ... and these might be common sense to some folks, but certainly not common sense to everyone, is that telling students, if you are tempted to look, maybe it's better not to. Take a breath. Think again. As Lara mentioned, these images are meant to hurt you and make you less effective as whether the parents, certainly teachers, student leaders. So, be aware, make sure students are aware of that. And along with those, sort of outside of those lines is make sure students are keeping a usual schedule, particularly if you have a student that is deeply connected with what's happening.
If they have family or friends that are living in Israel right now, I can imagine their schedules have been certainly turned upside down. Eating, sleeping, exercising, schoolwork, really important to keep those productive and on schedule. Staying connected to your trusted community, he recommends. And certainly this goes to our people on this call. When parents do better, kids do better. So, whether it's taking a break from the news as well, giving yourself the care you need, the students see that. So, just be aware of that. And the last thing I'll say is, as Laura mentions, besides from reaching out to people like us, is that don't forget, and this is really important, that your child's school counselors, they're really sometimes the lifeblood of a school system. Make sure to remind your students if you feel they need it. Talk to the counselors. The counselors are there for students. Counselors don't care their background, their religion, who they are. They're there to help students, particularly on the mental health side. So, just be sure to remind your kids about that.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you. So helpful. Aaron, can you just give us an example of a story that you're hearing from students and parents and how you advise them?
Aaron Bregman:
Yeah, absolutely. It's personal actually to me. I have a niece, she lives in the Raleigh area and goes to a prestigious private school. She's an 11th grader. And last week, every day after school, my niece would come home and my sister-in-Law would say to her, "Have you talked about in your say U.S. AP class, history class what's happened?" And my niece would say, "No." And days would go on. And by Thursday afternoon, there was still always a no. And so what ended up my sister-in-law wrote to the educator, wrote to the teacher and said, "Hey, this is not just a situation happening isolating in the Middle East. This is a world event. I really feel like this needs to be discussed with the students." And the teacher wrote back and unfortunately said, "I don't feel comfortable discussing this issue. We have Jewish students, Muslim students, students in the classroom that seem to have more information than I do, and I don't feel I am equipped to essentially talk about the sensitive matter."
And my response to that, and I've never obviously interacted with the teacher, but my response to be to any teacher like that is I find that disingenuous and honestly lazy. Certainly living in the DC area, I had contacts over my years in the classroom to many people within the Washington region, but certainly in Raleigh and other places all across the country, there are university professors who are equipped and experts in the field. There are other community related activities within or outside your community that I know would be able to work with you or you can reach to us and we can help you provide the necessary resources or talk to other organizations that could reach out as well.
So, even if the educator, as Laura, I believe mentioned earlier, doesn't feel like they're a Middle East expert, that doesn't mean there aren't ways to A) bring it up in the classroom or B) find someone that you can bring in that can discuss it with students. And sometimes in my experience, I've found that actually bringing in an expert gives students that sense that it's not your teacher that's going to either judge you or misread the situation. An outside person who you are unfamiliar with actually makes a better calming experience and allows you to feel you can actually ask direct questions to them and get an honest answer. So, to me, that's just one of dozens upon dozens of experiences and stories I've had both personally, but also I've received in my inbox in this last week.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you. And Laura, what about you? Is there an example you can share?
Laura Shaw Frank:
Yeah, I want to share something that I've actually seen in every community I've worked with, and Aaron and I have been inundated. So, we've both been working with countless school communities and parents and kids in the past week. Something that I'm seeing come up again and again is the fact that Jewish kids and Jewish parents and Jewish families are even those who are not necessarily all that involved with the Jewish community or who aren't publicly Jewish in their schools in any kind of very big way, even they are really hurting and grieving and suffering in this moment. And something that is hard for both our Jewish families, our Jewish kids, Jewish parents to understand and even harder for our school communities to understand is why. And I want to just emphasize that it is worth thinking about that question of why. Aaron and I both have a lot of content to share about what the Jewish people's connection to Israel is, why it is so visceral for us, even if we're not necessarily religious, not necessarily affiliated all that much.
