Silicon Valley High School Senior Slips ‘Jew’ Slur Into Yearbook Photo
Image by getty images
A Silicon Valley student admitted that he intentionally slipped an anti-Semitic slur into his high school’s yearbook.
The student at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, Calif., altered the name of an Israeli Jewish classmate in a team photo caption so the last three letters spelled the word “jew,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. The Jewish student comes from a family of Holocaust survivors.
School officials discovered the slur after 1,600 copies of the yearbook were printed and distributed at a cost of $64,000. The school district denounced the incident, which prosecutors have indicated does not rise to the level of a hate crime.
Neither student’s name is being released because both are minors.
The Jewish student’s mother said the slur conjured up the signs and labels used by Nazis during the Holocaust.
“It always starts out little by little,” she told the Mercury News. “It’s better to stop this now when it’s little.”
Though the parents of the offended student have demanded that the yearbooks be recalled, officials told the Mercury News that it was “next to impossible” as ”it is unlikely that students would be willing to return their yearbooks, which are already filled with messages from their friends and classmates.”
Why I became the Forward’s editor-in-chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
, editor-in-chiefSupport our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
