Do You Feel Safe Wearing Jewish Symbols In Public?

By: Dr. Chaim Y. Botwinick

In a recent poll by the Baltimore Jewish Times, people were asked: “Do you feel unsafe wearing Jewish symbols in public?” Fifty-four percent said yes and 46% said no. Although this finding was not totally surprising, the responses were somewhat disconcerting.

Just imagine: Over half of those polled expressed fear or concern regarding wearing Jewish symbols in public. This finding as well as similar recent surveys suggest that the levels of antisemitism and Jew-hatred today are not only rising, but have reached a level of unimaginable magnitude.

It is truly unbelievable that we have reached a point in history where members of the Jewish community are actually frightened to display symbols of their identity in public. It’s both troubling and foreboding. To be sure, the fact that such a large number of people express this level of fear and uncertainty suggests a new reality that demands close review and examination.

About two years ago, I met with a beautiful couple in their early 80s from France over Shabbat lunch. They told us that they were recently forced to remove their mezuzos from their doorposts for fear of violent antisemitic break-ins and vile graffiti on their doors. They also told us that they no longer wear kippot in public for fear of their safety. It was so sad to hear this elderly couple describe how they were being forced to live in such fear.

During the conversation, they both recounted how, as children during the Holocaust, they were forced to hide from the German SS by lying flat and still beneath the baseboards of a farmhouse just several miles outside a small farming village in France. It was a familiar story of courage, survival, and resilience. Ironically, today in France, members of the Jewish community are still hiding their Jewish identity and many are now in the process of making aliyah to Israel in order to escape violent Jew-hatred.

Since Shabbat, I lost contact with the couple, but the last I heard, they did in fact made aliyah to Israel where they are now living peacefully with their family. This is just one out of a million such stories throughout our history, how Acheinu Bnei Yisrael needed to hide their Jewish identity in order to survive as Jews.

Raising children in today’s harsh antisemitic environment is one of my greatest concerns. As adults, many of us have either experienced acts of antisemitism or have had family and friends who experienced it, including those who survived the horrors of the Holocaust. It truly pains the heart like a dagger when we witness Holocaust survivors reliving this horror in our day and age. Friends, it goes without saying that it behooves our Jewish community to take on this evil hatred in our society and ramp up our consternation with a call to action. How?

{The Role and Responsibility of Schools

When our children are exposed to these ills of society, whether by overhearing conversations at home, on the news, from a friend, or on the playground, we must do everything in our power to make them feel safe, secure, and proud to be Jews. One way to confront this challenge is to help our children appreciate and celebrate their Jewish identity through specially designed educational programs, initiatives, and experiences. The role and responsibility of schools must be to redouble their efforts to provide our students with the resources required to celebrate and inspire their Jewish identity.

First and foremost, it is essential that our Jewish day schools and yeshivot make Judaism joyful and inviting, not just demanding. As such, we know that true pride does not come from memorizing facts and events, but from positive personal, communal, and familial experiences. Our students must be inspired to engage in positive Jewish experiences that will that have powerful long-term and short-term effects.

In addition to the variety of learning opportunities, students should be exposed to the most inspiring teachers, rebbeim, scholars, and Torah texts to more fully appreciate their impact on Jewish identity and practice.

This impact does not happen in a vacuum. As we know, schools are powerful resources of Jewish knowledge, identity, and experience. As such, they can have a remarkably important and positive impact on a student’s Jewish identity, behavior, and attitude. When a student questions whether he should wear a Jewish symbol in public, be it a kippah, tzitzit, or Magen David, the student is essentially asking if it is safe. It’s therefore imperative that schools, parents, and communities do everything possible to ensure that their environments are emotionally and physically safe for their children.

{The Role of Parents and Families

The role of schools takes place in partnership with parents and families. Way too many of our children are exposed to discussions, debates, and conversations about antisemitism and Jew-hatred. These uncensored conversations can have over an extended period of time a damaging and detrimental effect on the psychological, social, and emotional well-being of our children.

Protecting our children against the fear of antisemitism requires open communication, proactive engagement, and emotional resilience. It also requires a home and school environment that is sensitive, understanding, and respects boundaries. It therefore behooves parents to reassure, acknowledge, and validate a child’s feelings of fear, confusion, and worry while at the same time making the child feel safe and secure.

An integral part of this process requires that families do everything in their power to encourage and display strong levels of Jewish identity through ongoing practice and conversation. This also includes parents who exhibit public pride through Jewish practice and behavior, whether in shul, at community centers, out shopping, at the airport, and other public domains. 

When an act of antisemitism or Jew-hatred is publicized on the world stage or in a community, it is essential that parents get ahead of the curve by not sounding alarm-bells but rather calmly discussing it through age-appropriate conversations. Reality dictates that global antisemitism and Jew-hatred is on the rise. It therefore makes tremendous sense to assume that our children will unfortunately be exposed to this evil with greater frequency. 

Finally, it is imperative that parents continuously celebrate and bolster their Jewish identity at home, especially in the presence of their children. Our children should never for one moment ever second-guess their Jewish identity, nor should they be put in a position to view their Jewish pride and identity through the dark clouds of antisemitic hatred or in response to this hatred. To that end, we must do everything in our power to always feel secure, safe, confident and proud to wear our Jewish symbols in public spaces. This includes parents who are the primary role models of this important behavior. When we do so, we confront the very hatred and fear that aims to destroy us.

At the end of the day, we should all feel proud to wear Jewish symbols in public. It is our undeniable right, choice, obligation, and responsibility to ourselves, our community, and our children. As a mamlechet kohanim and an ohr la’goyim, we were all created b’tzelem elokim, a reality that demands Jewish pride in private and in the public domain. 

Am Yisrael Chai. 

Dr. Chaim Botwinick is a senior executive coach and an organizational consultant. Her served as president and CEO of the central agency for Jewish education in Baltimore and Miami; in addition to head of school and principal for several Jewish day schools and yeshivot. As an influencer, he has published and lectured extensively on topics relating to education, strategic planning and leadership development. He is the co-founder of LEV Consulting Associates and host of the Chinuch Horizons podcast series. Dr. Botwinick is the author of “Think Excellence” published by Brown Books (2011).