Parents of pupils at Britain’s most expensive day school have complained about a Holocaust Memorial Day presentation which highlighted “offensive” and “problematic” content about Jews.

A letter seen by hundreds of parents at The American School London accuses the school of dedicating part of the display to showcase “outspoken Jews who, for the most part, other than being Jewish, had no obvious connection to the Holocaust.”

The JC understands the letter was signed by a number parents and sent to school leaders.

One of the “outspoken Jews” highlighted as part of the display was Eve Peyser, a politics and culture writer for Vice, who describes herself as an anti-Zionist.

Parents also complained about the inclusion of Ms Peyser as someone who has “written publicly about how they have actively disavowed their Jewish heritage”.

The letter stated: “Bearing in mind that the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s widely-accepted definition of antisemitism specifically cites denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination as an antisemitic act, it was particularly insensitive to showcase an individual who holds such views in a presentation about the remembrance of the genocide of the Jewish people.”

Other Jews celebrated as part of the Holocaust Memorial Day display included Rabbi Ruti Regan, who talks online about the intersection of disability and Jewish text, and Rabbi Sandra Lawson, who is an openly gay African American Jew.

The presentation also highlighted food blogger, Molly Yeh, who combines her Chinese and Jewish heritage when cooking alongside writer and activist Amadi Lovelace, who is a black, queer, and disabled Jew.

Others included Rabbi Josh Yuter, who is originally from New York and immigrated to Israel where he now works as a programmer and tweets about the Talmud.

Black writer and activist Rabbi Ma Nishtana, whose family is associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement was also picked to feature in the display. In 2021 the rabbi revealed publicly on Twitter that he is autistic and polyamourous.

Parents said the display about outspoken Jews “had no relevance to the Holocaust whatsoever.”

The letter claimed the only thing the Jews chosen by the school had in common was that they are “radical, left-wing political activists”. The storm follows an angry row last December when the school was accused of giving pupils a chart showing Jews as being more privileged than members of other religions.

One of the activists highlighted in the school’s HMD display — described as “outspoken Jews” — was Eve Peyser, a politics and culture writer for online magazine Vice, who describes herself as an anti-Zionist.

The letter of complaint said: “Bearing in mind that the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s widely-accepted definition of antisemitism specifically cites denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination as an antisemitic act, it was particularly insensitive to showcase an individual who holds such views in a presentation about the remembrance of the genocide of the Jewish people.”

Other Jews celebrated as part of the HMD display included Rabbi Ruti Regan, an American minister who has spoken about the intersection of disability and Jewish texts, and Rabbi Sandra Lawson, who is an openly gay African-American Jew.

The presentation also highlighted food blogger Molly Yeh, who has a Chinese and Jewish background and writes about cooking alongside writer and activist Amadi Lovelace, a black, queer, and disabled Jew.

Black writer and activist Rabbi Ma Nishtana, whose family is associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, was also picked to feature in the display. In 2021 the rabbi revealed on Twitter that he was autistic and polyamourous.

Parents suggested the school had gone to “great lengths to highlight their credentials of intersectional oppression”.

The letter also took issue with the inclusion of a picture of the Jewish-American politician Bernie Sanders alongside an “evangelical quotation promoting the virtues of socialism”.

A better use of the display, parents said, would have been to highlight Holocaust survivors “rather than an ill-fitting selection of outspoken Jews who mostly appear to have been included purely because they possess approved political beliefs and/or intersectional identity traits.”

The rest of the display was made up of Holocaust Memorial Day Trust teaching materials.
A friend of one of the parents at the school told the JC: “Very understandably, many Jewish families at ASL were deeply offended by the nature of this public display about Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“The school’s message to them was loud and clear: Jews are not worthy of empathy and compassion for the genocide committed against them and their families by the Nazis, simply for being Jewish alone.

“For the school to appropriate such a sad and sombre occasion as Holocaust Remembrance Day to promote its socialist, identity politics-driven agenda to students is extraordinary, particularly given all of the adverse publicity the school has received during the past few months.

“ASL seems to be going out of its way to make Jewish families feel unwelcome there.”

In an earlier controversy in December, it emerged children at the school had been presented with a circular diagram which displayed privilege based on ethnicity, sexuality and religion.

Jews were placed as closer to the “privilege” and power” at the centre of the chart than Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists, though further away than Protestants or Roman Catholics. The school’s headteacher, Robin Appleby, announced that she would step down in January, having been head since 2017.

Ms Appleby, who earned a staggering £400,000 a year, was said to have brought in changes to the school’s teaching of “diversity, equality and inclusivity”.

A spokesperson for the school told the JC: “We are taking this feedback from some members of our Jewish community extremely seriously and have a meeting scheduled with parents to discuss their concerns directly.”