To ask you to help with a cover story for my Jewish child

[Aislyn]

My eldest is at secondary school and has suffered horrific racist bullying due to being identifiably Jewish. She never told anyone, but they guessed due to her appearance, and her saying Eastern European countries when asked 'where are you from?'

Unfortunately the school has been completely unhelpful, and refused to tackle this.

My second child is starting at second and has sen. They are at even higher risk of bullying. They have an appearance that would mean that they could be identified as Jewish, especially when citing Eastern European countries in response to the above question. Can anyone think of a cover story for my child?

(Yes, I have tried to get them a place at a Jewish school, but there is none available)

Don’t worry, they’ll move onto their next self righteously virtue-signalling cause of the week shortly. They’re just particularly enjoying this one because of the excuse to be anti-Semitic.

Exactly. For instance, Ashkhenazi Jews are known to be at higher risks of Tay-Sachs, black people are at higher risk of sickle cell anaemia, East Asian people are more likely to get alcohol flush reaction..It's not racist to discuss these things.

Honestly I feel making it taboo to discuss that is inadvertently playing into the prejudice of the anti Semites who insulted Jews' physical appearance.

This! Kudos to your family for doing that. Social media imo so often hurts activism more than it helps as it becomes all about signalling rather than the actual issue.

Just... the child is not from Israel and this isn't about Gaza or Netanyahu.

They are from Poland and surrounding area. And, while many posters in this thread are oblivious to the connection between Poland and Jews, it is clear enough to those from cultures that hasn't discover antisemitism just last year as a moral hobby, but have a bit more experience in it.

Yes I have friends who were like this. Protesting every week and anti settler etc. They moved back to London and their DC got bullied for being Jewish. Very sad

Of course they should be able to.

The OP asked for a cover story. I asked where they were from.

Also...
It isn't virtue signalling to protest against something that is wrong.

Many of us are all too aware of the link between Poland and Jews.

In 30plus years of working with young people (many of whom have been happy to display some appalling attitudes, so I'm not living in a rainbow-tinted fantasy land) I have never come across Poland being used as a proxy for Jewish - if only for the obvious reason that Britain has a significant Polish community and those Poles are vanishingly unlikely to be Jewish. For obvious reasons.

I explained why it is currently: there is a lot of social media with racist slurs like 'go back to Poland'. The children at the school are consuming this. They do not have a detailed knowledge of history but they are aware of this link due to racist slurs. There is a large Polish Catholic community in the UK as well, but their appearance is different to my children.

Spanish Jews are Shepardic Jews, so look more similar to native Spanish people ( dark hair and dark eyes). Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe ( dark hair and dark eyes) look materially different from Polish Catholics for example ( blonde hair and blue eyes). Saying you are Polish tells people who know that you have Jewish heritage in a way saying ' I'm from Spain's wouldn't.. There is also a trend among the Pro Pal Activists to say Ashkenazi Jews are not native to the ME, and are from Europe, therefore Israel doesn't have a right to exist. So that narrative could also be one of the things being said in the homes of the bullies.

Exactly. I think also Sephardic Jews wouldn't be as immediately associated with Spain due to them emigrating to different countries after they were expelled in the 1500s. Whereas Poland's Jewish population was huge until relatively recently...

Re Polish Catholics though, around 1/3-1/2 of Poles have blond hair (1/2 if counting light brown & reddish) and about half have blue eyes. There's still many that don't : but there's obviously features more common to Polish Ashkhenazi Jews, as you say. I also think Ashkhenazi Jews may be more likely to have more curly hair, as I think OP said?

But London is full of people of all skin colours and accents. Never remember anyone being asked where they were from though as a child

I haven't been following the thread diligently so didn't see this. Haven't heard this anywhere that I work. Yet.

I described it as troubling (for me) because saying there is a typical Jewish look reminds me anti-Semitic tropes that depict Jewish people with large noses and other so called Jewish features. But perhaps that’s just me.

You say Jewish people have common features but my point was my various Jewish friends and colleagues do not, to my mind, share instantly recognisable and common ones. Also, many of the so called Jewish features people have described on this thread are also common in some non-Jewish communities. So how would you know? I grew up in an area with a very large Hasidic Jewish community and obviously they are easily identifiable. But if I think of the dozen or so Jewish friends, colleagues I think I would be able to guess the ethnicity of 3 or 4 of them but the rest…no. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at someone and thought “he/she looks Jewish” unless they were in religious attire.

This has already been covered. Some Jews share what can be described as a typically Jewish look, some don't. For some, like my children, their appearance is recognisable. It only becomes Anti-Semitic if it is coopted by racists into slurs.

My children do not wear any religious attire. They are recognised simply based on how they look, together with (when pressed) the Eastern European connection.

I am not sure where you work but unfortunately in London, or at least our part of London, racist slurs towards Jews are common places, and this is one of them.

Obviously this is the biggest issue, and the school should tackle this, but they are unwilling to.

I live in a part of London with a very large Jewish population.
I work in a part of London with a very small Jewish population (we have some Jewish schools/nurseries but it's mostly an ageing population and we have a couple of Jewish elder care homes that I occasionally work with).

I am only too aware of the rise in antisemitism. However, I haven't come across this one before. In fact, I plan to flag it up with colleagues on Monday in case it's spreading under the radar.

I had to intervene with an 8 year old with learning difficulties last week who was telling his friend that "Allah is more stronger than Jesus". I’ve also had young white British men spreading vile stuff around, assuming that I would agree. Like I said, I don't live in a fluffy bubble. There's a lot of shit out there. This is new shit and I take it on board.

It makes sense if you read the next sentence: "I am not ethnically British".

Almost all children match the description, and than there is the OP and her children which are visibly a different ethnicity, presumably darker.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/czj1m8xpk14t

Another reminder today that racism towards Jews is not benign. Luckily no one was hurt.

I am not in London or the UK, but it is also a huge issue here (Germany). It has come up at primary school, with some very unpleasant bullying of a Jewish child. The Jewish child‘s family is not at all conservative and do not display any religious symbols. Another child, who has a family background in Turkey, has put this together based on her looks and family background in Poland. The child who did this is nine - not sure if it has come from the parents or unrestricted social media (he is a bully who games a lot and seems to have unrestricted online access). He also spouts some very misogynistic rubbish from a very unpleasant rapper (whose content is actually deeply in-Islamic - a kind of Syrian/German wannabe Andrew Tate). The school do not seem to realize what is going on or be willing to confront it. My child and several others have stuck up for the child being harassed, including stopping her possessions being broken. There is an urgent need for identification of the problem and action.