Jewish public school families demand change to fight rise in hate

Some Jewish parents are demanding action from Ottawa's largest school board, saying it has failed to protect their children from increased anti-Jewish incidents in schools since the start of Israel's war in Gaza.

"The kids are all afraid to identify as Jewish," said Shira Waldman, a mother of four, around an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) meeting Tuesday night. "It's the most horrible thing a parent could ever imagine." 

The number of hate-related incidents reported to police in Ottawa rose nearly 20 per cent in 2023, with Jewish people and 2SLGBTQ+ people the most-targeted groups.

The number of these hate-related incidents against Muslims increased 160 per cent from the previous year. 

Waldman said the hatred and discrimination began in 2018 while her eldest child was in high school.

"Kids would throw pennies on the floor and say 'You are a Jew, pick it up.' Drawing swastikas on the desk, saluting … Hitler," she recalled. 

Her kids, including two currently in OCDSB schools, have been taunted about gas and Jews in science class, she said.

"The horrible thing is that our family did survive the Holocaust where many family members did die in the gas chambers at Auschwitz," she said.

"These are deeply hurtful generational traumatic events … pain that we carry with us." 

She said her children had so many negative experiences at the board's John McCrae Secondary School that she applied for a cross-boundary transfer for her youngest kid.

"It's not just one school, it's every school," she insisted.

Training, clarity on antisemitism

Waldman was one of dozens of parents at Tuesday evening's board meeting. 

Seven delegations spoke about the wide range of bullying and harassment Jewish students face. 

Leah Freedhoff, a Grade 11 student at Sir Robert Borden High School, said anti-Jewish hate was already at an unreasonably high level in public schools before the Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7.

That attack killed around 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies, with militants seizing more than 250 hostages — some since freed and some since killed.

More than 36,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Israel's offensive, Gaza's health ministry says, and about a million more people have been displaced. 

Since Oct. 7, Freedhoff said hate has become "untenable."

"I report the countless times we are verbally harassed in the halls and on social media by other students [and] we are told that nothing can be done. Or worse, we are told that it is not antisemitism," she said Tuesday night. 

Freedhoff said she has gone to her teachers and principals but they aren't trained how to deal with this type of hate, so "they just don't know what to do," she said.

"They aren't able to really classify what's happening as antisemitism … it's because we don't have a definition of what antisemitism is and because they aren't trained." 

Freedhoff wants the school board to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism, which Canada adapted in 2019, to help create a safe school environment for Jewish students.

She said it includes clear examples of antisemitism, such as [not] holding Jewish people collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli government. 

Pino Buffone, the board's director of education, admits the board is on a "learning journey" when it comes to defining antisemitism. 

"It is a work in progress for us," he told the delegation.

"We will continue to work at it and we'll continue to reach out to community partners that are trusted for us in providing us great advice on this very difficult time globally, but locally as well." 

He added the board is also working on a better tracking mechanism for instances of hate that occur inside schools.