Major Jewish organizations called on an Italian early childhood education center to issue a public apology for what they described as antisemitism directed at Jewish educators whose planned professional development trip to the city of Reggio Emilia was canceled after the center asked them to certify that they condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“There is no circumstance in which educators at Jewish institutions should be singled out for their personal views, social media or online profiles in an effort to identify connections to a country of deep religious, cultural, historic, and personal significance to Jewish people worldwide,” the Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and Prizmah said in a joint statement on Monday. 

The controversy unfolded earlier this month as more than 70 educators from Jewish schools canceled a planned visit to Reggio Emilia, Italy, after being asked to sign a statement declaring, “I distance myself from the occupation of Gaza and the violation of children’s and human beings’ rights in the occupied territories as well as in every places [sic] in the world,” according to a screenshot obtained by Jewish Insider. 

The educators — members of the U.S.-based Paradigm Project — were scheduled to travel from Oct. 11–16. Their goal was to study the Reggio Emilia Approach to early childhood education, a method long embraced by Jewish preschools, and bring those insights back to their classrooms.  

“This distressing incident continues a pattern of isolating Jews and Jewish institutions, limiting cultural exchange, learning and understanding, and suggesting that our full participation in civic spaces is contingent on our renouncing the State of Israel, the only Jewish state in the world seen for many Jews as the only clear refuge we have in the face of antisemitic violence. Bringing this trend into educational environments — into early childhood no less — is deeply disturbing,” the groups said.

Following outreach from the State Department, the mayor of Reggio Emilia, Marco Massari, told the city council last week that the city’s Charter for Democratic and Participatory Education, a document associated with Reggio Emilia’s early childhood education approach, was intended to be open for discussion, not a requirement that visitors sign on to a particular position. At the same time, he reiterated the city’s longstanding criticism of Israel’s government and called its war in Gaza a genocide.

The Jewish groups said a group of Israeli educators that “both refused to sign the statement and insisted on attending the event nonetheless” received “warm treatment and appropriate security.”

Even still, the statement called the mayor’s response “insufficient” and urged Reggio Children, the organization that oversees the educational approach and had been working with Paradigm, “to issue an unambiguous public apology that acknowledges the antisemitism Jewish educators experienced, and to take concrete steps to ensure that educators of all backgrounds are welcomed, respected, and treated equally, regardless of their religious identity or historical ties to any country.” 

The groups also called for changes to the city charter “to ensure that when it calls out injustice against children, it does so in a way that does not exclusively single out Israel or Israeli policy, in content or substance, and does not specifically target Jews around the world. Indeed, any such language should reflect a commitment to justice for ALL children — including Israeli and Jewish children.”