Jewish children ‘are showing anxiety about being taken hostage’

Joss went on to describe her patients’ anxieties around intruder alarm drills. “I’ve seen lots of children who are very panicky about the intruder alarms at schools. If they go to Jewish school, they have to practise intruder alarms, hide under the desks, and watch their teachers barricading the doors.

“It’s not just the older children who can understand what’s going on. It’s all the children from nursery, hiding under tables.

“The feeling of imminent danger is exactly the point of anxiety, which is to protect you...The idea that our Jewish children have to practise for imminent danger, it’d be strange if they weren’t incredibly anxious,” Joss said.

She recalled the anxiety she experienced while working at a Jewish primary school as a teacher.

Saskia Joss (Photo: WIZO UK)[Missing Credit]

“One of the reasons I eventually moved out of Jewish schools was that I also found the pressure of intruder alarms incredibly overwhelming,” she said. “The idea that you’d be the person to lie in front of the children – I was ready to do it, but the feeling was awful.”

Joss went on: “I used to have this huge cupboard with a lock in my classroom. Obviously, the protocol was to put the children under the table, but I used to have panic dreams where I would imagine myself carrying all the children and putting them in the cupboard…because it genuinely would have been the safest place to put them in [during] an intruder alarm. I was obviously insufficiently resilient to be the person to do that [job] for a significant amount of time.”

She added: “We’re very lucky we’re living in England. If I was working with children in Israel, it’d be much harder to provide the facts that make it feel safe.”

Last December, the JC reported that over 40 per cent of UK Jews  showed signs of anxiety disorders brought on by the events of October 7 and the increase in antisemitism, from research carried out by Hadassah UK and mental health charity Jami, part of Jewish Care. 

Rosa Doherty hosting the WIZO UK podcast (Photo: WIZO UK)[Missing Credit]

“As Jewish people, we can’t rest on our laurels and assume nothing will happen,” Joss said. “The way we support children with anxiety is by providing sufficient information…We tell them: ‘There’s never been an attack on a Jewish school in this country, we’re only doing it to have a really good plan, in case’…We also spend time relaxing our children when they get home from school after a drill.”

On instilling resilience in children, Joss said: “Resilience is the ability to know that you feel something and do it anyway, and that’s hard. We teach children that over time by showing them they can regularly do things that are difficult.”

WIZO UK’s new podcast, Impacting Your Future, is a six-part series featuring interviews with leading Jewish names in business, education, philanthropy and public life. They share the experiences that have shaped them and the impact they hope to leave for future generations.

Future episodes will feature entrepreneur and philanthropist the late Dame Stephanie Shirley, businessman and community leader David Dangoor, educator and JFS head Dr David Moody, JC journalist Stephen Pollard, and entrepreneur, physicist and author Eduard Shyfrin.

WIZO is the largest social welfare organisation in Israel, helping vulnerable and disadvantaged Israeli citizens, regardless of age, race, or religion. 

The first episode of ‘Impacting Your Future’ featuring Saskia Joss is available now on YouTube and all major podcast platforms

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