Why are we struggling in this moment? What is that very visceral identity piece of our connection to Israel? Not only so that we can understand it for ourselves, but that we can express it to our communities when they are kind of wondering like, "Well, you didn't even go to synagogue on Yom Kippur. Do you really care about Israel?" And the answer is, why do I have to go to synagogue on Yom Kippur to care about Israel? It is actually very much a part of my identity. I'll just share one quick statistic with you, which is in the Pew Center study of the American Jewish community, and by the way, our studies bear this out as well, AJC studies bear this out as well, but the Pew study is kind of the gold standard Jewish overarching study of the American Jewish community found that 80% of American Jews, 80% feel that a relationship with Israel, that Israel is either critical or important to their Jewish identity.
So, that's a very telling statistic. So, as we're thinking about engaging in these school spaces, important to think about those issues of identity for ourselves and for those that we engage with. And Aaron and I are very happy to help you unpack those questions.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you. Laura, let's talk a little bit about another issue and that's about dress codes. And this could be a Jewish student wanting to wear an IDF T-shirt, or it could be another student wearing a free Palestine or something like that. So, as we think about dress codes and what schools have the capacity to control or make a rule about, what can you tell us?
Laura Shaw Frank:
Yeah, so this issue has come up a bunch in the past week, which is why we thought it was really important to talk about it. We've heard from a couple of schools, public school systems in particular where students are wearing Palestinian flags to school and perhaps behaving in some type of an intimidating manner to Jewish students. So, I actually consulted with AJC's chief counsel about this question of freedom of speech and items that you wear to school. And the answer is that I'm dusting off my rusty law degree. And Melanie, I'm dusting yours off too. Melanie and I both have rusty law degrees.
The answer is that that people can wear items that are controversial or even problematic and causing of grief to others, such as in the famous case apparently is from the Vietnam War where a student wanted to wear a black armband opposing the war to school in a school where people had older brothers who had died in the war or other family members who had died in the war. And the ruling was that yes, they could wear those black bands to school. So, I'm not sure you're going to get too far on talking to a school administrator or the Department of Education in a public school system about restricting the kind of clothing that people wear. What I would suggest though is the same thing I would suggest for private schools. And that is this is a moment for sensitivity. This is a moment to take good care of our school communities and perhaps a superintendent, a principal, even in a public school system, could suggest strongly to students.
This is not the time to wear a Palestinian flag to school. It's not the time to wear an IDF T-shirt to school either. You want to wear your Jewish star necklace that you wear every day, great. You want to wear something small and modest that says who you are, great. But we don't want to in this very tender time, make things more painful or more difficult for members of our school communities. I do think though, that if something is worn in a menacing way and this was confirmed by our chief counsel, something's worn in a menacing way. In other words, let's say somebody wears a Palestinian flag tied around their face and stands behind Jewish students in their personal space and things like that. We did have a case of that this week. That's a different story that sort of crosses the line between freedoms of speech and intimidation.
And all public schools and private schools do have codes of conduct that include what exactly intimidation consists of. So, you should definitely take a look. They're all public. In the public schools, they're all online. You can go look them up. Private schools, I'm sure you have them in parent handbook, you can look them up there as well. Private schools may actually, if this conflict gets more tendentious here in America and in school spaces, I would not be surprised if some private schools said to students, "I'm sorry, you can't wear those things to school for now."
Melanie Pell:
Thank you. So, I have a couple of questions and then we have a lot of questions from our audience and we are grateful for all of those questions and we'll do our best to get to as many as we can. We will not be able to get to all of them, but we'll do what we can. But before that, Aaron, let's talk about resources. So, we have a lot of questions about resources. What kinds of resources are available for Jewish students, for Jewish educators, for non-Jewish educators? What is out there and what do we have to share?
