THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE

ANTI-SEMITISM ON THE RIGHT AND THE LEFT THREATENS TO END AN UNPRECEDENTED PERIOD OF SAFETY AND PROSPERITY FOR JEWISH AMERICANS-AND DEMOLISH THE LIBERAL ORDER THEY HELPED ESTABLISH.

- FRANKLIN FOER

1. Stacey Zolt Hara was in her office in downtown San Francisco when a text from her 16-year-old daughter arrived: "I'm scared," she wrote. Her classmates at Berkeley High School were preparing to leave their desks and file into the halls, part of a planned "walkout" to protest Israel. Like many Jewish students, she didn't want to participate. It was October 18, 11 days after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel.

Zolt Hara told her daughter to wait in her classroom. She was trying to project calm. A public-relations executive, Zolt Hara had moved her family from Chicago to Berkeley six years earlier, hoping to find a community that shared her progressive values. Her family had developed a deep sense of belonging there.

But a moral fervor was sweeping over Berkeley High that morning. Around 10:30, the walkout began. Jewish parents traded panicked reports from their children. Zolt Hara heard that kids were chanting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," a slogan that suggests the elimination of Israel. Rumors spread about other, less coy phrases shouted in the hallways, carrying intimations of violence. Jewish students were said to be in tears. Parents were texting one another ideas about where in the school their children could hide. Zolt Hara placed a call to the dean of students. By her own admission, she was hysterical. She says the dean hung up on her.

By the early afternoon the walkout was over, but Zolt Hara and other Jewish parents worried that it was a prelude to something worse. They joined Google Groups and WhatsApp chains so they could share information. Zolt Hara organized a petition, pleading with the school district to take anti-Semitism more seriously. It quickly received more than 1,300 signatures.

Most worrying was what parents kept hearing about teachers, both in Berkeley and in the surrounding school districts.