Raising a Child the World Already Hates

The Jewish trauma we thought was buried has come roaring back, four generations after the Holocaust.

It’s 2025. A Jewish mother holds her newborn close, marveling at the miracle in her arms. She can’t imagine anyone in the world wishing him harm. And yet, he is already hated, simply for being born a Jew.

This isn’t some distant relic from the past, the way many of us want to believe. It’s a fact of life today, shouted in protest chants on the streets of Western cities, smeared in graffiti, whispered on campuses, screamed from music festival stages. He can’t even track the shapes on his mobile yet, and already millions want him gone, whether by knife, bullet or ballistic missile.

This mother, like many modern Jews, sees herself as a citizen of the enlightened world. Her values are Western, liberal, humanistic. Her conscience is sharp and her empathy strong. But since Oct. 7, 2023, she has been in shock. Not just from the barbarity of the massacre, but from the global reaction. She expected solidarity, compassion, clarity. Instead, she found a flood of antisemitism rising just beneath the surface, waiting for its cue.

Trauma, personal or collective, reshapes us. Psychology has taught us how trauma gets passed down, how the pain of a war or a pogrom lives on in the stories and silences of the next generation.

Each of us is made up of two kinds of identity. One is external, largely beyond our control: our skin color, nationality, religion, birth order and how we were raised. The other is internal: shaped by our experiences, our interpretations, our awareness and the meaning we assign over time.

Two people can live through the same injury and carry it in opposite ways. One may turn it into a mission, a gift, a source of compassion. The other may be crushed by it, withdrawing from life, consumed by pain.

The same goes for war. Two soldiers, same battlefield, same horrors, can come out with entirely different stories. One says, “It gave my life meaning.” The other says, “It ended who I was.”

Trauma is never just about what happened. It’s what happened plus the meaning we give it. And that meaning is always shaped by what the people who raised us taught us, directly or not, about the world.

The original trauma that was never addressed will find its way back. Its trigger may be small or sudden, but it will come.

Every Jew — whether proudly Jewish, quietly assimilated or energetically post-Jewish — heard the voice of their ancestors on Oct. 7. The safe place cracked. The buried fears awakened. Our parents may have believed they were raising us in a new world, but the old story was only sleeping.

Every Jew — whether proudly Jewish, quietly assimilated or energetically post-Jewish — heard the voice of their ancestors on Oct. 7. The safe place cracked. The buried fears awakened. Our parents may have believed they were raising us in a new world, but the old story was only sleeping.

After the Holocaust, the lesson was clear: there is no truly safe place. Like Lot’s wife, everyone who looked back was frozen in salt. And yet, how can we not look back now?

The question is how to raise our children when their Jewish identity comes preloaded with a new trauma. How do we help them carry something they didn’t choose and can’t escape, when the world suddenly treats them as pariahs? How do we help them write a story for themselves that makes room for pain, but also offers meaning, strength, and pride?

And how do we keep a flicker of hope alive in them – that the world can still be good, that people can still be kind, even if they are not “ours”?

Here are three ideas.

1. Wear Your Name with Pride

The opposite of pride is shame. And where there’s shame, there’s hiding. It’s one thing to protect yourself publicly; it’s another to erase yourself privately. We want our children to live with their full selves.

Start with your own example. Talk about hard things. Let contradictions live in the open. Say “I’m proud to be Jewish,” when lighting candles in a place where you’re alone. Let them hear that.

As children grow, let them hear the deeper story. That now, more than ever, being Jewish can be a source of strength. That our history teaches us how to make meaning out of darkness. That our joy is tied to our sorrow, our identity forged in survival and stubborn love.

And yes, sometimes we feel shame. Not because we are guilty, but because we live among people who don’t understand. And when we feel that shame, we may hide parts of ourselves. That’s painful, but human. What matters is that we know why we do it, and that we don’t mistake safety for self-erasure.

Only people who show us unconditional love have earned access to all of who we are. Everyone else gets what we choose to share.

2. Make Room for Every Feeling, Even the Hardest Ones

Parents want to take away their children’s pain. It’s instinctive. But we must resist the urge to rush past difficult emotions. Feelings aren’t problems to solve. They are truths to witness.

When a child is angry, scared or sad, our job is not to correct the feeling or distract them out of it. Our job is to stay close, to help them name what they feel, to show them that nothing they feel is too much for us.

Because the child who feels understood learns how to manage emotion. The child who feels alone learns only how to survive.

We must remember: emotions are not threats. A child who is allowed to feel everything will grow into an adult who can face complexity. They’ll know how to separate what’s theirs from what isn’t. They’ll know how to ask for help. They’ll know how to listen.

We don’t need to protect our kids from fear or frustration. We need to sit beside them while they feel it and show them we are not afraid.

3. What We Don’t Face, They Will Inherit

If you carry shame about your Jewish identity, your child will sense it. Even if you never say a word. Especially if you never say a word.

That shame may have come from your parents, who absorbed it from theirs. A quiet disapproval of rituals. A mockery of old traditions. A sense that being too Jewish was somehow dangerous, low-class or embarrassing.

And then, one day, antisemitism shows up at work, or online, or in your child’s classroom. You respond with anger or fear, but also with confusion. That disowned part of you starts to shout. And instead of listening, you silence it again. You scold yourself. You tell yourself you’re better than those “other Jews” who caused this mess. You distance yourself from Israel. You whisper, “Not all Jews …” And your child sees it all.

Now imagine your child says they want to move to Israel and make Aliyah. Or asks questions about the conflict. How will you answer? What story will you tell?

You don’t have to give them certainty. But if your words carry shame, they will hear it.

You may not be able to give them peace. But you can give them truth.

The next time you ask yourself why your child has to grow up hated by strangers, why their Jewishness comes with a target on their back, remember this: we don’t get to choose the world we’re born into. But we do get to choose the story we tell about it.

You can’t sell your children a fairy tale. If you try, they’ll feel the cracks. Identity is a fragile puzzle. Your part is to lay the foundation, honestly and with love. Your part is to say, “Yes, this is hard,” and then stay beside them as they grow strong enough to carry it.

There are stories that must be rewritten. There are ghosts that must be named. If we don’t, they will live inside our children anyway, and they will call those ghosts “guilt,” or “rage” or “silence.”

A person without a home is a wanderer. A child without a rooted identity becomes a wanderer of the soul.

And if I may say something personal: I was born in Israel, the eighth generation of my family to live there. My Jewishness was not an idea or a burden — it was the water I swam in. I inherited it from generations of women and men who survived because of faith. Not belief in magic, but belief in meaning.

Faith tells a story. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that can quiet fear.

I believe no one truly wins in war. I also believe we have never known real peace. Some say we chose to raise children in the hardest place. Maybe. But for many of us, the hard place is the only place. It’s not despite. It’s because. It’s home.

And to my brothers and sisters in the Diaspora, your gaze matters. Your recognition matters. That connection — across oceans, across generations — is a kind of safety.

Hold that gaze for your own children. Not with pity. Not with apology. But with truth. Tell them: I see your pain, and I believe you can carry it.

Einat Nathan is a well-known parenting counselor, public speaker and bestselling author. A mother of 5, she lives in Tel Aviv.