Statement on Hume-Fogg

As some of you are aware, a group of students at Hume-Fogg Magnet School encouraged their fellow students to wear keffiyehs to school today. The messaging for the event included the image of a keffiyeh covering the entire map of Israel.  The event and the imagery were inappropriate, offensive, and threatening which is why the Jewish Federation reacted swiftly to address both with school officials and key stakeholders earlier today.

We are committed to ensuring that all our area schools are spaces where Jewish students are comfortable learning, growing and fully expressing their identities – including their support for the State of Israel. We must ensure that conversations about Israel and Zionism in our community’s schools are fact based, and fair, allowing for critical thinking and understanding rather than indoctrination, culturally intolerant, and threatening.

When we learned of the keffiyeh event, we contacted multiple parties at Hume-Fogg to voice our deep concern with the event and ensure that Jewish students would have spaces where they were safe and comfortable in the school, to ensure that no student felt pressured to participate, and to discuss opportunities for accurate student conversations and education about Israel and the current conflict.

In fact, a healthy conversation did take place between a group of the school’s Jewish students and their Muslim classmates. This meeting began to unpack some of the misunderstandings and misinformation about antisemitism and intolerance and was a good beginning in the effort to learn and understand a diversity of cultures, including why such an event was wrong and offensive.

I was in touch with principal Dr. Kellie Hargis of Hume-Fogg who, together with all of Metro Nashville Public Schools, firmly rejects antisemitism and all forms of cultural intolerance. Dr. Hargis also assured Judy that she is committed to an ongoing relationship with our Jewish Community. We will continue to encourage the school to utilize available resources and to partner with us around protecting the needs of their Jewish students, and all students.

For many years, our Federation also had a parent PTO group that served as an avenue for communication about school events and coordinated advocacy. We invite parents in the community to join that group as we reinvigorate it to ensure that Federation, as the central address of the Jewish community, is best able to hear and uplift your voices and that, together, we can represent our community in conversations with school officials.

We are aware that national advocacy groups know about today’s events and are responding. We believe it is in the best interests of our local Jewish community that this situation is handled by our Jewish Federation and our partners. Additionally, the Jewish Federation has a robust reporting process for antisemitic incidents, and a deep relationship with the schools and school systems throughout our region to address and remediate any such incidents.

I was also in touch with Ashford Hughes of Metro Nashville Public Schools who affirmed the district’s commitment to its continuing relationship with the Jewish community and said, “We look forward to continuing our partnership with the Jewish Federation as we work together to ensure that every student feels safe, respected, and valued.”

Together, we, along with our partners at the Jewish Federations of North America and the Anti-Defamation League, are committed to ensuring that our students are safe, proud, and heard, and that schools remain spaces for respect and learning.

Judy Alperin

CEO

Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville