Historical Illiteracy: How Gen Z Became Antisemitic, An Essay in Two Parts

Part 1: The Other Side of Pico

After a very long and tiring month, I am trying to take a brief vacation from antisemitism to try and recuperate and focus on my creative work for a few days.

There were a few pieces I wrote this past month that, for one reason or another, did not get published. I am trying to schedule things so that they will get posted over the next week.

I hope you are all finding ways to stay emotionally afloat in these dark and trying times.

If you like my work, please consider sharing it and subscribing.

We’ll talk soon,

Ted Goldstein

Part 1: The Other Side of Pico

Written on November 13, 2023

Last week, on November 8, 2023, I went to the dueling protests outside of the Museum of Tolerance on Pico Boulevard. The IDF had organized a screening of a film called “Bearing Witness,” to show Hollywood uncensored, unfiltered footage of what truly happened on October 7th. 

I heard about this event from an antizionist on Instagram. She claimed that the IDF had organized an event to screen 47 minutes of “propaganda.” 

At the actual protest, I decided to cross the street and talk to some of the anti-Israel demonstrators to better understand their argument. More honestly, I crossed the street because I wanted to see just how little they knew about the situation and how they would respond if I challenged them. 

Although this was only days after Paul Kessler had been killed in Thousand Oaks by an antizionist, I did not feel afraid. Maybe it was just youthful bravado, maybe it was some kind of religious fervor, maybe it was just because everyone on the other side of Pico looked so young, but I wasn’t afraid to cross the street. 

Earlier that day, in my speech and debate class, I asked my students which is better: one thousand weak arguments, or one strong argument. 

To my dismay, they said the former. If you make one thousand weak arguments, they reasoned, you’ll wear the other side down, until they’re too exhausted to argue anymore. Attrition, attrition is what they call it in war. 

But they were wrong. One strong argument is better than an infinity of weak ones because attrition cannot conquer truth. Weak arguments can be dismantled with ease; strong arguments stand on their own. But there was wisdom in their words. 

If you have been feeling intellectually exhausted by the absurdity of the world these days, you are feeling the attrition set in. You have been forced to listen to thousands and thousands of antizionist shouting points over the past month, and they’re usually quite loud. They’ve been shouting these liberation cliches from their self-made podiums, and they refuse to hear any kind rebuke. 

As I stood on the south side of Pico watching these minors shout through megaphones, I felt I had to prove something to my students, and to myself. I had to prove that our class in the art of debating was not futile. I had to prove that there was still value in learning the art of argumentation. I had to prove that truth still beats attrition. 

And so I crossed Pico. 

There were about 20, maybe 30 people on their side. I don’t think I have ever felt as spiritually separated from something as I did on Pico. 

But once I crossed, there I was, in a group of mask-wearing teenagers waving signs and chanting slogans. 

The first conversation I had was with a Jewish antizionist about what Zionism actually is. His argument to me was very simple: Zionism is Nationalism. 

This argument is incorrect for several reasons, which I started to explain. However, he was not really interested in discussing my arguments because he was “anti-nationalist in general, because all governments are evil and kill people.” He was, he wanted me to know, very strongly against killing people. 

“Agreed!” I exclaimed. I, too, am very strongly against killing people. 

Unlike him, though, I am not so strongly against the existence of nations with governments. Government is not my favorite thing in the world, to be sure, but I am pretty confident that things would be worse were it not for governments. 

  But at least his argument was a real one – a monologue against nationalism and governments. Naturally, I asked him how he felt about the American government and how it handled itself in the world. He, of course, hated the American government and all it stood for. 

“So why do you pay taxes then, if you don’t support what the government is doing?” 

To which he said, “because I don’t want to go to jail, man,” and proceeded to giggle.

This conversation concluded with a discussion on religious nationalism. Did I think it was right for a country to exist for the people of one religion? So first, I turned the question and asked him. “No, of course not,” he said. 

“So then why don’t you protest the Islamic Republic of Iran? Or Pakistan? Or Afghanistan? Why don’t you protest Qatar, which has no Jews in it? Or any of the other 55 Muslim countries that discriminate against Jews.” 

