Jewish 7th grader harassed so badly at California public school she transferred to private Jewish school

A Jewish girl is suing her California school after alleged harassment by staff and fellow students forced her to leave the school.

The 12-year-old Jewish girl’s family filed the lawsuit against University Preparatory Academy (UPA), a public school in Santa Clara, alleging violations of both state and federal law.

The harassment allegedly began after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against Israel.

“UPA [has] decided that education and kindness don’t matter anymore – just being on the ‘right’ side of a dispute thousands of miles away,” attorney David Rosenberg-Wohl, who is representing the plaintiff, said in a press release. “And if that means terrorizing a Jewish 7^th-grade girl and running her out of school, so be it.

“Fortunately, our laws don’t allow the school system to sacrifice a local school kid out of some benighted identification with the goals of extremist Palestinians.”  

The press release from the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC), which supports the lawsuit, explains the girl was “singled out by faculty, tormented by classmates, and repeatedly ignored by school administration despite increasing distress.”  

“A teacher singled out and publicly humiliated the 12 year-old student in front of other students due to her faith. The student’s peers became verbally and physically aggressive towards her during the following months, bullying and shunning her, and stripping her of personal identity by referring to her only as ‘the Jew.’”  

The girl’s family eventually removed her from the public school and placed her in a private Jewish school. But now they’re seeking recourse for the injustice their daughter suffered.  

“We hope that lawsuits such as this one will facilitate greater accountability in the K-12 system and will send a clear message to school administrators, local education agencies [and] the California Department of Education that the safety of Jewish students must be taken seriously,” said BAJC executive director Oded Shekel.  

“Jewish families simply want a secure, supportive learning environment for their children where they can focus on academics and the other developmental tasks of growing up, rather than being worried about being victimized for their religious identity.”  

Meanwhile, another California district faces a lawsuit for its allegedly antisemitic ethnic studies curriculum. And Jewish educators are suing the Los Angeles district and teachers’ union for antisemitic rhetoric and activities.  

But those issues aren’t limited to California.  

Indeed, Jewish families across America – and the world – are increasingly turning to Jewish schools for safe environments that inculcate traditional values. Prizmah, a Jewish education group, polled 100 Jewish schools across the U.S. and Canada, and 60% reported enrolling or expecting to enroll new students in the 2024-25 school year.  

The most common reasons for parents to change schools were:   

• Antisemitism in public or private schools;  
• Israeli families who moved because of the war;  
• Seeking Jewish community for the next generation;  
• Safety. 

“The best thing that we can possibly do to fight antisemitism is to empower, educate and embrace our community, and give our children the best Jewish education that we can,” commented Prizmah CEO Paul Bernstein.