Updated Aug. 22: Natasha Waldorf reports that her first two days of school “went fine” and that the students who harassed her last semester are not in her classes.
On Monday morning Aug. 21, 14-year-old Natasha Waldorf, who is Jewish, will start her sophomore year at Alameda High School.
In her class will be one of two boys who taunted her last semester, sending her text messages that included the word “kike” and other anti-Semitic insults, and the image of product mascot Mr. Clean in a Nazi uniform titled “Mr. Ethnic Cleansing.” In the halls she will pass two other students who taunted her that same week last January, joking about the Holocaust and, when confronted by Natasha, telling her that “Hitler should have finished the job.”
Alameda school authorities don’t deny that these incidents, reported in a J. cover story in May, indeed occurred. This week, Alameda Unified School District Superintendent Sean McPhetridge told J., and the parents by email, that the situation has been handled appropriately.
Natasha’s parents, Mel Waldorf and Jessica Lindsey, however, say otherwise. And they want something done.
“They are not taking this seriously,” Waldorf told J. “These were threats. How is my daughter supposed to feel safe, with school starting Monday? How can [McPhetridge] say he’s protecting a student when the kids who did this don’t have to apologize and are sitting in her class for the rest of the year? It’s egregious.”
The Zionist Organization of America has taken up the case on behalf of Natasha and her family, alerting J. to the ongoing situation this week. The ZOA has been engaged since June in an email exchange with McPhetridge and with the high school’s principal, Robert Ithurburn, which now seems to have reached an impasse.
Natasha’s parents, and the ZOA, want the school district to take five specific steps. At the top of the list: ensuring that all the students who taunted Natasha are made to apologize; instituting mandatory training programs for students, faculty and parents in how to recognize and combat anti-Semitism; and coming out forcefully and publicly in opposition to anti-Semitism.
McPhetridge says the district has followed correct protocol all along, although he is legally prevented from detailing what punishment, if any, the offending students have received. He says four of the five demands have been fulfilled, in substance if not in letter, and the fifth — mandating parental training — is not feasible. He reiterates his and the district’s support for full inclusion for all faiths, ethnicities, races and gender identities.
Natasha’s parents and the ZOA say the district, specifically McPhetridge, aren’t taking their complaints seriously. McPhetridge, on the other hand, told J. this week that no incident in his decades of service has affected him like this one, and he takes it very seriously indeed. He insists that he wants to meet personally with Natasha and her parents to clear it up, as he met with the parents of three other children who suffered similar anti-Semitic taunting in Alameda schools.
As of late this week, Waldorf said he was still waiting for a phone call from McPhetridge. And anyway, the ZOA says a face-to-face meeting won’t solve anything — the organization wants “demonstrable action.”
An impasse. And school starts Monday.
At the center of this conflict is Natasha, who, as detailed in a May 25 J. cover story and editorial, received a series of anonymous texts last January that taunted her for being Jewish and made threats about “gas” and “ethnic cleansing.” She discovered that a boy in her class, whom she thought was a friend, had sent the texts, egged on by a foreign exchange student. Eventually the first boy was made to apologize to her; her parents say the exchange student, who has since returned to his native Germany, never apologized and his parents weren’t even notified.
Later that same week, she and a friend overheard two other students joking about the Holocaust. One made the Hitler comment to her upon being confronted. Natasha’s parents then met with the school’s assistant principal and dean, but as outlined in ZOA letters to McPhetridge, felt appropriate action was not taken. (That dean has since left the school district.)
The ZOA letters also charge that these incidents are not isolated. Natasha reported to her parents and to school administrators other examples of students making anti-Semitic comments, of swastika graffiti found on desks and walls, and making jokes about the Holocaust, sometimes in front of teachers. Anti-Semitic incidents also were reported at other schools in the district, including Edison Elementary, as covered in J.
On June 16, the ZOA first wrote to McPhetridge, saying, “Anti-Semitism is a problem at other schools in the district, too. We understand that you are well aware of this ongoing serious problem, yet have not taken the steps you are legally required to take to remedy the anti-Semitism and ensure that it does not recur.”
“He has not met any of the list of demands we sent,” said David Kadosh, executive director of ZOA West and one of the two signatories of the June 16 letter. “He has not made public statements against anti-Semitism. He’s spoken in general about bigotry and says it’s enough.”
