By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2026-10-03 14:22:02 | Updated at 2026-10-03 15:19:35
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Thirty-five years ago, a film crew descended on my high school, Worcester Academy.
Trailers filled with cameras and costumes arrived at the end of the summer before my sophomore year to shoot a movie about a prep school set in the 1950s. Apparently, our gym and pool, unrenovated for decades, were perfect for the vibe. A few of my classmates even got to be extras.
When I saw “School Ties” in theaters the following year, the setting seemed recognizable, but the scenes of rampant antisemitism could not have felt more foreign. Watching the movie again with my daughter a few weeks ago, however, they were sickeningly familiar.
“School Ties” — which starred Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Chris O’Donnell — is the story of a Jewish high-school quarterback, David Greene, from a working-class Scranton family. He’s recruited to save an elite prep school’s failing football team from defeat at the hands of its rival. David, who’s played by Fraser, decides with the implicit encouragement of the coach that he should keep his Jewish identity to himself. Early in the film, he takes off his Star of David necklace and hides it in his top drawer — subtlety is not one of the movie’s strengths.
Within hours of his arrival, David hears one of his classmates use the phrase “Jew him down” to mean getting a better price for something. Some boys wonder how another one could choose Harvard instead of a different Ivy League school given the large number of Jews there.
When there is a football game on Rosh Hashanah, David doesn’t tell anyone despite the fact that his father instructs him over the phone to go to synagogue. He dons his tallis and yarmulke and goes to pray by himself in the chapel late that night; the headmaster finds him and lectures him about “you people.”
Eventually, Charlie Dillon (played by Damon) learns from an older alum about David’s secret. Charlie, who has been supplanted on the team by David, seizes this information. He starts telling Jewish jokes in the shower and then reveals to everyone David’s true identity. Hearing David called a “k–e” and a “sheeny bastard” in 1992 was quite literally the first time I recall those words spoken aloud. And when David finds a flag with a swastika and the words “Jew Go Home” hung over his bed, I remember thinking these people might as well live on a different planet.
What a difference 35 years make. It is true that I grew up at a time that people now refer to as “the golden age” of Jews in America. My own prep school class was probably about a quarter Jewish. I assumed that antisemitism was a problem of the past, not something I, let alone my children, would have to confront.
But here we are. Antisemitic slurs are a regular feature of discourse on the right and the left. Hate crimes against Jews have skyrocketed. A flag with the Star of David and two swastikas was raised on a building over NYU in May.
Perhaps the most shocking part of watching “School Ties” today is realizing that not too long ago, Hollywood’s biggest stars were willing to lecture the American public about the ignorance of antisemitism. Don’t tell Maggie Gyllenhaal, who recently explained in a press conference how Israelis waging war in Gaza are perpetrating another Holocaust.
When Charlie is being driven away from school after being expelled for violating the honor code — something he tries to get the other students to believe that David did — he shrugs it off. “In 10 years no one will remember any of this. But you’ll still be a goddamn Jew.” David replies, “And you’ll still be a prick.”
These days, it is hard to imagine Hollywood giving any Jewish character the moral high ground. The protests alone would make headlines for weeks.
I was lucky to grow up in a bubble protected from the world’s oldest hatred. My children will never know that world. The bubble has burst. There’s no going back.