Aaron Bregman:
Absolutely. And I'll try to project my voice as much as I can for those who are having a little trouble. And I apologize again for that. I am fighting a little bit of a cold. So, first off, I believe in our chat box or right after this call, you'll receive for those on this call a parent resource list that we have developed that will be incredibly helpful for you, hopefully for your school, for administrators if you'd like to share with them. So, that will be shared with this group, either just now or in the coming minutes and hours. We can also provide parents to help if educators certainly want to reach out to us with lesson plans, potential speakers. We have those connections and abilities if you want to. Certainly when it comes to the context and the content, just for example, this morning, a colleague of ours in the San Diego office told me that she was asked to come speak to a school district this afternoon, and she needed a slide deck on the entire Arab Israeli conflict within the hour.
And I was fortunately able to provide that PowerPoint for her. But the content is there. There are a tremendous amount of resources and we have that ability and we will certainly give you whatever resources you're looking for. And we recognize whether it's for Jewish day school students, as we've talked about, private school, public school, educators, administrators, we have that. Sometimes it's right in the materials that we give you, but sometimes it's a little more explicit. So, we're happy to work essentially offline, help with that as well. And certainly as I just add on to the resource part, just got to remember that educators do not have to have all the answers.
That's why we are here to create those resources if they feel lost, whether you're in the Jewish community or not, educator's first priority should be providing factual and respectful materials that support all students, but recognizing it in this aftermath of this terrible, terrible tragedy that the fellow Israelis, that the events of what is going to unfold in the next days and weeks ahead are going to be nuanced. It's going to be a tough conversation, but that, as I mentioned earlier, my example, that should not dissuade people from talking about it. This is a conversation that involves many, many students and many students want to talk about the issues. So, let's have the conversation, let's have the resources that you need, and we are there to help you with that.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you. Laura, anything you want to add there before we turn to our questions?
Laura Shaw Frank:
I just want to say that I love the fact that of course, Aaron was able to send a 50 slide PowerPoint about the entire Israel Palestinian conflict and within a half an hour, and I'm not surprised. All that to say we have enormous resources at our disposal, both from our combined 30 years as classroom educators. We both taught Israel studies, so 30 years of Israel studies teaching experience. And Aaron directs our teen program. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. But again, this content is really overwhelming. I can tell you that even after 17 years of teaching it, I don't feel a 100% confident on the material. And I'm sure Aaron would agree with me on his end too. So, don't be scared. Reach out for help. We're here to help you. And if we don't have the answers, we know where to get the answers, but the content is here, it is available to you and we can help you with it.
Aaron Bregman:
And just one last thing I'll just say that I was speaking to our DC regional board members yesterday and I happen to see a former parent of students of their children that I taught. And I said to the parent, I said, "I feel terrible. I don't know how I could have ever in an Arab-Israeli conflict course to 11th graders, how I could have ever prepared them for the tragedies that just befell us and what just took place over this last week." And the parent was incredibly kind and said that I did more than that, I think. But what I'm trying to say more so is that educators don't be nervous, don't be afraid. This is a time to get our students to be critical thinkers and to recognize that this is a moment that they're going to remember for a really, really long time and that we should, I hate to just use the word embrace the moment, but again, talking is the best way to go about this.
Melanie Pell:
Great. So, we're going to turn to the audience questions and there are many. The first one is a real softball. Laura, I'll give this to you. Is there a template of a letter we can send to our school?
Laura Shaw Frank:
I love a good softball. Okay, so there is actually a clickable link in the materials that have been dropped in the chat and that we will also send out with the follow-up materials after the call that has text of sending a letter to your administrator about a statement, requesting a statement. Otherwise, if it's something else that's going on in your school community, I would use the tone of that letter, which is a very open and engaged and partnering tone to reach out about the other things that you may have issues with as a teacher.