In both a conversation with J. and in letters emailed to McPhetridge, Kadosh points out programs the school district runs to highlight inclusion for other minority students. As part of its “Everyone Belongs Here” campaign, for example, the district has held several events celebrating Muslim culture and history, including daily announcements in the high school during April, noting it was National Arab American Heritage Month.
By contrast, the ZOA letter points out, there were no school-wide announcements in May that it was Jewish American Heritage Month. When members of the Jewish student club put up posters, one was ripped down while the others disappeared in a few days. And last spring, for the first time, no Holocaust survivor was invited to speak to the students for Holocaust Remembrance Day. The school said it “was too difficult” to find a speaker, the ZOA letter charged, and “rebuffed” ZOA offers to provide one.
“We’re not asking for special treatment,” Kadosh told J. “We’re just asking for the same attention and treatment for Jewish students.”
In an hour-long interview in his office on Aug. 17, McPhetridge refuted the ZOA’s and family’s charges one by one. Yes, he’s spoken out publicly against anti-Semitism at board meetings and a PTA meeting — the family just isn’t viewing the videos. Yes, the offending students were punished — he just can’t say how, due to privacy laws. Yes, the high school commemorates the Holocaust — and a speaker will be provided next year; he thanked the ZOA for reaching out with suggestions.
And yes, the district takes anti-Semitism seriously, as it does with all bigotry — although it can always do better. “It cannot be just about anti-Semitism,” he told J. “ It has to be the rights of all people.”
“I’ve invited the ZOA and the Waldorf-Lindsey family to meet with us,” he said, referring to himself and Principal Ithurburn. “There’s so much we can do talking together that we can’t do by email or phone. We are committed to making things better.
“When a family [tells me to] work with the ZOA and copy [us] on the letters, it’s hard to cooperate,” he added.
All of this is coming to a head at a time of upsurges in hate speech and anti-minority violence, including a rash of bomb threats at Jewish Community Centers in the spring — which alarmed Natasha, her parents said — the violence at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville last week, and this week’s vandalism at Temple Israel in Alameda, where windows were smashed on Aug. 17.
Meanwhile, school starts Monday.
Have you guys ever actually met anyone but Jews and white people?
Ever really spent any time with Asians or blacks or hispanics? Ever seen what happens when you call a Puerto Rican a Mexican or vice versa? Or a Korean Japanese or confuse an African black with an American black? Ever hear what blacks and Hispanics think of each other or what Chinese think about everyone else? Ever see how pissed an Indian (from India) father or mother gets when their son brings a white girl (or any non-indian for that matter) home?
Outside your priviledged lilly white ivy leave educated world what you ridiculously call racism is everywhere. What it really is is ethnocentrism. People from real cultures with distinct religions and traditions and cuisines and histories going back millinea in many cases choose to think their culture is the best and resent attempts to assimilate it out of existence so their kids will join the great American nothing.
In those schools full of minorities that your kids don’t attend racial epithets flow like water. And the world doesn’t end. Mainly because those kids aren’t raised to believe they are special little snowflakes and their parents can’t afford attorneys to sue sue sue every time they tripped on a sidewalk somewhere.
These kids are taught that you have to accept a certian amount of crap
The people who say “you just have to accept a certain amount of crap” have given up on the idea of equality for all. It is okay for people to make jokes, Dave Chappelle is my favorite comedian, and I love when he calls each of us out, but his intelligent and funny insights on culture come from love and encourage self awareness and growth. However, when comments come in the spirit of hate as opposed to love, it is pretty obvious to all involved. That is when adults need to take a stand and teach the children that hate is not acceptable. When you apathetically accept hate as “just the way it is” then you give up and give in to the system of oppression. I don’t think you can say that anyone “just accepting it” thinks it made them a better person. It made them more ethnocentric and more full of anger and hate. That is why the world is where it is today. When you stop fighting for an ideal that is necessary so that this planet can survive then what is the point of living? Yes, the fight can feel pointless, like an uphill battle where you are getting no where, or actually going backwards, but that is just the feeling that any oppressor counts on us having. They also work on dividing anyone different from others in the same situation, whether by race, religion or sexual orientation, dividing us by hate based on stereotypes, which we all (including you) need to daily self-reflect upon, admit and change. The entire reason Trump won and our world is changing for the worse is because too many of us didn’t believe in the hope for change and the possibility of an alternative. Anytime anyone is being judged unfairly based on the way that they were born, which each individual should instead feel proud of, each and everyone of us should stand against that and support each other in the fight for justice, no matter how insignificant it may seem to your personal experience, it is another grain of sand in that pile of sh*(&t we need to dump.
