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‘He’s petrified’: Halifax Jewish student pulled from school following antisemitic harassment
A Jewish student in Halifax, N.S., has been forced to study online after his school failed to stop repeated antisemitic harassment, his mother says.
Aviva Rubin-Schneider said her 15-year-old son, Joseph, was targeted for years by classmates at Park West School. He found swastika graffiti in the bathroom and classmates called him “Jewseph” and “Jewboy” and performed the Nazi salute at him in hallways, she said. In the wake of Hamas’s invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the situation got worse.
In January 2024, several students allegedly physically assaulted Joseph on school grounds. Rubin-Schneider saw a video of the attack and called it “traumatizing.” Rubin-Schneider said her son was punched, kicked, thrown to the ground and called names by fellow students.
“My son didn’t throw a punch,” she said.
After he was attacked, her son “never really went back to school after that,” she said. Rubin-Schneider and her husband decided to pull Joseph from the school, citing Park West’s inability to provide a safe learning environment. She said her son has been conducting his studies virtually through the public school system and requires ongoing therapy.
“He literally doesn’t go to school anymore. He has absolutely no desire to be in school,” Rubin-Schneider told National Post. “I’ve pulled him out completely. He’s got no desire to learn. He has no faith in any of the school, the systems or anything of that sort.”
Rubin-Schneider first contacted the Halifax Regional Police and the organization’s hate crime unit in the spring of 2023. A plainclothes police officer met with the principal and vice-principal of the elementary and middle school and, in June 2023, the officer gave a couple of lectures to students between grades 6 and 9 about racism, intolerance and hate crimes, she said. But she felt the lessons were mostly unconstructive and did not make Park West a safe learning environment for Joseph.
Following the January 2024 attack, Rubin-Schneider contacted Halifax Regional Police a second time because she felt school leaders were not empowered to properly respond to the situation.
“I was at my wits’ end. I was like, ‘If they’re not going to do anything, then goddammit, I’m doing something,” she said. However, “the only thing that I could do was put the kids through restorative justice,” she said.
Halifax Regional Police confirmed to the Post that an incident at Park West occurred in January 2024. “Three youths were referred to the Restorative Justice process which is led by Coverdale Justice Society,” spokesman Martin Cromwell said in a statement.
“Restorative justice is tailored to each individual situation, but in some cases it could involve police and/or the victim attending meetings with the participant so that all involved can speak to how the incident effected each person and the community,” Cromwell said in a follow-up email.
Kelly Connors, a spokesperson for the Halifax Regional Centre for Education, told the Post in a written statement that, given the concerns around student privacy, “I’m unable to comment on any specific case.”
“All schools in the Halifax Regional Centre for Education are committed to providing safe, welcoming, and inclusive learning environments for students and staff. Antisemitism — including the use of slurs or symbols of hate — is unacceptable and addressed as discriminatory or racist behaviour under Nova Scotia’s Provincial School Code of Conduct,” she said. “Behaviour of this nature is taken seriously and addressed consistently in accordance with policy.”
Rubin-Schneider sees her son’s story as a reminder of why Nova Scotia needs to better fund, support and prioritize combating all forms of racism, particularly antisemitism. She feels that teachers and administrators are poorly equipped to address such incidents.
“The fact that my son does not go to school anymore just tells you he’s petrified,” she said. “He doesn’t want to go to school; he doesn’t want to be around these kids. He knows he’s just going to be bullied again.”
Rubin-Schneider said that the demographics in her neighbourhood have “changed dramatically” over the past two decades and the students who targeted her son were members of the Arab community.
“We could move, but why am I forced to move out of an area that I lived in for over 23 years? You want me to pick up and move because of what’s going on with the demographics in my area? Guess what. I’m staying here. It is my house,” she said.
The Atlantic Jewish Council said in a statement that, according to data from the World Zionist Organization, there were even more attacks on the Jewish community in 2025.
“More antisemitic incidents were documented last year in physical spaces than the year before. These included street assaults, attacks on synagogues, targeted harassment of Jewish communities, and repeated harm to Jewish institutions,” the group said. Rubin-Schneider is an assistant to the director of the Atlantic Jewish Council.
“Antisemitism in Nova Scotia Schools is a concerning issue, and we get many complaints from students and parents every year,” the Atlantic Jewish Council said.
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