As Campus Protests Rage, Our Kids Face Tough Decisions

To say I am greatly disturbed by the protests on college campuses is an understatement. I grew up in the Vietnam era, so I understand the urge for students to speak out. But when protests turn from being a peaceful demonstration to a call for violence against a group of people (whether it be a call to kill Jews, Blacks, transgenders, or any other marginalized community), it crosses the line from “free speech” to “hate speech,” making the targeted group feel unsafe on campus. In this season of Passover when we celebrate freedom, these kids are robbed of their freedom.

I can’t help but wonder how we got here. Students are easily influenced. Social media and Tik Tok contribute. For every pro-Israel post, there are 50 posts against the Jewish homeland. The anti-Israel propaganda machine has been actively at work for the past 20 years. Unfortunately, much of the hate comes into students’ heads from some professors who have bought into an ideology that vilifies not only Jews, but Western Civilization as a whole. It’s no wonder so many kids are morally confused. I am reminded of a prep-school teacher’s line from the movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she will be mine for life.” We’ve all had teachers like Miss Jean Brodie who held that kind of power over our minds.

We’ve been here before. In 1930’s Europe, universities were a hotbed for fomenting antisemitism. The hate started in schools, then moved into cultural institutions, media, businesses, neighborhoods. It led to the murder of two-thirds of Europe’s Jews. Either we learn from history, or we are doomed to repeat it.

I’m grateful that our two kids, Adam and Lizzy, are grown and were never radicalized to hate. But Laurie and I have five young grandkids, and it’s hard not to worry how they will respond when the time comes that they face such temptation. What can we, as parents and grandparents, do to strengthen their core and give our kids the tools to make good decisions?

Laurie and I were recently in Florida to hear our daughter speak at the Annual Summit Countering Antisemitism. Coincidentally, Lizzy asked what we did to raise kids who stayed connected to our faith and identity. We are grateful that Lizzy is a leading advocate for Israel and Judaism, and that Adam was recently appointed by Gov. Abbott to the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission. We’re no experts at raising kids, and certainly we didn’t do everything right. No doubt that luck and blessing played heavily into the outcome. But I answered that we were intentional about identifying our core values and actively sharing those values with our kids. We regularly shared stories of our ancestors who miraculously survived Hitler, who faced unimaginable persecution but stayed strong and resilient. We taught our kids they are links in an unbroken chain. They grew up knowing that they belong to a heritage that’s bigger than they are. We did our best to adhere to the line in Ethics of the Fathers, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

In my role as an estate planning lawyer, I’ve become a major proponent of family meetings. The goal is to create family cohesiveness. Even young children can have a seat at the table and participate in an exercise to identify the family’s values and answer aspirational questions. What is the purpose of our family? What do we care about and stand up for? Who do we come from? These are conversations that should happen early and often. I’ve written a lot about family meetings in this blog. To reiterate, estate planning is about more than money. It’s about passing down not just your valuables, but even more importantly, your values. To get the most from this process, I recommend bringing in a professional to facilitate the meetings, someone who knows how to guide the process.

Obviously, there’s no guarantee that raising kids to know the family’s values and heritage will keep them on track. However, when our kids are faced with the choice of which path to take, there is a moment when they have the power to choose their response. Lizzy recently taught me a powerful lesson from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” We cannot control what influences may tempt our kids. But when temptation arises, our kids are in control over how they respond. Let’s raise them with the tools to hopefully make the right choice when that time comes.