I’m just asking is there a difference between oppression and insult in your world?
Cause in the real world oppression takes the form of being denied jobs, housing, voting rights, due process under the law and even physical violence you know actual oppression.
What was said to this girl was unpleasant and someone owes her an apology but is it going to affect her going on to live the remainder of her priviledged life she won in the birth lottery in relative sheltered affluent bliss?
She was insulted, not oppressed.
And you wonder why groups like blm don’t take Jews seriously.
“..is it going to affect her going on to live the remainder of her priviledged life she won in the birth lottery in relative sheltered affluent bliss?”
I don’t see why that is the test. Because some person or group is discriminated against less or the ultimate effect is less (how could you objectively measure this anyway?) makes it ok in your mind?
Children all around the “real world” have to deal with violence and lack of food too. Should they just “deal with it”? We can be better if we want to and try to.
Was she discriminated against?
Was she denied anything or excluded from anything or just insulted in a horrible way?
It’s not okay.
It’s just life when you’re living in the world. Kids are hateful to other kids. Always have been always will be. And they’ll hit you where it hurts. It’s not virulent antisemitism its kids being generically cruel using whatever they can to make their Target feel small.
if you’re Jewish and somehow grew up without hearing a few comments like this directed at you or someone you knew youve lived an awfully special life.
Back in the day we solved these matters simply. We punched the jerk in the mouth and that was the end of it. Unless if course you got caught punching the jerk whereupon you told the principal/teacher/coach what was said and he told the punchee that maybe he should watch his mouth next time. If he said it to a girl the jerk got smacked twice.
Now we teach our kids not to stand up for themselves but to tell Mommy and get everyone in trouble. Yeah that doesn’t fit into any stereotypes.
I’ll bet you the black and hispanic kids and well the Muslim kids too deal with the same kinds of stupid hateful comments.
And then they are actually discriminated against.
Her person was threatened when people said “Hitler should have finished the job.”
Surely you can see how she might be afraid that these people were going to harm her.
Kinda like what Israeli Jews might feel when a nation state desperately trying to acquire nuclear technology from the very nations that exterminated six million of us feels when they say they want to exterminate us?
Except the guys that say those things to us aren’t just troubled teenagers but grown men who are already funding, training and arming people who are daily actually trying to murder us.
But I’m thinking it’s different for us. Jews in Alameda don’t run to the principals office to complain about that. They support their presidents plan to get back to doing business with the people who not just call for our murder but actually murder us. Cause Israeli lives don’t matter.
I lived in the states for four decades and had a lot of that type of crap said to me. It was insulting but but never truly scary.
Do you think telling someone they should be killed, which is what happened to this poor girl, is the same as being called a Ni**er?
I think being called the n word is worse. Because there’s actual power behind that word in a society that actively discriminated against blacks.
If being told you should be killed by people not intending to do it but to simply hurt your feelings and make you feel small is horrible thing than president Trump’s Mommy and Daddy should run to the office and have what seems like most of the lefties in the country expelled and their parents sent to counseling.
So it is less of a problem for you when someone says to a Jew “all Jews should be killed” than when someone calls a Black person a Ni***r. In the Crown Heights protests in the early 1990’s, who do you think was at fault, the Jews or the Blacks,
Yeah I don’t enjoy when people adopt the same Jew vs black mentality that led to those murders. I enjoy even.less when they try to pull me into their racism.
I think people who kill others with screwdrivers are usually at fault. You know for opening up someone’s head with a screwdriver…not for being black.
There is definitely a history of killing Jews after saying all Jews should be killed. Do you agree that saying “the Jews killed Christ” is murderous?
There’s not just a history of it happening. It’s happens right now.
Just not in Alameda.