“Wait,” he said. “Is your argument that I’m going to get killed in one of these places if I go there, just because I’m Jewish?” 

The short answer is yes. But I knew he wanted me to say that so he could tell me about all of his friends who have safely gone and visited these places. 

Instead, I asked a different question: “Do Orthodox Jews have a right to live?” Of course, he said. “And do they have a right to eat kosher food and live a Jewish lifestyle?” Of course, he said. 

So then I told him about the zero Jews living in Qatar, and how they reneged on their promise of having kosher food available for the Jewish fans at the World Cup. I asked if that was antisemitic, to which he just said, “I don’t know man, I’m not that practicing in my Judaism.” He giggled and walked away. He was high as a kite. 

The second conversation I had was much more heartening. I spoke to someone from Hawaii who told me about how much her indigenous friends are suffering back home. It sounded quite tragic, and I could tell that she was actually interested in talking to me. 

We spoke for a bit about the death of Paul Kessler and the danger of having two sides that receive two completely different sets of news. This was a point we could both agree on. Still, I am sure that we both walked away thinking that we were each, respectively, the one receiving the Truth. 

She told me she was wearing a mask because “they’re building Cop City in Atlanta and they’re getting ready to send us all there.” This is something I had never heard of, but she said it with as much conviction as if she had told me that the sky was blue. I am going to do some more research into “Cop City,” but this seems to be a significant idea in these circles. It is important to note how far apart our respective set of news and facts are. 

Finally, I asked her if she knew what November 9th memorialized. Had she ever heard of Kristallnacht?

“No,” she said. “What’s that?” 

Of all of the things that I have heard antizionists say over the years, that is the most common. “No, what’s that?” 

They simply do not know. Now, the first thing I felt I had to do was educate her a bit about what Kristallnacht was, and why it might be offensive to protest outside the Museum of Tolerance the day before. 

But there is a much greater and more terrifying reality we must confront: Generation Z knows nothing about the Holocaust. 

For Jews born before 1996, this seems incredible. Many of us live with the lessons of the Holocaust on an almost daily basis. 

A story you heard, a tattoo you saw, a person you held – these are the things that we think about when we think about the Holocaust. And we used to think about the Holocaust a lot. Now, not so much.  

The nature of the antisemitism in Gen Z is big and complex, but I’ll tell you where I think it begins. Antisemitism in Gen Z began in the Department of Education, with No Child Left Behind. 

End Part 1: The Other Side of Pico 

Part 2: How Historical Illiteracy Leads to Antisemitism 

The effect of No Child Left Behind meant that kids who were not at grade level would get pushed forward into the next grade. If you have one 4th grader reading at a 3rd grade level, and you move them into 5th grade anyways, now you have a 5th grade classroom with 3 different levels of student ability, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. That means that the teacher has to find a way to teach 3 different levels of students in the amount of time they used to have to teach to just one. 

If you compound the effects of this into 6th grade, and then 7th, and then 8th, you’ll see that, by the time students get to high school, there could easily be 5 to 10 different reading levels in a single class. 

Teachers, meanwhile, were expected to deliver the same quality and caliber of education, often while also dealing with budget cuts. This usually means bigger classes… which means more different levels.

As a teacher in this situation, you have three options: slow the pace of the course so as not to lose slower students, lower the intellectual level so that slower students can still be successful, or change nothing and teach how you always taught, but you will need to accept that none of the slower students will learn anything that year. 

Sadly, more often than not, there is a combination of these three things. I believe what is most responsible for the ignorance of Gen Z is slowing down and shortening courses, especially history classes. 

Every student in California is supposed to take U.S. History 3 times in their school curriculum; once in 5th grade, once in 8th grade, and once in 11th grade. The reason for teaching this way is that the early courses create the scaffolding for the later courses. A high schooler cannot discuss the political distinctions between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution if they never learned about how Colonial America worked and what happened in the Revolution. 