And Aaron, you're going to start smiling in a moment. We were always told by our administrators, and I'm sure Aaron was told this too, when you talk to parents, you have to sandwich. You have to first say something nice about the student, then you can say the thing that you need to say that's maybe a little critical of the student, and then you end with something else that's nice about the student. I would encourage you when you're writing to your school administrators, sandwich, talk about how proud you are to be part of the school community. Raise your concern, reemphasize that you want to be a partner in working together and suggest a time to talk.
Melanie Pell:
Great. And again, I see many of you are already in the document. We can see all of you in there, which is great. Please save that. There's so many clickable links in there, and because of the nature of this kind of Google document, we will be updating these resources in real time. So, if you click on them tomorrow, the numbers that you see may be updated. And so just keep that open and make sure you spend some time in there. As Laura said, we will also send an email, it will probably be tomorrow with the recording of this call, along with this link again to all of these resources. So, we want to make sure you have as much as possible. Okay. Aaron, how do we work to get schools to do regular and mandatory workshops or programs around antisemitism?
Aaron Bregman:
Absolutely. I mean, obviously if a school has not been doing that yet, I'm surprised and I would say certainly that should have been done a long time ago, but unfortunately we are in the era we're in now. We are certainly happy to help if a school does not know how to begin this conversation. I know Laura talked about whether it's a parent affinity group or certainly having someone reach out to us, we are certainly happy to help provide different templates of what that could look like. I do think it's a real case by case basis. What I mean by that is recognizing the size of the school, the size of the, is it a K through 12 school, how big is the high school? Is it for a particular student body or grade? What are the goals that the school wants the students to get out of it?
As we all know, we used to obviously bring in a lot of Holocaust survivors, which are dwindling by the day and months and years. So, I really do think, I know it's sort of a cop out, but I'd have to hear what the school wants to get out of that. And then based on that background, I would love to provide more details and ideas of what could work for each individual type of school. And again, depending on, not that it matters if it's a public or private school, but Jewish day school has a little different context, but we are certainly here to help provide those ideas if need be.
Laura Shaw Frank:
Can I answer a couple of things?
Aaron Bregman:
Yeah, please.
Laura Shaw Frank:
Great. Okay. So, a couple of things. First of all, a really important thing that all of us should be doing in our kids' schools is making sure that Jews and antisemitism are a part of the school’s DEI framework. The minute that that happens, it opens up all kinds of other portals and possibilities of conversations about Jews and Judaism and Jewish history and culture in the school space and antisemitism. So, that's something that really we should talk about. Maybe there's a question about that, but that's really, really important. And I'll just say that within the DEI space, it can be difficult to bring Jews as a category into that space because DEI spaces are often about a racial identity and ethnic identity or gender identity. And Jews don't neatly fit into any of those. Jews or multiracial are multi-ethnic are multi gendered.
So, we don't fit into a typical template of the way American schools have thought about diversity, equity, and inclusion. But there are very important ways and parameters and facts and history and advocacy that one can use in order to get your school to understand why it is so important to include Jews and Judaism and antisemitism into DEI frameworks. So, that's really, really important. And what I'm going to say in addition to that, and this is also really important, the U.S. National Strategy on confronting antisemitism. This is a 60-page document that the Biden administration has issued. It was issued in May, U.S. National Strategy. There is a link to it in the document in the resource doc that we put into the chat and that we'll send out afterwards. That document, if you look at it, says explicitly that the administration calls upon schools, private and public, to include Jews and antisemitism in DEI frameworks to educate about antisemitism, to educate about Jewish culture and Jewish tradition in school spaces.
So, if you need any good evidence, any good argument, well the United States said so. So, all of that is really helpful in trying to talk through the kind of antisemitism training, education that you need in the school spaces. And as Aaron said, every school space is different. Aaron and I have consulted for Jewish day schools, we've consulted for private schools, we've spoken in public schools. So, every forum is different, is a little bit different and has its own needs. But we're here to help you think those things through. But very important to look at it through that DEI framework.
