Sept. 2026
Lishai Peel, principal, Kehila Heschel School

Everywhere I look, I see an increasingly hostile world for Jews. Some of the hostility is direct and unmistakable. Some of it is ambient, hidden behind coded language, casual comments and the widespread use of “Zio” as though it were not simply another way to speak about Jews with contempt.

In response, many Jews I know have become hypervigilant. Some are retreating from the non-Jewish world. Others are playing down their Jewishness, hoping that if they are quiet enough, agreeable enough or sufficiently critical of Israel, the hostility will pass them by.

As a mother, I feel the impossible contradiction of this moment. How do I tell my son, who attends public school, to be proud of who he is while also warning him to be careful about what he shares? How do we teach our children to speak openly about their families, traditions and connection to Israel while preparing them for the possibility that these very things may be used against them?

This moment is asking us difficult questions about survival and about what it means to be Jewish right now. It is asking us to recognize not only obvious danger, but also the quieter ways harm reaches our children: through exclusion, misinformation, social pressure and the suggestion that Jewish identity is something requiring explanation or apology.
I know many people are strategizing, ringing alarm bells and fighting the endless waves of Jew hatred online. That work matters. But as a mother and a Jewish day school principal, I believe one of the most important answers is also the simplest. It is an answer that has been with us throughout our long history:

Raise Jewish kids.

Raise children who know their stories, their language, their traditions and their people. Give them Jewish friendships and Jewish places where they do not have to shrink themselves. Teach them that Judaism is not merely something to defend. It is somethig to live, question, celebrate and cherish.

Raising Jewish children with knowledge and confidence is an insistence on Jewish joy, Jewish perseverance and Jewish gpeoplehood. In a world that may ask them to become quieter, our task is to give them a Jewish identity strong enough to remain fully, unapologetically their own.