Navigating a Post October 7th World as a Jewish Educator in Brookline
I am writing this piece for the sole purpose of clarifying to my colleagues and my community what we have gone through this past year.
It was October 2023. I walked into Brookline High School with trepidation knowing that I could not in any way display my politics nor my fears in front of my students. I entered the Jewish affinity space (a space created to allow Jewish and Israeli students to process the horrors of October 7th) to show my support for scared and grieving students. I tried to remain stoic, balanced, as students spoke about friends and family in Israel. Students popcorned around the room sharing.
My best friend is in Israel and I haven’t heard from him
My teacher didn’t even mention what happened at all
My teacher told me someone’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter (this later turned out to be a horrible misunderstanding of what the teacher had actually said)
I have believed since the very first day of teaching, back in 2000, that my job was to help students learn how to think critically, but never to indoctrinate. Present all sides and allow students to think for themselves. But I was entering a post October 7th world which would challenge my rules, even in a town like Brookline, home to at least nine major synagogues and a large population of practicing Jews.
It was my 24th year of teaching. Less than 24 hours after the October 7th massacre our newsfeeds flooded with the horrors of the previous day. Women sexually assaulted, babies kidnapped, and teenagers and elderly brutally murdered by terrorists. I came to school that following week still reeling from the fear that Jews in Israel, and the world, will never truly be safe. I needed to process it all. I tried to discuss it with my peers, but I was met with comments like “Think about our Palestinian colleague” or “Look at the horrible things Netenyahu has done.” Or “It was bound to happen.” A few colleagues reached out recognizing how events in Israel play on the fears of Jews around the world, but most of my colleagues were silent. Dr. King once said “we will never forget the silence of our friends.” I can’t forget.
But the conflict didn’t play out so overtly through October and November. People feared the response the IDF might have to Hamas and the dangers of innocent people in Gaza being hurt. My compassionate heart also wanders to innocent people living in Gaza during this dangerous time. Any loss of life is horrific. The anti zionist rhetoric began to permeate slowly. (The true meaning of Zionism is the self determination of the Israelites to finally have our indigenous land recognized by the international community.) First, it began with a few students wearing the keffiyeh. As a child of the 80s, I grew up fully in fear of Yassir Arafat, the former face of the Palestinian Liberation Organization who made the keffiyeh symbolic by folding it on his head to show the shape of Israel in the front. To me, he was not a freedom fighter, but a person who used violence and condoned terrorism. After October 7th, and then after December, the number of students and staff members wearing the keffiyeh multiplied. I had a visceral reaction as I pictured Yassir Arafat’s face and his repeated refusal to negotiate with Israel. And yet, as a teacher, I knew I could not publicly react to the students’ silent messages even when it made me fearful.
And while it began for me on October 7th, it was early December which sparked an avalanche burying the confidence of enough Brookline High Jewish educators and students that we had to find each other. It was the start of a fraternity that we hadn’t anticipated. In early December 2023, Brookline High held its annual Day of Racial Reform and Solidarity, formerly called the Day of Courage. In the past, it has always been one of my favorite days of the year. In 2007, Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the original nine students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas in 1957, came to speak at Brookline High. As part of the day, Minnijean talked about how important it was for people to tell their stories. Thus, the central piece of our day has always been students telling their stories. I love listening to students describe their experiences.
This year was different. The day was moderated by a student wearing a keffiyeh. Some of us questioned whether the day came with a theme. The last student to tell his story discussed the Serbian genocide and then went on to accuse Israel of committing a similar genocide in Gaza as the country responded to Hamas’s terrorism. The student finished his speech. I was expecting someone in charge to come to the microphone to say, “we recognize this may have been harmful and we will be in room blah blah blah for anyone who needs to discuss this”. But the day continued without interruption. Israeli students cried in the bathroom. Jewish students texted their parents. There was undeniable harm done.
Our email listserv, which reaches all faculty and staff, blew up. I commented that the student needed some sort of follow up. I was told that there would be follow up with his “team”. Months later, his guidance counselor, a central member of his “team”, had never heard nor participated in any follow up. Emails expressing that the student violated the rules of the day were met with colleagues expressing how Israel was conducting a genocide. It was a feeling of a new reality. Scholarship took second stage for some teachers. Up until this year words had been sacred. Language needed to be used with clarity and definition. Now it was being weaponized against my people. Genocide is defined by a small percentage of survivorship after ethnic or racial cleansing. All of the replies focused on the conflict in Gaza, not the immediate incident at our school.
The emails were angry, hurtful, and wrought with misinformation consistent with social media. The curriculum coordinators wrote an email advising everyone to stop commenting on the thread. The next day, an email, violating the request of the administration, stated “On a day that was supposed to center the voices and experiences of students of color, a segment of our community decided to center their white voices. I could not have scripted a better homage to white supremacy if I tried.” As a Jew I was accused of being a white supremacist for expressing my concerns.
