Jewish public school students in the United States are approaching the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel with optimism, after spending time building alliances with non-Jewish classmates, even as activists organize anti-Israel school walkouts nationwide.
“We can’t win a fight alone, but we can win it with friends,” Mason Hunter Lang, 17, a senior at New World School of the Arts in Miami, told JNS.
The North American Values Institute has been tracking “revolutionary youth” chapters coordinating Oct. 7 walkouts in multiple states. Promotional materials include students burning an Israeli flag and expressing support for “Palestinian resistance.”
“Jewish students should never feel they have to hide who they are to get through Oct. 7,” Sharon Sorkin, director of community relations at NAVI, told JNS. “Be proudly Jewish, know the facts and don’t be intimidated into silence.”
Lang, who is president of his school’s Jewish Student Union club, responded to Holocaust jokes by arranging for a survivor to speak to students. The first event accommodated 25 students. For the next, he needed to secure space for 100.
“They hadn’t humanized us,” he said of the classmates who made offensive comments. “They still saw us as a thing instead of a person.”
His club now has 75 members, including non-Jewish students, he told JNS.
“It’s a club for anyone that wants to be a friend and to learn, to come and join,” Lang said.
He also organized a seminar in which theater students acted out antisemitic encounters and how to respond. “We talk about how to deal with it and address it,” he said. “It wasn’t comfortable at first, because that’s never a comfortable thing to deal with.”
Eva Rosen, 15, a sophomore at Douglas Southall Freeman High School in Richmond, said that her Jewish Student Union club plans to show a remembrance video on Oct. 7. Most of the 30 students who attend her club meetings aren’t Jewish, she said.
“We’re open to anyone who’s supporting us,” she told JNS.
Rosen described harassment in middle school, including being told that she should have died in the Holocaust. Support from her family and community helped her become an advocate for others, she said.
“Keeping our head held high and looking for the next positive thing is what keeps us going from day to day,” she told JNS.
Evan Abowitz, 17, a senior at Parkway Central High School in St. Louis, Mo., said that attendance at his Jewish club surged after the Oct. 7 attacks.
Students “really just needed to find a community and find people for their questions that they had,” he told JNS.
Rabbi Derek Gormin, who develops national programming for Jewish Student Union, an NCSY program, said that its clubs have grown from about 200 before Oct. 7, 2023, to 515 today.
“When you ask these students, they want a safe place to celebrate their Judaism,” he told JNS.
Sorkin, of NAVI, said that protecting students is an adult responsibility.
“Schools must ensure that Oct. 7 is treated with historical accuracy and sensitivity, not turned into an opportunity for political activism that leaves Jewish students feeling isolated or targeted,” she said.
Sorkin told JNS that she advises parents of public school students to “know what is planned, ask questions beforehand and make clear that every student deserves to feel safe and respected in school.”