As schools started pushing weaker and weaker students into 5th grade classrooms, those teachers had to decrease the amount of material they covered. And when a teacher has to cut material, they cut from the end and hope that another teacher will one day pick up that slack.  

Unfortunately, 3 years later, when that cohort matriculated to 8th grade, it was an absolute mess. Every student had a different background in history because every student came from a different 5th grade classroom,and each of which cut a different amount of material from the curriculum. 

So the 8th grade teacher does their best to catch the kids up on what they missed before, but they too have to cut the curriculum. And then the same will happen in 11th grade. 

Consider these things in connection with the chronological structure of a history class. If material is getting cut, and it always gets cut from the end, that means that the same decades of history are getting cut from the curriculum every year. What is cut is generally going to be the most recent decades.  

Although the U.S. History curriculum allegedly goes up through 1980, I have not met a single person whose high school history teacher got past 1918 and the 14-Point-Plan. Ask anyone you know who went to a California public school, and I bet they will tell you the same. 

Generation Z knows nothing about the Holocaust because we never taught it to them. They know nothing about World War II because we never taught it to them. They know nothing about Soviet antisemitism because we never taught it to them. 

And now, they’re marching in the streets on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, dismissing anyone who might dare to call them antisemitic. 

They are also appropriating the history of the Holocaust (a history which they do not know) to say that Israelis are the real nazis of the world and that Israeli fascism must be exterminated. Of course, Putin used this same tactic to justify his invasion of Ukraine, but if the younger generation doesn’t know anything past 1918, they definitely won’t understand anything that happened after 2018. 

They say you should never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. Sadly, most of my generation seems stupid, or, at the very least, ignorant. What’s sadder is that it’s not their fault. 

It is not as though these students chose not to learn the history of the Holocaust; in fact, they thought they had. They thought they had learned the history so well that they knew how to spot it while it was happening in the present. But that’s clearly not the case. 

I believe that the root of most antisemitism in Gen Z is ignorance, as it always is. There are, of course, malicious actors who do know the history of the Holocaust and are using Goebells’ propaganda playbook to spread and intensify the antisemitism. But, at the moment, the majority of young antisemites are just ignorant. And the solution to ignorance is education. 

Therefore, I propose that we defund any UC or Cal State organization or department that condoned the October 7th attacks or has subsequently supported antisemitism on campus.

Those funds should be used to create mandatory courses on Holocaust education, and perhaps even mandatory courses on the basic facts of 20th and 21st Century history. 

There is, sadly, a dire and urgent need to denazify Generation Z. If we have learned our lesson from history, we know how critical it is to do this now, before their ignorance calcifies into malice, and it must be done quickly. 

One way we could identify where the misinformation is coming from is by issuing a multiple choice test to every student in the UC system about basic facts and knowledge about the Holocaust, antisemitism, and the conflict. 

From there, we could see which departments, and maybe even which classes, were producing the least informed students, and we could begin our intervention there. 

The good news is, Jews are great educators. The bad news is, the people we need to educate think everything we say is propaganda. 

Throughout all of this ugliness, the most painful thing for me to witness has been the ignorant and brainwashed Jews of my generation who have the audacity of stupidity to say that Israel is committing a genocide. The reason that I find this so heartbreaking is that I know why they're saying it – because they’re Jews. 

There is no people who is more anti-genocide than the Jewish people. In fact, in 2004, the rabbi of my shul created an organization called “The Jewish World Watch.” Its clarion call to action was that a Jew cannot stand idly by while genocides happen all over the world. 

And Rabbi Shulweis was right. A Jew cannot stand idly by while a genocide is happening. He was right that a Jew must watch out for the world. I suppose what’s so sad is learning that the world isn’t watching out for the Jews.

I worry for the antizionist Jews who haven’t learned that lesson yet. 

One day, not long from now, there will be peace in Israel and Palestine, real peace. I see it now, in my mind’s eye, just as clearly as I see this screen in front of me. We will get there through education. We will get there through loving kindness. We will get there through all of this. 

When the going gets tough, the Jews get going. Let’s go and spread some light into this dark world. 

Spread light, spread love. 

Am Yisrael Chai.