I did not set out to raise my children as experts in danger. I wanted to teach them the ordinary things: how to tell the truth when it costs; how to be kind without being naïve; how to laugh at themselves; how to walk into the world with their shoulders back and their eyes open. I did not want to teach them how to disappear.

But antisemitism has a way of forcing a second curriculum into Jewish homes, a hidden syllabus that no parent would choose and no child deserves. It is not delivered with a bell or a timetable. It arrives in the form of a flinch, a warning, a change of route, a decision made with a tightness in the throat. It is the education of the hunted.

It begins earlier than people imagine. Not with the smashed glass and the shouting mob, but with the first time a child comes home quieter than usual, or the first time they ask why someone made a joke about “the Jews.” It begins with that peculiar parental instinct that something is wrong, and the even more peculiar parental obligation to translate wrongness into guidance without turning a child’s world into fear.

So you start small. You tell them to keep the necklace under their shirt. You suggest they don’t wear the school jumper with Hebrew on it on the train. You say – casually, too casually  – “Maybe don’t mention synagogue to everyone.” You hate yourself as you say it, because it tastes like surrender. And yet you say it, because your job is not to win an argument about pride. Your job is to get your child home.

And then the “small” rules become a way of life.

You teach them the difference between a question and an interrogation. You teach them to hear the tone that turns curiosity into accusation. You teach them how to exit a conversation without provoking it. You teach them to lower their voice when they say the word “Jewish,” as if their identity were a match in a room full of petrol. You teach them where to stand on a platform if a crowd is rowdy. You teach them to notice who is behind them on the pavement. You teach them which streets to avoid after........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)