The Christ killer thing…it’s one reason why I live in a place where people who say things like that are a tiny minority that don’t say things like that here.
More than you think say that. Archbishop Tutu is a good example of one who says that murderous statement.
If you said “Trump should be assassinated”, the Secret Service would be investigating you.
It seems to me you want to see us all lined up against walls and shot.
Really? Where did you get that from? I’d rather noone ever be shot. I’ve actually seen people shot. And stabbed. And beaten. None of these these things are funny or entertaining even as rhetorical devices.
I actually live in a place where people actually threaten Jews with being murdered and then they actually try and succeed more often than is comfortable. And then their government uses international aid dollars to reward the murderers with lifetime pensions while the world does nothing but blame Jews for getting murdered. Does that happen where you live?
I’ve actually seen american presidents shake hands and hug terrorists responsible for the brutal murder of hundreds of Jews, some of them Olympic athletes. People who aren’t ill behaved teenagers, but adults who have publically stated things that make the terrible things those children in Alameda said seem trivial and have not only the guns and bombs and armed followers to carry it out, but have actual jewish blood on their hands.
I saw your last president and most of your Congress vote to admit a terrorist state that clearly and unambiguously calls for the murder of millions of jews (of course we aren’t as good or human as Jews in alameda-we just have to take people saying they want to exterminate us in stride..it’s all good fun when you’re talking about israeli Jews right) into the company of civilized nations. Cause calling for the murder of Jews outside high schools in Alameda is just fine.
Btw I’ve never seen american Jews put Israeli flags overlaying their Facebook posts in sympathy with Israelis murdered by terrorists like they do for anyone else from any other country who is killed by terrorists. I keep forgetting it’s a tragedy when Europeans get murdered. It’s just a Tuesday when an Israeli gets murdered.
I’m just saying if you’ve actually been in a place where threats are real as opposed to insulting you might understand why the n-word used against people who are living in a place where here and now they are actually oppressed, you know racially profiled and actually more likely to be shot by cops for the color of their skin might-among other real acts of daily oppression-might have more real power than what a troubled child influenced by an actual antisemite from Germany the home and grand champion of of western antisemitism says.
I was just bored and read your comment in it’s entirety. And started laughing.
The reason why trump won was that sixty percent of the people in the United stares didn’t and never will go to college. Yep somebody…a lot of somebodies …actually most somebodies actually have to do the jobs youre too good to do. And they deserve dignity and respect. The overwhelming (95%) of the people in the country aren’t lgbt. And with real life and death problems affecting the other 95% they’re a little tired of a party that seems to spend all of it’s time in that 5%. Most folks outside big cities get married have kids and live quiet lives in suburbia. They go to church, usually fairly un fundamentalist (funny thing is the Jews outside big cities tend to feel this way too-look at the exit polls) they aren’t interested living lives of unpredictable career changes and moving around the country, maybe world, chasing the jobs the us has decided are too much trouble.
They build/fix your car, run your power lines, make your food, build your homes you know the jobs your kids will never do. You kids will figure out how to make a buck by outsourcing their jobs to Asia and putting them once again out of work.
Bet you kids will make a pile on their options.
Funny thing is that these people used to get the bedrock of DNC politics. Now they hate you guys.
The DNC and lefties not only ignore these people but mock them and they’re pissed at being written off as throw away people cause their lifestyle isn’t cool anymore.
And the whole story line of all the people that disagree with my politics or simply have different
priorities are stupid and racist and horrible people is the best way to ensure a Trump win in 2020.
Cause people don’t like a bunch of snotty snowflakes calling them names any other than you do and they’ll vote trump just to give you the finger.
They…we…don’t necessarily love or even like trump. It’s you. People don’t like your condesention and assumption of superiority.
Yeah. “Those people” head what you said about them.
You were just bored? I doubt that. I think you need to get a life. And while you are doing that get an education as well. Jews were oppressed for thousands of years and this is the first decade in history that they are not. Just read a book and then get a life. You know nothing about me so stop talking like you do. You know nothing about me. I have spent my life with blue collar people and that is not the reason Dump won. He won because he cheated and because haters like you couldn’t bear having a female or a Jewish candidate. You are a clueless and very confused person who can’t have a normal conversation but instead rely on abusive comments that swing from insane opinion to the other as long as you can spew hate. Your need to troll the internet and spew hatred is most likely because people don’t want to even connect with you face to face. How’s all this hatred and ignorance working for you? Bet you have a ton of friends and no health problems, right? Why not stop trolling and walk around in the real world. Talk to people face to face and use your real name.