Melanie Pell:
Great, thank you. I just want to note again, because of if anyone had any issues with some of the audio, there is a transcript that is going to be generated by Zoom. So, we will send that out to all of you as well in addition. So, if there were any parts that you couldn't hear as well, we'll make sure you can read them. So, we have a solution to every problem here at AJC. Okay. So, thank you. So, Aaron, let's talk about what is age appropriate. At what age or grade would you recommend that educators begin to bring up some of these issues, and when is it appropriate to show support in the classroom for Jewish students? Is that appropriate in elementary school and middle school? What's your recommendation?
Aaron Bregman:
Yeah, I mean, I can certainly try to speak to the first question and the second one, I'd love to hear Laura's thoughts on too. But as someone who taught primarily just in the ninth through 12th grade, I do think, and this, as we've talked about it as everyone on this call, I'm sure knows, the conversations, not just what's currently happening on the ground, but historically are incredibly complicated, incredibly nuanced. For example, I taught an Arab-Israeli conflict course for one semester, and I barely scratched the surface to 11th graders. So, there is so many ways to go about talking about these issues. I certainly think with, I have an almost four-year-old, do I think it's relative or important? Unless they are directly connected to a family member or friend that was harmed at this last week, I don't think that's appropriate. Even elementary school, I think there are, and I'm sure there are people that are invested in the elementary school space that can speak better about this.
But I do know that general speaking, make things more black and white, make the terminology and language much more clear and crisp and sort of straightforward. Bad guys, good guys. I'm sure there's better terminology that one in that space could use. But as you get older, certainly that's the conversation shifts. The conversation shift, the dialogue within the students shift to the teacher. And this goes back to the idea of Socratic seminar, even as again, the older they get teaching kids how to speak to their peers about this issue becomes such an important tool that they need as they move on out of high school as well. So, the educator at some point should be able to sit back and moderate and then allow the students to speak with each other. That is really an important skill. So, as we move on, I think it gets less black and white and more certainly gray. But Laura, I'd love to hear your thoughts on certainly the ways to approach other younger crowds.
Laura Shaw Frank:
Yeah, so what I'll say about younger crowds and also my educational experience is for the most part in high school, although I do have some late lower school experience, like fifth grade experience, I would say that with littler children, the thing to focus on is Jewish people in America hurting, talking instead about the political situation there, focus on what they know and they're seeing in their community. Why are mommy and daddy or mommy and mommy or daddy and daddy or whoever it is feeling upset in this moment? Why are some of the teachers in school sad right now?
Why are we talking about Israel all the time? Why did we go to a rally? And talking about that the Jewish people feels a strong connection to Israel. Talking to them a little bit about why and what Israel is and that some sad things happened in Israel and we're sad because our Jewish co-religionists, our brothers and sisters, our fellow Jewish people have been hurt and therefore we're hurt. So, I think concretizing it for them as American Jews in this community and talking to them about having empathy and understanding for those around them might be the way to go with younger kids.
Melanie Pell:
Yeah, thank you. And as the parent of a nine and a half year old, I think the other thing I would say, again, I'm not the expert here, I'm the moderator, but I would say as a parent, a lot of it really has to start with us at home before it gets to the classroom. We have to make sure our kids hear from us and understand a little bit from us if we think there's any chance that it's going to come up in the classroom. It's best that they're hearing first from their parents. Laura, you just mentioned empathy and one of the questions is about how do we frame our empathy for Palestinians who are also in harm's way and who are invariably going to be killed and really a lot of pain for Palestinians as well. What is it we want to teach about that?
Laura Shaw Frank:
Yeah, that's a really, really important question. What we want to teach about that is that the innocent suffering of any civilian should hurt our hearts. There are certainly plenty of innocent civilians in Gaza who are going to suffer or suffering now and who are going to suffer enormously, and we can say that full stop. And that does not take away from the fact that this conflict was caused by Hamas. It does not take away from the fact that what Hamas did to Israel was an abhorrent act of terror. It does not take away from the fact that Israel has a responsibility to defend its citizens. It does not take away from the fact that Israel is going to do the best it can to mitigate civilian damages.
