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Coping with Emotional Effects of Antisemitism

Grade Level: High School (Grades 9-12)
Duration: 60-75 minutes

Note to Teacher:

This lesson deals with sensitive emotional reactions to coping with antisemitism. Assess your students’ emotional needs before beginning the lesson, and consider including a mental health professional, such as a social worker or psychologist, to help lead this lesson.

Objectives

Students will…

  • Understand how rising antisemitism might be affecting them on an emotional level.
  • Recognize how widespread antisemitism can change how they feel about their personal identity. 
  • Learn some valuable tools and methods to offer support help them mitigate some of those effects.

Materials

Lesson Outline

1. Introduction 

Ask students to write down 3 emotion words to share how they are feeling right now in response to the worldwide spread of antisemitism in their notebooks. Then, have students read their words aloud and write responses on the whiteboard. Alternatively, this can be done using an online tool, such as www.mentimeter.com. From these responses, note the more obvious themes or recurring emotions, as well as words that appear only once or twice, highlighting the possible range of emotions. Explain to students that all emotional responses are valid and that there is no one “right” way to cope with what we are all experiencing right now.

2. Understanding Our Reactions: Scenarios

First we have attempted to recognize our emotions. The next step is to learn how to cope with those emotions. Life is filled with stress—how do we react when we are in moments of stress? Are we making choices or allowing ourselves to have knee-jerk reactions? 

Break students into pairs or small groups and ask each group to reflect with one another using one of the following options:

Option 1: Ask students to look at the various emotion words shared in their notebooks or word clouds. Pose the question: When have you felt some or all of these emotions over the last year and beyond, in connection to antisemitism? Ask for volunteers to share more about what happened and how it made them feel.

Option 2: Pass out a scenario card to each student group, with the scenarios described below. In their groups, students read the scenario and reflect on how they would react. Each scenario describes a real antisemitic incident that has taken place over the last year.

  • A Jewish Federation building was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti on the one-year anniversary of the Hamas massacre in Israel.
  • A Jewish man was harassed on the subway for wearing a yarmulke, with people verbally abusing and filming him.
  • A Jewish college student had her door vandalized for placing a mezuzah on her dorm’s doorframe. 
  • Israeli fans at a sporting event were harassed and attacked after cheering for the Israeli team. 


Then, bring all students back together and lead a discussion: Why is it important to learn how to process our emotional reactions to different situations properly? How can that help us to take control of our emotional responses, and move beyond the knee-jerk reactions?

3. Mindfulness Exercise

Explain that one way to control our emotional responses is to partake in mindfulness practices. The idea behind mindfulness practice is to be aware of and acknowledge our thoughts and feelings and how external events or triggers impact them. This practice allows us to focus on the now in terms of “my body, my thoughts, and my behaviors.” That means acknowledging that if you are having a knee-jerk reaction, learned coping behaviors can help you to make informed decisions to change your reactions. 

Mindfulness allows us to make choices, to control our reactions. We can choose to spend 5 minutes controlling our breathing and find that our heart rate slows down, our blood pressure normalizes, and we feel overall better. Most of the time, we do not think about breathing—it is just something we do—it is automatic. Yet, mindfulness teaches us that we can control even that which is automatic. By choosing to focus on this, we choose to do something within our sphere of influence. This is especially important in times when many things feel out of our control. 

Make sure all students are seated at their desks or in a circle on the floor and play them a recorded meditation exercise, instructing them to follow along with the directions in the recording or video.

Lead a follow-up discussion with students to process the meditation exercise. After completing the exercise, ask students to share: How did you feel before the exercise? Did you feel any differently afterward? In what ways?

4. Conclusion: Reflection/ Journaling Prompts

Explain to students that now that they have had a few moments of calm, they can process their emotions more meaningfully and thoughtfully. Taking a break and focusing on breathing can help calm the chaos and help us to make sense and order from our intense feelings and emotions. 

Pass out the journaling template for students to complete. Each student will write “3 things I am grateful for,” “3 things I am worried about,” and “3 things I hope for,” based on what they have been experiencing in connection to the rise in antisemitism. 

Having the ability and opportunity to process what they are experiencing properly can help students calm their thoughts, feel more hopeful, and reduce their stress.