Anti-Semitic acts in Pine Bush, N.Y., schools reminds me of my school years in Islip, N.Y.

by Seth Rogovoy

The New York Times ran an exhaustive article today about anti-Semitic acts perpetrated on Jewish students at public schools in Pine Bush, N.Y (“Swastikas, Slurs and Torment in Town’s Schools“). As a result, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has called for an investigation of the school district (“Cuomo Orders Inquiries on Claims of Anti-Semitic Acts at Pine Bush Schools”). 

The article describes a slew of offenses inflicted upon Jewish students in the schools, including anti-Semitic epithets; the use of swastikas, drawn or carved onto school property, to harass; taunting and jokes about the Holocaust; being pelted with coins or being told to retrieve money from the trash; being shoved because of being Jewish; being mocked with Nazi “Heil Hitler” salutes; and other types of verbal and physical harassment.

The article describes a climate of fear in the school among Jewish students, some of whom tried to hide their Jewish background and others who were afraid to attend school or even stopped going at all. The article also describes a situation in which school administrators and teachers were aware of what was going on and either minimized its seriousness, did nothing about it, or denied it was happening.

What’s most amazing to me is not that these things are going on in Pine Bush schools, but rather, that this has been judged as something newsworthy. Not because I don’t think it is newsworthy, mind you – because I do. But what is newsworthy today was pretty much my daily experience throughout my school years in suburban Islip, N.Y., a sleepy town on the South Shore of Long Island in Suffolk County.

There is not a single thing on that list of anti-Semitic acts in Pine Bush that didn’t happen to me on a regular basis in school in Islip in the late-1960s through the 1970s (I graduated from Islip High School in 1978), including the complicity of some teachers and administrators. My sixth grade teacher, in fact, is what we now call a Holocaust denier – there was no such term at the time, but he taught us that there was “no way that six million Jews could possibly have been killed by the Germans” – that it was “simply impossible.” And he apparently taught this to all his sixth grade classes throughout the years – literally hundreds of students passed through his classes learning that there was something dubious about the Holocaust and the number six million (his name, by the way, was Eugene Vincent Bradley — if anyone knows his whereabouts or has his contact information, please let me know. I want to ask him something).

But getting back to the more brutal, everyday harassment – pushing, shoving, Jewish “jokes,” teasing, the thing with pennies … yeah, I know all about it. Every single day, pretty much from elementary school through graduation, probably worst in the middle-school years, this happened to me and my Jewish friends. And we had to learn to laugh it all off merely to survive — so as not to be even more victimized, humiliated, or harassed.

It was a very different time back then in Islip. You could get away with a lot, and students weren’t treated like fragile, breakable objects. They were left to fend for themselves for the most part. A murder actually took place on school grounds – a sweet, innocent high school girl literally had her brains bashed in out in back of the school. There were no cancelled classes; no teams of grief counselors and therapists brought into the school to lead discussions about how we felt about this tragedy; no public outcry or, at least not to my knowledge, no attempts to beef up security in the school. All that we got was one minute of silence (which probably lasted 20 seconds) along with the morning announcements on the school loudspeaker system.

I don’t say all this to lessen the importance of what is happening in Pine Bush right now, and the media and political response to this. Times change, and that is a good thing. I don’t look back on what I lived through – the daily harassment, embarrassment, fear, and infliction of physical and emotional pain – and think that it was a character-building experience. It was horrible, and damaging, and it took a toll on me to this day. It made me uncomfortable with my Jewishness at times during my life, and although I think I have to a large part overcome that feeling, I’m sure it still lives deep inside of me. It made me oversensitive to perceived slights about my Jewishness; too quick to suspect people’s motives as stemming from anti-Semitism; and it probably made me more ethnocentric and nationalistic than I may otherwise have become.

I’m glad that the pendulum has swung, and this sort of thing is finally being taken more seriously and to such an extent as the governor launching an investigation. Although I don’t know what can be done about it. Forcing everyone to learn about the Holocaust – which is the most popular response — is most definitely not the answer. It merely emphasizes Jews as victims.

As the Times article suggests, the children perpetuating this behavior are to a large extent learning it at home and bringing it into school. I don’t know what the answer is, therefore. I’m just happy to know someone is finally recognizing this as a problem that needs to be solved, and that someone else is actually intending to do something about it.

In the meantime, my heart breaks for the kids who are still going through this sort of thing. Times change, yes – but not nearly enough.