The (Jewish) kids in the South are not ok.
Filed notes on parenting from the modern confederacy.
“It’s some kind of JEW day on Monday, right?”
“My parents told me I’m not allowed to talk to Jews.”
“Did you kill Jesus?”
These are just some of the things that my teenagers have been asked in the last few months by other kids at their pubic schools in Austin, Texas. Yes, THAT Austin, Texas. The one that everyone says is a blue dot in a red state. THAT Austin, Texas.
I am compelled to write this piece today on the heels of my kid’s one- day, middle school suspension. Here are the facts:
My kid responded to what he experienced as antisemitic hate speech by a classmate.
Our kid admits to putting a classmate in a headlock for what has been reported to us as a few seconds.
There was no injury to the other student reported to us.
The teacher did not see it. Other students in the classroom did not see it.
Both students involved are boys of similar size and weight.
The other kid reported the violence to the Principal (as he should have).
Our kid did not report the hate speech that he was responding to to anyone at the school. Only to us, his parents, after some careful, quiet, patient questioning.
Ironically, this suspension fell on Yom Kippur. Our Jewish holiday to atone. Cue suspenseful music here.
I’ve been called to my kids public schools for years now, sometimes several times a year, as a result of systemic bullshit antisemitic nonsense. It started when our oldest was in 2nd grade in November of 2016 right after a certain Presidential election. Coincidence? Doubtful. These cases that bring me to their school each year are the ones that I hear about. There are many more that I do not.
It’s worth noting that I did not have a Jewish childhood. I converted to Judaism when I was thirty; choosing this tradition, this lineage, this legacy. That is different that from my kids and my partner. This is relevant because I do not have my own Jewish specific legacy of a childhood peppered with antisemitic micro-aggressions and hate crimes to influence how I parent. This is different from my partner/the father of my kids. His story is not mine to tell so I will stick to my own.
My two teenagers live their Jewish identities in their own ways and I am not here to tell their stories. What I am here to tell is what it is like to be a White, Queer, Jewish parent in the modern confederacy.
Spoiler: its scary, lonely, triggering, confusing, privileged, and exhausting.
My childhood as a girl in the US south was full of harassment, early sexualization, unchaperoned adventures gone wrong, violence, and threats. I am not different in these ways than any other white Gen X latchkey kid raised by a single mom who lived in the rural south. My single mother was a white, straight, middle class feminist. She taught my sister and me about standing up for ourselves, told us that we were unstoppable, and instilled in us both a deep, lived commitment to birth control as a tool that we could use towards self actualization. She also told us not to go out alone at night, to walk with our keys between our fingers when in a parking lot, and to never drink “too much” that you’d not be able to control what happened to us. As if that every mattered much. But good tips, nonetheless.
Raising white Jewish kids in the south is surprising to me. Especially in a place like Austin (is there another place “like” Austin, maybe Nashville, Louisville, or Athens?). I use the word surprising here on purpose because I continue to be surprised even though I should not be. I was Jewish before I had kids so from my thirties on I’d always imagined raising Jewish kids. And admittedly, having not had a Jewish childhood myself, all of the Jewish parts of parenting are new to me. So I am genuine in the choice of this word as it is my experience.
Firstly, I am surprised because I assumed that Austin was “liberal” and in that assumption a few other assumptions were baked in like Austin was “safe” because it was liberal. It isn’t. For lots of folks. Last summer I had the honor to serve as Interim Executive Director at Congregation Beth Israel. This community was still in early recovery from an arson on its Synagogue during my tenure there. While in this role, I was trusted to hold space for the staff as they moved towards a massive reconstruction process. I was asked to support the Board as they went through the criminal justice process as the terrorist who harmed their place of worship was charged with a crime. In this role I saw behind the scenes into the number of threats that are made throughout Central Texas toward Jews, our homes, our community spots, our places of worship. Spoiler: It’s more than I would’ve every imagined. Terrifying stuff.
