When we’re at a playground I love the fact that my daughter Gabby will invariably get bored playing with just me and will go towards the other kids who are there and say: “Hey guys, can I play with you?” She is fearless in the way that she will go up to complete strangers and try to start playing with them. And one of things that I really love is that she will go up to any child who is there, at her innocent age she still doesn’t see the difference between genders, races or religion. For her every child is a potential playmate and friend – it is something I cherish in her and hope she will hold onto forever.

But we know that at a certain age children start to notice the differences between them. Boys and girls might worry that the other has cooties, eventually playing primarily (if not only) with other children of the same gender. And then there are the other differences that they eventually become aware of, the color of a person’s skin or the religion that they practice. Their childhood innocence is lost as they start to see the difference in others rather than what unites and brings us together.

This past week I was heartbroken to read about the Muslim schoolgirl in Framingham who received hateful notes at her school. The first note was bad enough saying: ‘You are a terrorist’ with her last name. Then things escalated when she came into her classroom and found a letter that said, ‘I will kill you’ and her name.

School should be a place of learning and exploration, where all of our children feel safe, valued and loved. I cannot imagine how she must have felt going back into that place knowing there was someone who called her a terrorist and wants to kill her. This is not a case of children being children, this is unfortunately a case of children learning terrible lessons from their parents, the adults in their lives, and our society.

What are we doing to our children that one of them can look at a fellow classmate and accuse her of being a terrorist just because of her religious beliefs? And worse still how have we got to a point where a child thinks it is okay to write that they want to kill someone else, simply because they are different? Our children are not immune from the hateful rhetoric that has polluted our society and unfortunately some of them parrot it, while others might even absorb and act upon it.

As the saying goes: ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and we therefore all bear responsibility for doing what we can to raise all of our children in the correct way. Today one of our primary roles must therefore be to combat bigotry and hate. We must help our children to see beyond the differences, to recognize the many characteristics and qualities that they all share. Our education needs to focus on tolerance and inclusivity, so that we can rise above the voices of hate and division.

For me, as a Rabbi, it is about helping children to learn the Biblical lesson that all of humanity, each and every one of us, is made in the image of God. It doesn’t matter what our gender, race or religion is, we all possess the Divine spark within us and share this Godly quality with our friends, neighbors, and especially with those who are different.

In this case it was a Muslim schoolgirl who was the recipient of hate, but when someone writes a note like this it is not an attack on one of us, it is an attack on all of us and the values that we hold dear. We owe it to our children to do whatever we can to ensure that no other child is on the receiving end of this kind of abuse, as adults this is our responsibility.