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Why antisemitism training was canceled

I am responding to the Sept. 11 article “Anti-Israel groups say they convinced S.F. schools to cancel antisemitism training.”

As a teacher in San Francisco Unified School District and specifically at Abraham Lincoln High School who was supposed to attend the professional development workshop stated in the article, I would like to counter the narrative that the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) “successfully lobbied to cancel the training.” 

Numerous United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) union members from the affected school sites shared their concerns with site and district leadership about contract violations for the planning of the professional development in question. I contend that it is the collective power of UESF members, not AROC or CAIR, that led to a postponement of this event. While there were some concerns raised about the organization selected to lead the workshop, the greater issue was the timing and lack of planning of the event that constituted contract violations. 

The irony of attending a workshop on the anniversary of 9/11, on a topic that is directly related to that event, also showed a lack of sensitivity toward the various communities represented among our district school staff.

The postponement of this workshop indicates a desire on the part of SFUSD to bring this information to staff at a later date. From the initial notification the affected staff received about this workshop, SFUSD also plans to hold similar workshops “to support students of other diverse backgrounds and specific identities” in the future. As educators, we value our students’ diverse backgrounds and desire that each and every student feel supported in our schools. 

In my humble opinion, raising awareness about Jewish identity and antisemitism is worthy of a professional development workshop if it is well-planned with all stakeholders and our labor contract is respected.

Kristy Erickson
SFUSD educator
UESF member

UCSF activists go beyond criticism of Jews

David Spero (Sept. 5 letter to the editor) may not have heard any criticism of Jews at UCSF, but Rupa Marya and others aren’t just supporting Palestinians (“Special report: Pro-Palestinian activism puts Jewish UCSF patients and doctors on edge”). They go beyond that, using bigoted and inflammatory language similar to what has historically been used against Jews, and believe that because they say it’s only against “Zionists” they should be protected against being called antisemitic.

Yet the wide consensus of Jewish community organizations, embodied in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, is that in many cases, anti-Zionism itself is indeed antisemitic. 

Spero is right about one thing: “If one doesn’t personally identify with Israel, nurses wearing Palestinian flag buttons will not seem threatening.” Yet given that the JCRC-commissioned study in December 2023 showed that 89% of Bay Area Jews believe in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and that 66% have a personal connection to Israel, the overwhelming majority of Jews will indeed perceive this as threatening.

Michael Harris, M.D.
Bodega Bay 

Nuances of Meta’s ‘river to sea’ decision

In response to your Sept. 4 article, “Meta says ‘from the river to the sea’ is not inherently antisemitic,” it is good to see that Meta’s independent Oversight Board has come to the correct conclusion that this phrase is one that should be treated with nuance. 

I hope the company’s underpaid and overworked moderators will find the time to do so. This stands in contrast to a long history of Meta services over-policing Palestinian speech, as has been well documented at Stopsilencingpalestine.com.

Less good was the J.’s decision to ditch nuance in favor of quoting two extremist critics of Palestinian rights and none supporting Meta’s decision. Your readers would have been better served by providing the context in the Oversight Board’s announcement about the specific posts that led to its review. None of these approached what I consider antisemitism, although one of the three could arguably be called inflammatory at worst.

Such alarmist coverage of any decision favoring the Palestinian community raises the question: Is there anything a person can say in support of Palestinian rights that won’t be labeled antisemitic? What will it take for us to talk about the substance of these calls for freedom, peace and justice instead of dissecting their choice of words with a scalpel?

Starchy Grant
Oakland

Gun training teaches safety

Maxine Turret’s Sept. 5 letter decrying a firearms training that would teach among other things, firearm history, types of firearms and ammunition, firearm ownership laws and the psychological consequences of gun ownership took me back to 1998, when my synagogue offered a course in gun safety for youth designed to teach respect for and caution toward these dangerous weapons. Same intent (teaching about a fraught topic) led to the same response (exposure to the subject is contaminating).

Congregation Beth Emek in Livermore offered the 1998 class to our pre-teens and teens precisely because of inadequate gun control and because guns were prevalent in society. (And oh, did we not predict what the next quarter century would bring!)

We believed making the subject itself taboo had the potential to be more dangerous for our children than learning about gun safety, similar to the rationale behind the rabbinic dictum that one of a parent’s responsibilities is to teach children to swim. 

Throughout the class, the instructor stressed the fearsome responsibility anyone even holding a gun had toward others. Did the participants get it?

