Geometry teacher Ben Frisch Image by youtube

NEW YORK (JTA) — Students and alumni at a Quaker-run private school in Manhattan are rallying around a teacher who was let go after making a joking Nazi salute in his mathematics classroom.

Ben Frisch, a teacher at Friends Seminary, was fired for saying “Heil Hitler!” while raising his arm to illustrate what in basic geometry is known as an obtuse angle.

The school’s principal, Robert Lauder, explained Frisch’s firing in a letter to the community.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

“Our students know that words and signs of hate and fear have no place at Friends,’’ he wrote. Lauder cited the Feb. 14 incident and “other equally inappropriate and troubling actions by Ben.”

But a petition circulated among the school’s 279 students drew 190 signatures voicing support for Frisch, who has been a teacher at Friends for 34 years. Alumni also launched a petition, which has drawn 469 signers, and students and some faculty joined a walkout to protest his firing

“I think we all can agree that whatever happened, Ben’s intentions were not malicious or bigoted. He has always been devoted to Quaker principles of nonviolence and fighting injustice and has not a hateful bone in his body,” according to the alumni petition. “It sounds like he found himself in an awkward situation and made an awkward joke.”

The New York Times, which first reported his firing, noted that Frisch, while himself a practicing Quaker, is the son of an Austrian Jewish man whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust. The school’s enrollment is about one-third Jewish, The New York Jewish Week reported in 2012.

Times columnist Gina Bellafante said, “At the same time an adherence to the values of forgiveness and restorative justice that institutions like Friends promote would seem to demand a path — reprimand, rehabilitation — other than firing someone who made people uncomfortable.”

Frisch is challenging his termination.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount