Walking into school on October 13th, an emptiness permeated the halls. It wasn’t the day before vacation, or a national holiday, but there was something different about the atmosphere. It is an understatement to say that the last few weeks at Ramaz have been eventful. As shown by the abundance of Schoology posts detailing Chesed initiatives and rallies, the student body has been unified to support Israel during this time of crisis. But with this advocacy comes increased security and the spreading of inaccurate/vague information.
According to many Hamas-supporting social media pages, October 13th was supposed to be a day of hatred/violence against American Jews. An Instagram post was sent around grade group chats, spreading fear throughout the student body. Manychose not to come to school because of this uncertainty.
“I decided not to come because I felt very unsafe. I was also scared because on social media, people kept posting it. I know the school had protection and that it was fine, but a part of me was nervous,” says Rose Nakash ’24, who missed her Blood Guts and Judaism exam on Friday and took a makeup exam along with over a hundred other students Wednesday after school.
Although taken after school, any exams missed due to fear surrounding the “day of hate” will not count as true makeups. According to Rabbi Schiowitz, the school understands and respects individual families’ safety concerns and did not want to penalize students who were worried. However, the Ramaz administration decided that they would not be closing school or rescheduling exams (which would inconvenience students who chose to come) due to this fear.
“Ramaz consulted with police and was advised it was safe to be open. Ramaz feels that we need to have objective standards to determine whether we close, and not just whenever people start feeling nervous, because then there is really no way of making a definition of when it is unsafe to be open. There was no credible threat to dictate that we should be closed,” said Rabbi Schiowitz
Student body president Raymond Ashkenazie echoed this statement: “On Thursday night, so many students were reaching out to me saying, ‘Is it possible for school and the test to be canceled tomorrow? We are very afraid and don’t want to go to school.’ Due to no official threat the police or FBI knew of, the administration and I concluded the importance of coming on Friday. Something Mr. Cannon said that I shared with the student body and found particularly meaningful, is that if we don’t show up to school, we are essentially letting Hamas win by allowing them to dictate when we open and close school. Imagine if we were unable to come together, at the end of the day Kumzitiz, pouring out our hearts to Hashem because Hamas said we shouldn’t. I am really not just proud of how all the student body has reacted to this devastating news over the last two weeks, but how we showed up and will continue to show up with our support of Israel.”
With the addition of two security guards, as well as a police car stationed outside the building for the time being, the Ramaz administration stands by its philosophy that Jews should not allow fear of antisemitism to dictate their life decisions while also acknowledging the ever-present security risk presented by the current situation.
