A large majority of Jewish teens worldwide — 78% — feel that their concerns over rising antisemitism are being dismissed or minimized, according to a new survey published at the start of the school year.

The study, conducted by Mosaic United, a joint initiative with Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism and private philanthropy, along with academic research firm Tovanot, spotlighted several concerning trends of Jewish high school students between ages 14-18 amid the global rise of antisemitism, sparked by the Israel-Hamas war. Of the 662 respondents, nearly half (47.4%) reported experiencing antisemitism personally — including physical threats, online harassment and derogatory comments — with the majority of incidents occurring in school. More than 30% of respondents also reported avoiding wearing Jewish symbols out of fear, and 22% have said they hide their Jewish identity.

The pollsters said they found the respondents using mailing lists from Jewish youth groups and by advertising on social media platforms, namely TikTok and Instagram. More than 80% of the respondents were from the United States.

“We’ve all seen what’s happened on college campuses but we wanted to capture the experiences of high school students to better understand how antisemitism is affecting young people globally, and our goal is to provide data to guide some sort of intervention,” Alana Ebin, director of the organization’s Mosaic Teens department, told eJewishPhilanthropy. She noted that the reporting structure in high schools is not as “systemic” compared to college campuses. “So maybe there wasn’t really awareness… nobody has done anything examining attitudes of young Jews on a global scale,” she said. 

In the U.S., most antisemitic incidents occurred in school, with 26.6% of respondents facing discrimination from teachers and 27.4% from school administrators. 

Ebin said that she expected antisemitism among teens to come from peers, but was surprised by the high percentages that were reported in the U.S. coming from teachers, curricula and administrators. “That points to a larger systemic issue of what’s happening in education and is raising red flags,” she said. 

“Close to 80% of teens had their experience minimized or dismissed when they reported it. We’re currently living in a time when society promises to listen and honor marginalized voices, but Jewish voices of teenagers are being flat-out dismissed and that’s unacceptable,” Ebin said. 

The survey on antisemitism in high school is, according to Mosaic United, the first in a series to examine antisemitism and Jewish identity on a larger scale; a separate survey of attitudes towards Israel’s war is also planned.