My children call me “Aba.” I have been given several other names that carried weight, including soldier, instructor, and business owner. Each came with duties I understood and accepted. Fatherhood arrived without instructions and asked more of me than any of them. The word Abba reaches further into the future than anything else I have ever been called.

When I trained soldiers, I was responsible for what they could do under pressure. When I teach self-defense to my students, I am responsible for what they carry out of my school and into the street. Raising children carries another kind of responsibility. I am partly responsible for who my children become, for the judgment they will use when I am no longer standing beside them, and for the inner voice that will speak when they have to make a difficult decision alone. That responsibility travels through them into homes I will never see.

For a Jewish father, the weight is heavier in a specific way. I am preparing children to live openly as Jews in a world that has repeatedly treated Jewish identity as a reason for danger. For many years, I could speak that sentence as history. My children are now growing up inside it.

Since October 7, antisemitism has moved from the corners of public life into its ordinary parts. My children have watched Jews threatened and blamed. Hostage posters were pulled down as though kidnapped civilians were a provocation. People performed cruelty toward Jews while describing themselves as the conscience of the world. Then the danger reached our family. I had to protect my children during a confrontation in New York, controlling myself while assessing the people around us and choosing a response that would keep my children safe. After I was targeted for being Jewish, I began wearing a Star of David openly. My children also know........

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