I live in a country full of blue collar people. And almost all of them are -gasp- Jews. Our country is full of people of all colors united, most of the time, by a common peoplehood.
I guess you’d call that racist.
I most certainly do have pretty good health care like everyone where I live. When I lived in your country I didn’t. That’s just one of the many many things we do better than you.
But to actually have the place we live a lot of us had to pick up rifles and secure it and we still have to send our children off to the army to protect it and our very lives. If we fail we get to watch our wives and children raped before our eyes as the people you and yours want to give a state to murder us.
And jews where I live, you know the unimportant Jews, are actually oppressed. Last year a nice old woman who is amazingly kind to my daughter got stabbed in the throat by racists as she waited for the bus a could blocks from my home. A Jew….a real.jew ran across the street and beat her attacker silly with an umbrella while other real jews sat on him and waited for the police. Thankfully because of the draft so many of us have combat medical training the woman lived.
I guess we just decided that fighting back was better than crying to mommy. Cause fir Jews that don’t live as house pets in the states there is no mommy to solve our problems.
But then you vote for the people who supported admitting an entire country whose leaders clearly state their desire to murder me and my family into the community of civilized nations.
Seriously you throw a hissy for because someone said something nasty one of your kids. A country of fifty plus million promises to murder everyone I love in my entire country and you seem to think we should get over it. Cause your antisemite in chief needs your support. That’s good enough to sell out six and a half million Jews.
You’re the same breed as the american Jews who kept quiet about the shoah cause it would cause problems for fdrs wartime plans.
If you want to see an ignorant person who truly loathes herself and hates jews look in the mirror.
You are amazingly wrong in all your assumptions. That’s why trump will win again in 2020. Cause even when someone tells you the truth you’d rather hate and condescend and fall back on your bigotries against everyone who doesn’t buy into your sad agenda hook line and sinker than listen for grains of truth.
It’s what he was banking in 2016. It’s a lock in 2020 cause your abject failure has resulted in nothing more than a redoubling of your arrogance.
I agree with you here. Having grown up in a virulently anti-Semitic Soviet Union, I learned to accept that, oh no, not everyone loves Jews. In fact, the majority hates Jews in the most gutteral way. People who comment on your comment are equating “accept” with “defeated”. It requires courage and clarity of mind to admit to the truth. It also allows one to be ready and prepared to bravely and decisively respond to anti-Semites.
So your argument is that other people have to deal with crap/racism/bullying/whateveryoucallit so she should deal with it too. Really? That is sad. How do you separate that from something like, “other kids get physically abused by their parents in horrible ways, so you should not be concerned with being smacked every now and then”?
It’s pretty simple. Being called names is one thing and being hit is another. And then of course being spanked by ones parents or getting swatted in the principal’s office as diciplinary tool is one thing and being abused for no reason is another.
Do you also have problems with apples and oranges?
Prove you believe what you are saying: write “President Trump should be shot”. I’ll let authorities know what you think.
I don’t think I’ve ever written that anyone should be shot. I’ve seen what happens when actual bullets impact actual human bodies. I certainly wouldn’t even joke about the president being hurt. Any president. Even for discussions sake.
Besides I don’t need to believe anything. I seem to remember a generally unfunny comic having a photo shoot with a mock-up of the presidents severed head and reading very divided opinions on whether or not that was in bad taste. All I have to do is scan news stories talking about a number of famous lefties and Hollywood types that are being called out or praised, depending on whose reporting for making those types of comments or just look at the memes from the last SF Facebook friends I haven’t blocked making similar jokes and then joking that maybe pence would be worse.
It can readily be deduced you want us dead.
Otherwise you would not put requests for our deaths beneath the utterance of n****r.
Would you agree with this – the Holocaust would not have occurred but for the Christ killer charge?
