Co-authored with Bridget Harris
A few months ago, Sesame Street posted a simple message for Jewish American Heritage Month. The spirit of the post was unmistakable: celebration, inclusion, belonging.
Yet the comment section rapidly filled with vile antisemitism before it was turned off. A post from Sesame Street—created to help children grow “smarter, stronger, and kinder”—became a target for contempt.
Kindness was met with hate.
For parents, educators, and all of us who care about young people, this is not simply a social media story. It is a developmental story. Children are watching how adults respond when fear rises, anger hardens, people disagree, groups are blamed, and cruelty is excused as humor, politics, or “just how people talk online.”
The Jewish High Holy Days are a time to gather and reflect. They’re also an apt moment to ponder what feeds “isms” like antisemitism—and, critically, what we can teach children and teens so they do not inherit the dangerous spiral of “You hate me, I hate you; you hurt me, I hurt you back.”
Feelings Are Information, Not Instructions
Antisemitism, like other forms of group hatred, often begins with a story—a story built out of fear, anger, grievance, humiliation, confusion, or pain. Those feelings may be real. But they become dangerous when they are turned into false conclusions: I feel afraid, so you must be a threat. I feel powerless, so your group must be to blame. I feel angry, so cruelty is justified.
This is why one of the first lessons we can teach children is also one of the most important lessons of emotional intelligence: Feelings are information, but they are not instructions.
Fear deserves attention, but it does not prove another group is dangerous. Anger can alert us to injustice, but it does not give us permission to dehumanize. Pain may explain why someone wants to lash out, but it does not excuse turning a whole group into a target.
Hatred can be seductive to young people because it offers a false kind of strength: certainty instead of confusion, belonging instead of loneliness, superiority over shame.
Telling children simply “don’t hate” is not enough. We need to help them work with the emotions that make hatred so contagious: fear, anger, shame, belonging, and the wish to be accepted by the group. We can help them ask: What am I feeling? What story am I telling myself? What do I know, and what am I assuming? Who might be harmed if I share this? What would my best self do next?
Disagreement Should Not Become Dehumanization
Antisemitism, as with many forms of prejudice and othering, thrives when one group of people is no longer seen as neighbors, classmates, teachers, doctors, artists, children, grandparents, and friends, but rather as a category, a symbol, a suspicion, a conspiracy, or a threat. It thrives when curiosity collapses, and when old stereotypes travel at the speed of a comment thread.
Parents can help their children make an essential distinction: Disagreement is not hatred. But a permission structure is created when people mock others and are rewarded for it, when cruelty is dismissed as “just a joke,” or when group hatred is excused because “everyone is angry.” Young people notice all of this.
When that cruelty is practiced by public leaders, online influencers, celebrities, or adults at our own dinner tables, parents have to become even more intentional about what they model at home.
Parents can say, clearly and calmly: “In our family, anger is allowed; dehumanizing is not.” “That person may be powerful, but that does not make the behavior right.” “We can disagree strongly without humiliating.” These sentences matter because they build a counter-permission structure.
This is how families become small schools of moral resistance: by helping children see the culture clearly and practice a different way of being inside it.
Empathy Stops Us From Mirroring Harm
Empathy is central here, but empathy is often misunderstood. Empathy does not mean agreeing with everyone, excusing harm, or avoiding accountability. Empathy means remembering that another person has an inner life as vivid and vulnerable as our own.
Empathy develops through emotional intelligence skills that help children pause, identify what they are feeling, and ask what someone else may be feeling, needing, or carrying. It helps them resist absorbing a stereotype or repeating a cruel joke and instead recognize the humanity of a Jewish or Muslim classmate, Christian or Hindu neighbor, Black or Indian teacher, or differently abled friend.
Children need to learn that when someone hates them, the answer is not to become hateful in return. The answer is to protect oneself, seek help, set boundaries, tell the truth, and refuse to become a mirror of the harm.
We Need to Lead With Our “Best Self”
Finally, we can help young people imagine and practice their Best Self. Our Best Self is who we want to be, and who we want others to see, when it matters most: brave, fair, curious, compassionate, and strong enough not to join in cruelty. It is the self that pauses before posting, asks before assuming, reaches for dignity instead of contempt, and understands that belonging is not a scarce resource.
Sesame Street had to turn off comments because kindness toward Jewish Americans invited hate. That painful teachable moment shows us what happens when empathy is not cultivated.
Our children are watching.
They are learning from what we condemn, what we excuse, what we laugh at, what we interrupt, and what we repair. The task before parents is not to raise children who never feel anger, fear, or hurt. The task is to raise children who know what to do with those feelings—children who can tell the truth without hatred, stand up without dehumanizing, and refuse to keep the old spiral going.
That is how we begin to build a different inheritance.