In October 1998, your publication ran a story about the class. When the reporter tried to get the participants to pose pointing a gun at the camera, they were appalled: “You never point a gun at a person.” Not only had these youth learned the lessons of gun safety, but they could apply them appropriately even when it was an adult asking them to do the wrong thing. The memory still makes me proud.

P.S.: No, I don’t own a gun. Yes, I still support very strong gun control. Yes, I still support gun safety education.

Patricia Munro
Livermore

The golem myth

Andrew Gilbert’s story “Oakland composer Sam Reider puts Jewish folklore’s most famous monster to music” repeats a popular error when he says that the golem folktale is “one of the sources that inspired … Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein.’”

Shelley began writing Frankenstein in the summer of 1816 during a famous literary vacation on the shores of Lake Geneva. At the time, no version of the golem story had ever appeared in English. It had been published in German and Polish, languages that no one present at that gathering could speak or read.

Frankenstein had been a bestselling novel, already adapted for the stage several times, decades before the first popular version of the golem story was published in English. Moreover, there are enormous differences between the golem — mute, clumsy, made of clay — and Victor Frankenstein’s creature — fluent in three languages, powerful and made of human body parts. If any version of Frankenstein resembles the golem, it is not Shelley’s version, but Boris Karloff’s.

It has become a literary hobby over the past decades to attempt to erase or devalue Shelley’s authorship of her masterpiece. I’m sorry to see this effort furthered by an assertion that the mother of science fiction based her novel on an obscure folk tale she could not have been aware of. 

Sarah Stegall
Author of “Outcasts: A Novel of Mary Shelley”

J Street isn’t pro-Israel

Please do not refer to J Street as pro-Israel (“As a liberal Zionist, I don’t see Israel living up to its founding aspirations“). Did J Street oppose Cori Bush or Jamaal Bowman, two of the most anti-Israel members of Congress? It did not. That should tell you all you need to know about J Street’s politics. It is about as pro-Israel as Trump is pro-immigration.

Gil Stein
Aptos

J Street’s courage

I wanted to commend Charles Rothschild on his opinion piece. As an Israeli American, I live daily with the contradictions of being pro-Israel and pro-peace, of being an American progressive Jew and an Israeli citizen. The courage to speak truth to power and to uphold our Jewish values in the face of the nationalistic right-wing fervor in Israel is commendable. J Street has this courage to promote honest, open conversations about Israel and our American and Jewish values

Ben Linder
Palo Alto

What about the jihadists?

I appreciate the heartfelt opinion of Charles Rothschild’s op-ed about Israel not living up to moral aspirations that inspire many in the Reform Jewish community. However, he does not mention the implacable, genocidal hatred that motivates jihadists who are determined to eliminate Israel while they sacrifice their civilians as human shields. 

According to John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point, no democracy has faced the kind of ruthless tunnel warfare with human shields that Israel is now fighting. Moral judgment should not be based on aspiration, regardless of context. Rothschild does not provide the context but focuses on Israeli wrongdoing alone.

Is it no wonder that the Israeli left, dedicated to “land for peace,” has not won an election in 25 years? While we pray for a time when peace among the people in the Middle East will arrive, the Israelis face implacable foes. There is much to criticize about Israeli attitudes and actions regarding Palestinians legitimately. However, we should first say that we want them to win their existential war so that they can hear our critiques for their improvement from solidarity rather than rebuking from virtue signals that support false equivalency.

Jeff Saperstein
Mill Valley

Genocidal ideology behind Oct. 7

So the school year begins with the charge of genocide against Israel. Lecturer Hatem Bazian of UC Berkeley describes a policy against face coverings as “covering for genocide” (“Gaza protests return to Bay Area campuses as semester starts”). The unreality is stunning. 

John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point, points out: “Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any military in history.” Yet the charges continue. 

The entire history of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, which birthed it, reflects the genocidal ideology that culminated in the horrific events of Oct. 7 and will do so again and again unless it is stopped.

Such a movement cannot be reasoned with or appeased. It must be crushed. For the sake of regional peace and the ultimate well-being of the people of Israel, Gaza and beyond, we shall hopefully see this outcome very soon.

Whatever one thinks of the various factions of the current governing coalition, we must be clear as to the actual stakes here and support Israel in this justified, existential war of survival.

Steve Astrachan
Pleasant Hill