Jonathan Frisher, a 17-year-old student from Cheshire in England’s northwest, is leading a growing national campaign to make education about contemporary antisemitism mandatory in UK schools.
Frisher launched a Change.org petition three years ago after seeing the positive impact a dedicated lesson had in his own school, pushing for legislative and policy changes to ensure students across the country are equipped to recognize and challenge antisemitism in all its modern forms.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Frisher shared that the campaign was born from his own experiences as a Jewish student in a school with a very small Jewish population.
As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, facing direct antisemitic harassment from peers carried a particularly heavy personal toll. “As soon as I started high school, peers targeted me for being Jewish; they would tell me that I should be in a gas chamber, and I was constantly subjected to seeing swastikas drawn in classrooms and Nazi salutes being displayed,” Frisher said. “Someone told me they hated me for being Jewish.”
Frisher noted that much of this hostility stemmed from ignorance and a lack of a clear framework for recognizing hate. He explained that while schools do teach about the Holocaust, it is often taught as a distant historical event that ended 80 years ago, leaving students with the impression that antisemitism is a phenomenon of the past rather than something continuing today.
Furthermore, Frisher pointed out that because antisemitism is so heavily associated with Nazi Germany and concentration camps, people often set an impossibly high bar for what counts as antisemitism. In his own experience, overt actions, such as a Nazi salute in a classroom or remarks about gas chambers, were frequently dismissed by peers as a joke or banter rather than recognized as the targeting of a Jewish student.
To fix this gap, Frisher worked with his school to implement a single lesson focused specifically on contemporary antisemitism, which was introduced in year nine [eighth grade in Israel] alongside Holocaust education. The class addressed how symbols like swastikas and Nazi salutes continue to cause harm today and provided students with the tools to recognize antisemitism for themselves, rather than relying on a Jewish classmate to point it out.
Lesson explored how antisemitism differs from other forms of hatred
Crucially, the lesson looked at how antisemitism differs from other forms of racism by examining pervasive conspiracy theories concerning Jewish power and control. While many forms of racism portray a targeted group as inferior, Frisher highlighted that antisemitism uniquely portrays Jewish people as powerfully dangerous, focusing on centuries-old tropes that they secretly control banks, governments, and the media.
The impact of the lesson within his school was immediate.
“People apologized to me and attitudes changed,” Frisher said.
Realizing that the curriculum could successfully shift the culture and give young people the language to identify hate in coded language, memes, and conspiracy theories, Frisher launched his petition three years ago because he wanted to see the approach implemented in every school across the country.
His campaign has since gained significant momentum, spiking following the Golders Green attacks earlier this year. At present, the petition has garnered over 40,000 signatures, with a Jewish News poll finding that three-in-five voters support the policy.
Initiative supported across UK party lines, Jewish organizations
The initiative has earned support from major cross-party figures and Jewish organizations, including the Movement for Progressive Judaism, the Jewish Leadership Council, and the Jewish Labour Movement. Additionally, his local Member of Parliament, Connor Naismith, has started an Early Day Motion in Parliament supporting the initiative.
Frisher emphasized that education must bridge the gap as the living memories of decidedly personal connections to the Holocaust fade and society grows more polarized.
“As we lose Holocaust survivors, we lose the most powerful testimony there is – people who lived it, who can look a young person in the eye and say, ‘This is what antisemitism did to me,’” Frisher noted.
“As that generation passes, antisemitism risks becoming an abstract historical concept rather than a lived reality. That’s exactly why education must fill that gap – because we can no longer rely on personal testimony alone, and schools are where that responsibility now falls.”
