“It’s risky putting yourself out there.”
When Shirra Berliner and her husband Yaniv decided to transfer their son from the Jewish day school system to a Toronto public school, they could not have imagined that the move would thrust their family into a very public incident involving Nazi salutes and swastikas.
The Toronto District School Board announced on Feb. 8 that it was investigating two reports of antisemitism involving the Charles H. Best Middle School on Wilmington Avenue. According to reports, the Berliners’ son had been the target.
Officials said the culprits would be having consequences and that outside experts were being called in to help the students learn about the Holocaust and antisemitism.
The Berliners remain deeply uncomfortable with how their concerns had been handled—by the school itself, and the wider board. The couple and their son spoke to The CJN Daily about their experiences, and how solving the issue in the public eye was anything but their intention. (The family asked The CJN not to use the teenager’s name.)
I’m sorry to have to meet you under these circumstances, but I appreciate you taking us back to how the antisemitism incidents happened. Can you describe what you know?
Shirra: So a couple of weeks ago, we’re in the car, and our son just said, “Yeah, something really weird happened the other day at school. I don’t know.” And he said that he kind of didn’t know how to feel about it. He said some kids got his attention and he turned around and there were two kids in their seats giving the Heil Hitler salute and saying, “Oh, we’re just asking the teacher a question.” And so I said, “How did it make you feel?” And he said, “At that time, I was just fuming inside. And I wanted to get up and hit them, but I didn’t want to disrespect the class or cause a scene. So I just kind of got back to my work and ignored it.” We were thinking, “Do we want to report it? Do we want to talk to the teachers?” Their school has a bit of an issue with calling people snitches. That’s kind of this culture of if you go to a teacher, then you’re called a snitch.
So we decided that we can’t just do nothing. And so he said that he would talk to them himself and say, “Don’t ever do that again. I don’t like it. I got really mad,” or at least confront them. And so he did, to one of the students who he’s actually friends with.
And then maybe like a couple of weeks later, he was working on his own in class and it was after the trucker protest in Ottawa. Some kids are working as a group and then they got his attention.
Teenager: It was after Holocaust Remembrance Day. We learned about the trucker protest as a class.
Shirra: And so he turned around to look and a student was holding up like this object [swastika] that they had fabricated out of these linking cubes. And it’s like a geometry tool that they use in class. And the student was holding it up.
And he just went into shock. And he said, “Yeah, I kind of froze, really.” And he didn’t tell us it happened. He’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want to make a big deal because I know people will get suspended for this. And I don’t want to go through that.” And we said, “Well, we have to tell. This is affecting your ability to learn right now.”
Yaniv: We’re not clear if this is hateful. All we have is some concerning incidents. When they made the swastika, it was a substitute teacher, so it was kind of a circus in the class. And credit needs to be given. One of the boys saw this and broke up the swastika. So at this point, we’re left with some hateful symbolism at the very least, and he’s upset by it, but some of it are his friends and some of it are his acquaintances. So we felt like we had to do something about it. But we weren’t sure if it was tomfoolery or if it was hate.
Shirra: I felt like it still needed to be discussed as a class. I felt like there was a gap in their thinking. They were fooling around, making interesting shapes, and they definitely made the swastika on purpose. But we just thought it needed to have some connection between the role of images and the visceral response. I really feel like the connection wasn’t made of how a swastika was going to affect a Jewish person.
So has the school, and your child, had any Holocaust training as a class or anti-racism training? They’re in Grade 8 now, right?
Shirra: They’ve had a lot. They’ve had Holocaust education the week before.
So it’s come out: the TDSB, and Jewish organizations, have gone public about it. There was a media conference. How has this spiralled and how do you feel about this?
Shirra: Well, after we wrote the letter to the teacher, she escalated to the principal right away. And I was expecting a call. [Their son] stayed home that day just because he needed to take a breath. And he didn’t know whether he was dealing with antisemitism or, like, stupidity. We didn’t know. So we said, “You know what? Stay home. Because if you go to school and it gets escalated, you’re going to be called a snitch.” And we don’t want him to deal with that.
Basically, you weren’t happy with how it was dealt with within the school because you weren’t able to tell your whole story before it went berserk?
Shirra: The principal called my phone and said she’d like to have our son come in as part of the investigation, on Monday morning. And I said, “Okay, I’ll join him.” And she said, I couldn’t because of COVID. And I said, “Okay. I’ll Zoom in.” And she responded that she prefers to do investigations without parents. And I said, “Well, he’s pretty upset about this, and so I’m not comfortable with that.”… Then suggestions were made to involve the teacher, but I didn’t want them to miss even more classroom time. So I said, “I think I have to go to the superintendent.” And she said, “Go right ahead.” I was fuming. And that was it. That was the last time we heard.
[Ed note: According to the TDSB, it is not uncommon for principals to meet with students without their parents to conduct investigations.]
Yaniv: So then through mutual friends, we heard that the boy that held up the swastika is ravaged by grief about what he did, that it doesn’t represent his family at all, that he has an aunt who is Jewish and cousins who are Jewish. And that he meant nothing by this, except for tomfoolery. So we were upset that this boy now has gone through this investigation. They called his house and they spoke to his dad, and they said, “We’re investigating your son for a hate crime.” So certainly there was no hate crime here. This was stupid, but it wasn’t done with hate. And that was our initial intention to figure out what’s going on here. Is it hate or is it just, like, immaturity or carelessness? And clearly it looks like it’s carelessness for the most part. We know a couple of the kids involved in this, and they feel very bad about this.
I hear you pulled your son out of school for a while?
Shirra: We thought that with our son leaving school, it would cause less drama, but then it ended up causing more drama. It was like this other kid was being targeted saying, “Someone’s leaving school because of you”. And so then we said, you know what? Leaving was probably causing more drama. So then we pulled back and asked our son if he could be brave and just go back and deal with it. I think we can be part of the solution to bringing the community back together.
Yaniv: Had we just called his dad, we could have just handled it way better. And that would have been the end. So we thought going through the TDSB’s formal complaint process would be objective. This was not our intention. We feel bad for this kid. Actually, we feel bad for this kid and for the whole community to be labelled like this.
The two Heil Hitler salutes? How do you feel about that? Is that different?
Teenager: They did that on more than one occasion. And in December, in the schoolyard, when I was at recess when that kid’s brother sent him the article saying, quote, “Israel doesn’t exist.”
So what does this say to other families who have had similar incidents with kids about whether to make a complaint or to settle it?
Shirra: I don’t know. I think if the investigation had involved us more, I think that would have been better. I get the impression that the TDSB was on eggshells, they were afraid of a lawsuit.
So what comes next now? What do you want to have happen?
Teenager: Well, I’m going back to school tomorrow. I probably just want everything to blow over. The kid that did it apologized. He feels super guilty. That’s the most they can do.
Yaniv: Yeah, that’s great. This was not this kid’s intention, right? It’s been blown out of proportion. This was not the response that we wanted.
But the question of the Heil Hitler that’s still pending?
Teenager: I think we’re just going to leave that because… too much negative attention. I don’t know.