You first statement is kinda silly. You’d have to meet my daughter to understand how silly. See she’s a Jew just like dear old dad. And she’s too cute to send to bed without her supper let alone kill. So my wife and every one of my neighbors. My banker, of course, but also my plumber and electrician and the guy who fixes my car and the kid who sells me sodas. Most of the cops and army are Jews too. I think my fellow Jews are safe from me. I find a lot of us irritating as all get out but that’s what headphones are for.
I guess I’m a silly person. I think that blood libel has been around for millinea. And sometimes it’s an excuse for ignorant masses to murder Jews. But the shoah happened because Germans hated Jews and wanted the money and power they thought we had. It happened because Germany just llst a war and the best way to get to feeling good about yourself is to find a scapegoat. And the best scapegoat is a tiny minority living among you. It happened because the very people, educated economic elites who had about as much use for stories about Jesus as well I do. But they liked the idea of confiscating assets and signing on to a program that promised to get Germany’s economy moving again and if they had to go along with murdering the Jews to satisfy the Nazis that was fine with them.
Yeah Ill give you that two thousand years of blood libel might have motivated the ignorant masses, but they wouldn’t have had the infrastructure to carry it out without the coldly calculated approval of the very people who didn’t buy into the Christ killer stuff and knew better.
Businessman. Academics. Professionals. Highly educated people that have the same disdain for religion as most of the people I’ve met in the Bay area. They weren’t avenging Jesus. They were making a buck…or deutchemark as it were.
Kinda like what’s starting in your Bay area universities today. Except they not calling (publically) for the extermination of all Jews yet….just israelis. Jewish students are getting honest to G*d assaulted, browbeaten, excluded, and the things your anti Israeli buddies are saying would make goebbels blanch. Actual history is being rewritten to set up the next shoah and generations of your countries best and brightest are being indoctrinated with israel hatred, the gateway drug to global antisemitism.
And the next shoah.
And just like German Jews you think it’s part if a healthy debate that will blow over.
But you keep focusing on high school freshman and idiots in clown suits that no one likes. And of course me.
But don’t worry when your lefty neighbors start going after you we’ll keep the light on so you know where to run to.
That is if the Iranians you guys like so much don’t nuke us first. Then you’re truly screwed.
I do not think you are Jewish.
A course you could be a counterfeit Egyptian.
You are right that this is building anti-semtism. Banning public rallies is one thing but private behavior is another. I am not going to preach.
“Earnest Comment”: You are an ignorant, cowardly, bigot. Why are you afraid to use your real name? Alameda is extremely diverse ethnically as are the students at Alameda High School, so your nasty stereotype of Jews who live and attend school there is obviously inaccurate. I now see that you have numerous comments on this site–which I have no interest in reading. Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time? I suggest that you (1) get a life, and (2) see a psychiatrist.
Earnest Comment:
What you call “special little snowflakes,” we call Mensch. We raise our children to be compassionate and responsible adults so that they do not turn out like you.
This is repulsive and unacceptable beyond belief. When I was a child, decades ago, going to school in racist OC, I was stigmatized and bullied for being a Jew. I promised myself I would never let it happen to my children and came to the Bay Area where it never did. That this is going on in 2017 is unimaginable. Our children shouldn’t have to fight these battles. If it were me, I’d get my kid the hell out of there. She doesn’t deserved this abuse.
Oh, man, are you uptight, Kids are cruel. They are testing cruelty–it’s something obvious–but yet, she had to do something. It is his honor to be sued. But it is a frivolous lawsuit. It is not however a frivolous media campaign, but a ruthless one.
“That’s it! He marries Ruth.” Hey, lucky guy.
“What manner of fairy tale IS THIS?”
Just a note to always keep your accounts private as anti Semitic trolls will follow you around from site to site. Some post hundreds or thousands of times under just one username and they could be using many. They can compile lists of names and sites with a Jewish focus can be target rich.
Alameda has a problem that it needs to address. Police need to get a handle on this before Alameda becomes the Charlottsville of the Bay Area.
http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/09/06/police-noose-found-outside-alameda-high-school/
What Natasha Waldorf did was okay, but the people who rally around it have the humorlessness that drunks & christians despise. Blunted affect. The anti-semitism issue is real but the focus on her perps is purely bitch. One trouble: She’s awful.