But unfortunately, Hamas is the kind of ruling terrorist organization that's going to put its citizens into harm's way and has already done that. I think that you can have full stop empathy and then if there's pushback saying Israel is causing it, at that point, you can start to talk about some of these other really important frames and really important pieces of information, contextual frames that are necessary to understand what's going on. But we should absolutely, absolutely have that empathy for everyone who is suffering in this conflict. Certainly every civilian who's suffering in this conflict.
Aaron Bregman:
I couldn't agree more with what Laura said going into, call it grad school, a teacher school. As a history teacher, you were always taught, at least my professors always said, "You should walk in a classroom. Students shouldn't know if you're a Democrat, Republican or our case is a coup, a labor, whatever you're teaching, you should be down in the middle and make them play devil's advocate." In this case I do think everything that Laura just mentioned, it should be up there, should be said directly to the students. But with that being said, and with my history head on, someone who taught during 2008 and 2009, 2014, 2021 and the other Gaza incursions, I do recognize that there's going to be more and more difficult conversations down the road.
And that's where the nuance comes and that's where the moral discussions come in. That's where the conversations, I remember explicitly talking to students about when Gilad Shalit was released, the idea of a thousand prisoners for one Israeli soldier. There are going to be a lot of incredibly difficult conversations for both Jewish students and non-Jewish students, but particularly for our Jewish students. These are things that parents educators, synagogues, community groups, youth groups we'll be discussing in the long-term future, unfortunately.
Laura Shaw Frank:
I want to add one more thing. Totally agree with everything that Aaron just said. And I just also want to add that we have seen, particularly on college campuses, this narrative among professors, students also, but even professors, that the terror attacks are Israel's fault or that the terror attacks are something to be celebrated and we can come out and be a moral voice here. That is fundamentally immoral. It is a horrible thing to say in every single way, and I think that one of the best things that we can do in this moment is not take that horrible low road of saying that it is justified to murder civilians in cold blood, to cut babies’ heads off, all the horrible things that we saw happen.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you. I'm going to do a little roundup of a few questions that are in the chat. We had a number of questions about resources for college students, and this webinar was really designed for high school students. But I want to acknowledge too and share two things. One, last week we had a really, really fantastic webinar with college students that is available on our website and on YouTube. And later this week, what day is it? I don't even know what day of the week it is anymore. I believe it will be later this week. We are planning and we haven't circulated anything yet, but stay tuned a webinar in partnership with Hillel International where we will address more of the university situations and issues. That is a multi-part webinar in and of itself. We do on our website - If you go to AJC.org/CampusLibrary, we have a whole compendium of resources for university students.
And the other thing I want to note is a few of you have asked about what Laura referenced with the National Strategy for Countering Antisemitism that the White House issued earlier this year. We have on our website a whole series of guides, guides for public school administrators, guides for private school administrators, then guides for mayors, guides for members of congress, all different sectors about what they can do to help implement the recommendations. And a lot of that is about how they can introduce and implement the teaching of antisemitism and about Judaism into their DEI curricula both in schools, in corporations, wherever.
So, I saw a number of questions like that in the chat. We do have resources about that on our website. We will try as we put together the email that will go out tomorrow with all of the resources. We'll try to answer as many of the questions we didn't get to here with links to things and materials and resources that will help answer some of those questions. So, before we wrap up, I want to, and there's a great suggestion, Aaron, of doing a LFT session, almost like a webinar LFT session where we can do a little bit of a teach-in like that. So, I think that's an interesting idea that we should look at.
Laura Shaw Frank:
That's a great idea.
Aaron Bregman:
Absolutely. And I'll mention for those who don't know LFT, we'll talk about it in just a minute as well.
Melanie Pell:
Well, how about now? Why don't you tell us a little bit about LFT?
