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After years of antisemitic incidents at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale, including threats of violence against Jewish students and two instances of swastikas drawn on school property in the past year, the city’s only public high school held an all-school assembly on antisemitism.

The Jan. 11 assembly — which came at the request of several Jewish students who felt the matter was not being adequately addressed — was attended by more than 2,000 students and teachers and included a guest presentation by Eliezer Cohn, an educator with National Conference of Synagogue Youth, the national Orthodox youth group.

Though the high school regularly holds monthly “advisories” for students on different social issues, those are usually just a set of slides teachers show in their classrooms.

The talk by Cohn, director of Israel education for NCSY, was the first advisory held in front of the entire school — and the first to feature a speaker presenting in person.

Cohn covered the history of antisemitism, from the Middle Ages through Nazi Germany up to Kanye West’s recent comments. The resident of Oakland, who grew up in Kansas and Florida, discussed the definition of the word, and the impact this kind of hate has on Jews.

The invitation to Cohn was not the first attempt by Fremont High to handle antisemitism at the school. Prior incidents had been addressed in statements, and a similar assembly was held last year after a swastika was found drawn in the boys’ bathroom in March, principal Bryan Emmert said.

But after the second swastika was found drawn on a campus building last fall semester, he said, Jewish students came to him asking for action.

“I’ve always been really passionate about this [issue],” said Ella Hassner, a junior who first approached Emmert with the idea of an antisemitism presentation.

Hassner’s family immigrated to the United States from Israel when she was in fourth grade, moving to Sunnyvale as Hassner was starting high school.

Sunnyvale has the largest concentration of Israeli expatriates in the Bay Area and is sometimes called “The Kibbutz.” The South Bay overall has a high concentration of Jews — some 35% of the Bay Area’s 350,000 Jews, according to a 2018 study by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.

Attending Fremont High was the first time in years that Hassner had been part of such a large Jewish community outside Israel, she said. So she was surprised to encounter antisemitism at school.

“Knowing that even though there are so many Jewish students [and] no one is doing anything to prevent it was very troubling to me,” Hassner said.

After the swastika graffiti appeared on campus again, Hassner, along with other students and faculty, began to plan the outline for the antisemitism advisory assembly.

When Cohn was on a visit to Fremont High to advise the Jewish Student Union as part of his work with NCSY (NCSY helps run JSUs across the country), Emmert, the principal since 2011, asked if he wanted to step in.

David Bigelman, a history teacher and faculty adviser to the Fremont High JSU, said the assembly helped enlighten students who hadn’t previously considered antisemitism to be an issue of concern.

“I feel like it was successful in becoming something worth talking about, and I don’t know that it was at that point before,” Bigelman said.

Cohn said he has since been contacted by two high schools in Oakland interested in his presentation. He hopes programs focusing on antisemitism become the norm in high schools, as one of many conversations about different social issues. Another school-wide assembly to discuss antisemitism at Fremont High is already in the planning stages.