I waited for a follow up email from administration. There was nothing. It was my supervisor, the Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator who eventually mediated a discussion between us so that we could move forward as colleagues. And we did move forward because we are two adult educators. But nothing was public. Nothing came from our administration. The last word had implied that I was a white supremacist. That it was the last word, written with impunity and met with silence by the larger school community was even more cruel.
And so this set the tone for the rest of the year. Some of our newly formed support group, had numerous meetings with our Head of School and with the Deans of Students. In one particular meeting, we tried to explain that we felt fearful. We could see colleagues’ social media posts and antisemitic positions and we were nervous. The response from a dean whose primary job is the protection of students, was that “safety is a privilege.” If my child one day said she did not feel safe, would she receive this same response? Each meeting made me feel like more of a nuisance walking around the school where I have spent 24 years.
The keffiyehs continued to multiply and some staff members publicly displayed their political positions. One day as I was perusing social media, I clicked on a public Facebook profile of a staff member. For employment it clearly stated “Brookline High School.” As I scrolled through, I clicked on a video. It showed two young girls playing, giggling, holding hands. One was a Jew, and one a Palestinian. The caption read “how it all started.” As the Palestinian girl turned around, the Jewish girl began violently stabbing her in the back. Although it was vivid and frightening propaganda. HR advised our curriculum coordinators that individuals who were not student facing had a right to free speech. The rules have not caught up with the times. In our high school building, every single person faces students.
The social media of our colleagues continued to cause harm. What faculty members post on their social media is essential to students feeling safe in their classrooms. If someone posted a confederate flag on their personal social media, and a parent happened to see it, students of color would not feel safe in that person’s classroom. As a mother of Jewish children, I do not feel safe with my kids in a classroom where the teacher wants to wipe Israel off of the map. One of our teachers, out on maternity leave, posted some articles and memes along with false data demonizing Jews and Israel and legitimizing Hamas, a terrorist organization. I reached out to her expressing my concern, as Hamas is an organization whose mission it is to rid the world of Jews. Her response was that the use of the word terrorist triggered her and that we, as Jews, should rethink our relationship to Israel. (If you are knowledgeable about Jewish history you recognize that Israel is in every single one of our prayers as our ancestors were the Israelites). A colleague quite literally advised us to rethink our religion.
By the spring, someone had written “from the river to the sea” on a wall in a bathroom. Our Head of School’s email to teachers and the parent community stated that “some may find this offensive.” The Congress of the United States has ruled the slogan hate speech as it calls for the erasure of Israel and all of the Jews living there, but for our school it was open to interpretation. If someone had written the “n” word in the bathroom, a response saying that “some may find this offensive” would be met with vitriol. Hate is hate. When I pushed back on that I was told that people believed this slogan was okay and therefore he had to write something that would not offend either side. The response to hateful graffiti had to appease the offenders as well as their targets.
By March, I questioned whether Brookline High was the future school for my children. (Many teachers have their children attend.) But that was short-lived as the children of Brookline, and my children, rely on strong voices when there is a void. I have since chosen to double down. I bought a home in Brookline.
The colleague with the harmful social media has decided not to return to BHS. In her departure email, she titled it “Goodbye and Some Thoughts on BHS and Palestine”. Not, thoughts on Israel and Palestine. In her “last email/lecture” she mentioned the graffiti as a freedom slogan. Her comment violates the law in writing. But the email is still sitting there. Every endearing response to her adds to our marginalization and disregard for the hateful sentiments coded in her email.
There were some more hopeful moments during the year. I had an opportunity to have lunch with a few colleagues whose opinions and beliefs were different. We had good conversations and mutual understanding. I am grateful to those who were willing to sit down, listen, and speak with me. One teacher even bought me the book “Everyone Loves Dead Jews,” and we started to read it together. This, along with the fact that some of our administrators attended seminars learning about antisemitism in the spring, gives me some hope that it’s possible to educate our administrators about antisemitism with the same intentionality that has taken place in our school with anti-racist teaching.
I closed out the year with a positive meeting with a DEI administrator and finally felt that someone in administration understood the pain we have felt this year. It didn’t feel like just lip service when she told us that safety is NOT a privilege. Unfortunately the negativity of the year made me speed out the door on June 18th. The 2023-2024 school year changed me. Brookline High was not the same place. There was too much silence.
Brookline High has been an essential part of my maturation as a teacher and a human being. I’ve spent the greater part of my 20s and 30s here. I will work to repair relationships and educate about my Jewish culture when I can as that is the Jewish way – Tikkun Olam.
Marcie Miller
Social Studies Teacher
Brookline High School, Brookline Massachusetts