When Jonathan Frisher was subjected to antisemitic bullying at his secondary school he was shocked – then quickly resolved to take action to stop the hate.
Classmates at his Cheshire academy school had hissed at him, mimicking the gas chambers, gave Nazi salutes and scrawled swastikas.
“From year seven to year ten, I faced sustained antisemitic abuse,” the 16-year-old said. “A lot of it involved the glorification of the Nazis. I was told I belonged in a gas chamber because I was Jewish, and there was a wider atmosphere in which antisemitism felt normalised.”
What surprised him was how quickly attitudes changed after he asked the school to introduce a single lesson on contemporary antisemitism. Some pupils even apologised to him. Every person in his year took the lesson after learning about the Holocaust.
“Since I worked with school to start educating people there’s been a lot less antisemitism,” he said. Now he is campaigning with a petition to make one lesson on modern antisemitism compulsory in every school.
The teenager launched his change.org campaign three years ago. It had garnered about 6,000 signatures until the spate of antisemitic attacks in recent weeks saw it surge to more than 38,000 signatories. He has taken his campaign on national television, with an interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, and won the support of his local MP, Connor Naismith, and Rabbi Charley Baginsky, co-leader of Progressive Judaism. “Holocaust education must be taught alongside contemporary antisemitism,” he told the JC. “Too many young people assume antisemitism ended with the Holocaust and is not a serious problem today. Learning about modern-day antisemitism, which is often linked to the glorification of Nazis, can help young people understand the continued dangers of those ideologies in 2026.
“I’m not proposing a huge change to the education system. I’m calling for one mandatory lesson for all students on modern antisemitism. That is what was taught at my school, and it reduced antisemitism there. Education is key to rooting it out.”
He said the need for antisemitism education in non-Jewish schools was “urgent”. “In the long term, only education can tackle antisemitic attitudes in the next generation.” The scale of the problem became evident to Frisher when his rabbi asked which young people in the room had faced antisemitism at their school and every single child raised their hand.
His friends at shul had all experienced similar incidents, with people attacking Israel and referencing Adolf Hitler. While some people were “malicious,” he said, most of those abusing him “didn’t realise the impact of this stuff”.
It was in 2023 that Jonathan decided to educate pupils about contemporary Jew-hate alongside the Shoah. “We learn about the Holocaust, but we don’t hear about how people are still aligning with that ideology and using those symbols now,” he told the JC in 2024. “Also we don’t learn about how many Jews get affected by antisemitism today.”
Sir Keir Starmer has described antisemitism as a “crisis for all of us”. The government has pledged £7 million to tackle antisemitism in schools, colleges and universities in England, includes a £1 million “Tackling Antisemitism in Education Innovation Fund”, to provide teachers with training and resources to challenge abuse and encourage informed debate. The original £7 million pledge was announced by the then Tory chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, in the 2023 Autumn Statement.
To sign Frisher’s petition, click here.
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