Raising Jewish kids in the South is surprising in another way to me in that it is lonely. There are some sizable Southern, Jewish communities (think Houston or Atlanta) but most of us in the South do not live in those kinds of communities. We live in Southern communities where our kids go to Hebrew schools during off hours in churches because there are no synagogues. We live in Southern communities where our kids are the only ones in their grades to be Bat or Bar Mitzvah’d. We live in Southern Communities where not only are we not celebrated, we are not seen at all. We live in Southern communities where Jewish assimilation is survival, it is safety.
The irony of my kid’s suspension recently is that the tension and anxiety about being Jewish that built up in him all week and finally won was a result of something that the Austin Independent School District was trying to do in their attempt to see him and the Jews who live here. This year those of us with kids in the AISD will have a few new school vacation days, days that ARE NOT Christian holidays. Yom Kippur was the first one of these (the others are Diwali and Eid). What AISD did was what most white, straight, allies do: make a structural change without doing any of the social, support work to make the structural change successful and think that that is enough.
In fact, Yom Kippur was not even given a full observation credit as it’s listed as a teacher work day. What are the Jewish teachers supposed to do?
Well intended but it harmed exactly the kid it was meant to support. See, what happened last week was that throughout the week our kid who does not feel safe to be public in his Jewish identity at school (those are his words) was asked in the way that middle school kids ask things: without filter, with a flat tone, about the “JEW day” that was coming up. These kids, I do not doubt, were not at all harmful in their intent as they asked our Jewish kid about what this “JEW day” is all about. But this kid, our Jewish kid, isn’t up for the task of explaining to you or your non-Jewish kids about what Yom Kippur is about. That, non Jewish friends, is for YOU to do. Try Google, its that easy. And its def not his job. In fact, he felt increasing uncomfortable in this questioning and when the last kid who asked did so in a tone that was interpreted by my kid as threatening, well, he snapped.
Case in point, when the adult in the room, i.e the school leadership, called me on the phone at 3:45 on a Friday afternoon to report this incident to me, they did not think to ask, or consider, that this specific Jewish kid was not up to the task of being the designating Jew for this new era of non-Christian student holidays in the AISD. She led the call with how surprising it was that our kid was acting like this. So, hey, here’s an idea: ask him what compelled him to do this. When he gives you a one word answer or looks away. Sit with it. Consider the context clues. Give it a minute. It was not his responsibility to explain this to anyone, much less this leader in his community. It was theirs to get out of him what wasn’t spoken and to investigate what wasn’t being said.
And here is where it gets more complicated, friends, because my Southern kid is white and male. So the kind of response that he chose (a headlock, most recently) is socially acceptable for him to make (thanks, toxic masculinity) but is not available to his brown, black, or female identifying friends to make at the same cost. They’d likely be punished much more severely, if not physically harmed in return. They’d be immediately socially branded as much worse than he will be, and they’d likely have been treated very differently by the school administration.
This final way in which parenting Jewish kids in the South is surprising to me is the ways it is making me a more engaged Jew. How? I am the parent who brings the doughnuts + latkes to class during Hanukkah. I am the parent who writes to the band teacher to gently encourage them to choose “holiday” songs from traditions other than Christmas. I am the parent who writes to the school administration to push back against why I have to submit a special form for an “excused religious absence” for our observation of a religious holiday when all of the Christian holidays are excused and meaningless to us. And I am the parent who invites the families whose non-Jewish kid has actively come at our Jewish kids with antisemitic BS to our house for one of our Jewish holiday gatherings so they can actually SEE us.
I wonder what I would’ve done if I’d felt the empowerment that my kids feel in both their maleness and their social confidence levels when a kid in school openly harassed me when I was their ages. I find myself thinking about this little girl a lot as I parent my kids through their childhoods in this modern confederacy. I wish I could go back and protect her, value her, see her. I can’t, but I can do this parenting bit differently and offer myself some grace and recovery as I do. THAT is a real gift.
So what am I getting at? Your Jewish friends who live in the South are called to do our Jewish lives differently here and we are often not ok. Please check in on us. Regularly. Come to our traditions + parties when you are invited. When there is violence against Jews, tell us that you are a safe place for us. Learn what you need to know to show up for us in ways that are in alignment with our expressions and values. This part will not be the same for all of your Southern Jewish friends. Ask us what we need. Protect us. See us. Value us. Cherish us.
Onwards, y’all.