Aaron Bregman:
Absolutely. I'll be short and quick, but LFT, our Leaders for Tomorrow program, that is our teen program that has been going on for the last nine years. Long story short, LFT started actually in 2014 in our New York office where we had a student who went to a school that did not talk about the issues. This is during the Israel-Gaza situation in 2014. And they said, "We want to be able to talk to our Jewish peers about this, and I don't have a way to do that." And essentially, with that being said, LFT was created to talk, to allow students to come and engage with each other about the really difficult questions that were happening then, but also expand to understanding their Jewish identity and talking to kids that weren't in their community about that. Talking about why is antisemitism authorized. Using those difficult questions that we hear that happen in college campuses all the time, being able to give students that space to discuss it.
So, with that being said, LFT, AJC.org/LFT, we are really fortunate. We have 14 cohorts this year across the country, 13 of which are in-person. We do have a virtual cohort for those who are not near an AJC office that can get to one of those in-person cohorts. And in short is a great way for students, particularly in this unfortunate time we're in, to learn more about the issues, again, on Jewish identity, on Jewish history, on Israel, modern Israel conflict, contemporary issues in Israeli society, antisemitism, preparing for college, all those things combined. As well as having a three-day advocacy program in Washington D.C., February 4-6. It's an incredible program that we have more than 100 students attend every year. So, I strongly recommend to have your students apply. There is an application process, there is an interview process. We have limited space left in different cohorts, so please go to the website and apply. And I guarantee it'll be certainly worth it for your students to get involved in.
Melanie Pell:
Thank you. And before I turn it to you, Laura, for any closing thoughts, I just want to note there was a question about what to do if something happens in your community. We have regional offices across the country. We have 25 regional offices across the U.S., which means some of you may be in communities that are not physically covered by one of our regions, but you can always reach out to any of them or just reach out to our highschool@ajc.org and we can help you. In terms of reporting incidents, we work closely with the ADL as well with the Anti-Defamation League. They collect incidents.
They really are tracking specific incidents. So, it's really good to report those because that data is important and that data matters. So, reporting it to the ADL is really important. We can also help you on the advocacy side and on the communication side, so you can do both. We're here to help. They're here to help. I just want to respond to that. If you have an AJC in your community, please reach out to our amazing regional staff. And if you have an ADL and not an AJC, again, like ADL, we're all here to help. We're all here trying to fight the same fight. So, use all of us liberally, I would say. And Laura, let me ask you to give any final thoughts and then we'll turn it back to you, Mara, to close this out.
Laura Shaw Frank:
I guess what I just want to end with is just by saying that you are not alone. We are here. I know that I speak for Melanie and Aaron as well in saying that we feel like this is our war efforts. We can't fight the war in Israel, but we can help Jews in America to get what they need to expand the understanding of the community in which we live, about what's going on with us, the suffering that we're undergoing, and what is true and factual about what's going on in Israel. So, just to let you know that we are here for you, no question is dumb, et cetera. I will say we are being inundated. So, if we don't get back to you immediately, that doesn't mean we don't care. Be patient. We will get back to you, we promise. But really, we are here for you and we don't want you to ever feel alone.
Aaron Bregman:
And if I could just say a real quick Melanie that I know these conversations can be incredibly challenging when we encounter ignorance or hostility instead of understanding and support. But to our Jewish students and our Jewish parents out there tonight, be aware, be outspoken, and be proud, and we're here for you.
Mara Steine:
Thank you, Aaron, Laura, and Melanie for tonight's important conversation. And thank you to our audience for tuning in tonight. To stay up to date on the evolving situation, make sure to follow AJC on social media. We also urge you to visit our website at AJC.org/AttackonIsrael, where you can find informative resources, ways to take action, and information on how to donate to AJCs Emergency Israel campaign, which has raised nearly 2.5 million dollars thus far. If you would like to send a note of support to the people of Israel, please visit www.ajc.org/loveisrael. These notes will be shared on Israeli TV stations across the country. We continue to stand in solidarity with Israel today and every day. Am Yisrael Chai. Thank you again and goodnight.
