We thought we were choosing a school. In reality, we were choosing how our daughter would survive being Jewish in Britain today.
Everything we believed about that choice, about meritocracy, about integration, about the quiet confidence of belonging, collapsed in the days following the October 7th attacks. What replaced it was clarity. The question was no longer which school was best for our daughter’s future, it was which environment would allow her to remain unapologetically who she is.
We always thought we had a plan. Like many Jewish families, we chose a Jewish primary school to give our daughter grounding, identity, and community. Secondary school, we assumed, would broaden that world, allowing us the best of both.
So we did what so many parents do. A year of tutors, practice papers, and preparation for the 11+. By September 2023, she had sat the exams, offers followed, choices were there.
Then, within a week, everything changed. October 7th brought our perception of safety crashing down around us.
By January 2024, as decision time loomed, the atmosphere in this country had shifted in ways many of us had never experienced. Weekly hate marches filled the streets, social media became a torrent of antisemitic distortion and public discourse bent under the weight of misinformation and moral confusion through national institutions we had long trusted.
Then came the final school visits at two of London's most prestigious girls' schools. In one, a swastika carved into a toilet wall. In the other, a prominent art installation titled “Children of Conflict: The Horrors of Gaza."
We didn’t need to ask how a Jewish child would navigate that environment, we already knew. So we chose a third option: a Jewish secondary school. A place where our daughter would not be asked to explain herself before she had even had the chance to understand herself. Where her identity would not be put on trial. Where being Jewish was not something to defend, but something to live.
We made a trade-off consciously and deliberately. Her happiness and security over perceived prestige, her mental wellbeing over league tables.
We are far from alone in doing so. Today, 87% of Jewish families in London choose Jewish schooling. Across the UK, the figure is around 70%, representing a sevenfold increase since the 1990s and a 20% increase in the last decade.
This is not coincidence, it is response. A community adjusting to a reality it never wished to confront.
While some still believe that a Jewish school's offerings can be instilled at home, that may be true for certain families and I respect that choice.
But to those who believe we are not in the midst of an existential fight for our identity, who believe there are more important things than embedding a strong, confident Jewish identity in our children, I say this plainly: You are wrong and more than that, you are deeply naïve to the scale of the existential threat we face.
This is not simply about education, it is about preparation. Preparation for a world in which our children will be questioned, challenged, and too often isolated, not because of what they think, but because of who they are.
Jewish education has always been the cornerstone of Jewish survival. The command in Deuteronomy is clear: “And you shall teach them diligently to your children."
History tells the same story. We educated our children in the ghettos of Eastern Europe. We educated them in the shadow of extinction, whilst in the camps. We educated them as we were expelled and forced from one country to the next. We educated them while fighting for our homeland and through the decades of terror that followed.
At every moment, when it would have been easier to stop, we did the opposite, we doubled down. Without education, there is no continuity and without continuity, there is no future.
This legacy, paid for at unimaginable cost, was not built so that we could cede the ground it preserved. We owe it to them, we owe it to ourselves and above all, we owe it to our children.
Yet, even now, provision is fragile. Just this past week, Immanuel College, the only private Jewish secondary school in the UK, came perilously close to closure.
It may not have been the choice of many, but it was the choice of some. Losing it would have meant that children whose families consciously chose a Jewish education would no longer have that option. Circumstance, not choice, would have forced them elsewhere.
In doing so, they would have lost something far more significant than a place in a classroom. They would have lost that right.
So this is not optional, not anymore.
If we want a future in which Jewish children can stand tall, speak clearly, and refuse to be diminished, then Jewish education is not a preference, it is a line in the sand.
When our children are asked who they are and they will be, our responsibility is to ensure they do not hesitate, do not shrink, and do not apologise.
They answer with clarity, with confidence and with pride.
And I venture to add that this is true for Jewish children in the entire western world.
Leo Pearlman is a London based producer and a loud and proud Zionist. His most recent film about the Oct 7 Nova Music Festival massacre, ‘We Will Dance Again’ has won the 2025 Emmy of the 46th Annual News & Documentary Awards for most ‘Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary’.