As welcoming as Haldane may seem, it is not safe from prejudice. Students have experienced a marked uptick in antisemitism in school life in recent years.
“I think Haldane is affected by antisemitism in the same way that it aff ects the entire country. It is being spread throughout the school by jokes that may seem harmless but actually do cause harm, as well as wrongful online information,” said sophomore Sela Lant, a Jewish student at Haldane.
Since October 7 2023, the war in Gaza has fl ared tensions domestically, and the number of antisemitic attacks in America has increased, according to a report released in May by the Anti-Defamation League.
“It feels less safe to be openly Jewish now, ” said Haldane senior Amelia Kaye, who is Jewish. “There’s an attack on a Jewish synagogue or building basically every week. Before October 7, I didn’t have to think about it before going out wearing a Jewish star necklace or a shirt with Hebrew on it. Now, my parents don’t want me to when I’m going some places, even in our area,” Kaye noted.
According to several Jewish students at Haldane, antisemitism is alive and present throughout the entire Hudson Valley. Both Lant and Kaye attested to experiencing antisemitism within our community and the surrounding area.
“Here in the Hudson Valley, I’ve driven past people holding signs with Jews drawn with bloody fangs and dollar signs, and other signs blaming Jews or Israel for 9/11, calling us racist, calling us baby killers, and denying or supporting the October 7 attacks,” said Kaye.
For Lant, it hit even closer to home. “[One] encounter I had at school was when another student asked me, ‘When you went to Israel, how many brown people did you kill?’ I have also experienced people making antisemitic jokes that they think are okay or funny, but
they really are not.”
Although several Jewish students have said they have experienced antisemitism within Haldane, teachers give mixed reports about their firsthand experience in the classroom. When asked if she had observed anything along the lines of antisemitic behavior, English teacher Nancy Martinez stated, “No, not antisemitism, and definitely not in the last 10 years. I haven’t even overheard any slurs or anything.”
Science teacher Lee Posniack had a more equivocal position. “I’ve been here a long time now, but I don’t think anything was outwardly antisemitic. I think sometimes kids will say things because they’ve heard other people say them, and not really know where that might have come from, and then sometimes I’ll say, ‘Do you know what that even means? Or why that might have been offensive?”
For Generation Z, especially, the proliferation of jokes and memes online is often a source of antisemitic speech in school hallways. The slang term “goyslop” provides a direct example. The phrase is derived from the combination of the Hebrew word “goy,” or “goyim,” which is a phrase used to describe a gentile, or a non-Jewish person. The term can be used in a derogatory manner and is marked by dictionary.com as being “sometimes disparaging.” Slop, the suffix of “goyslop”, has been adapted into popular lingo as a term to describe a hastily made, subpar product, most applicable to fast food or AI-generated content.
For many students, describing something as “goyslop” is viewed as a harmless joke meant to poke fun at poorly-made, highly-processed foods and is rarely considered deeper than that. However, the term, according to KnowYourMeme.com, actually has its roots in alt-right message boards, where some users blamed corporate corner-cutting on a conspiracy by the “Jewish elite” to devalue the quality of American food.
Some Haldane students who have used the term in the past said they were unaware of the meaning of the phrase. On the usage of the term goyslop, Jaiden Gunther, a junior at Haldane High School, said, “I’ve heard it all over; other people in person, TikTok, Instagram, etc. I thought it was a random word [or] internet slang, but it never occurred to me that it was related to the Jews, and it never really felt like it had anything to do with religion.”
Another Haldane student, who requested to remain anonymous, said the following on how they had used the term in the past. “I used the term goyslop not as anything meant to be derogatory, but as a term used for anything that seems to be overly processed, like if a food seems like I’m digesting more sugar or microplastics than anything else.”
Current political fighting and wider conflicts in the Middle East have contributed to the context in which students experience the spread of antisemitism locally. The lines between political dissent, anti-Zionism, and antisemitic hate speech have become harder and harder for students to distinguish in recent years.
“The major issue is that people are connecting everyday Jewish people with the actions of the state of Israel and its government. I think separating those two things is one of the most important ways to stop the rise of antisemitism. We are seeing that connection people have made in their heads, which is not true, massively contributes to the increase in antisemitism,” Lant said.
For High School Principal Julia Sniffen, education is the most important factor in preventing antisemitism and hate speech.
“The primary place to look is what we refer to as your tier one instructional practices and the things that you do in classrooms, [such as] literature, to build understanding of culture, to build understanding of religion, to build understanding of social-emotional [skills] and of empathy; I think that that is at the front of what we do,” Sniffen said.
Sniffen also emphasized the importance of specific parts of the curriculum. “We work very hard at looking at selections of literature and the ways in which history is taught, [so] it’s not just open a textbook and read it and memorize it and move on.”
Another point Sniffen stressed heavily is how specifically certain incidents are addressed. “When situations arise that are hateful in nature, they’re the one that you really need to address. I think navigating situations with seniors in high school is very different than navigating situations with freshmen. My expectation of the development of a young learner when they’re 14 is different than when they’re 18. [For example], the work we can do with freshmen, in terms of providing understanding and guidance and learning and reform and progress… you have more time to work with students who need to gain understanding about others when the students are freshmen.”
