The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has produced a four-part online program to educate middle and high schoolers on Jewish identity, antisemitism, and strategies to challenge bias and prejudice against Jews.
The course, entitled 'Challenging antisemitism,' consists of four online modules, each of which takes less than 30 minutes, to which educators are given free access for use as part of their curriculum.
The first module focuses on Jewish identity, the second on ‘recognizing antisemitism,’ the third on ‘challenging antisemitism,’ and the fourth on the dynamics of antisemitism and prejudice more broadly, including how to work against it, and its tendency toward escalation if left unchecked.
The fourth lesson includes the Pyramid of Hate, a model of how prejudice escalates from biased attitudes all the way to genocide, through stages of biased actions, systemic discrimination, and bias-motivated violence. The Pyramid is not specific to antisemitism but rather applies broadly to the demonization and persecution of groups of people.
Course comes amid surge of antisemitism
The course comes amid a surge of antisemitic incidents following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent, ongoing war between Israel and Hamas and its allies.
This surge includes incidents at schools, with the ADL tracking 450 antisemitic incidents at (non-Jewish) K-12 schools between October 7, 2023, and February 20, 2024, a 107% increase from the same period last year.