CNN Anchor Bianna Golodryga Tackles Anti-Semitism in New Book for Tweens

Bianna Golodryga, a news anchor for CNN International, immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union in 1980 with her family to escape anti-Semitism.

Now a mother of two, the former political refugee finds herself forced to explain the hatred expressed toward Jews in the country she loves – much of it in the swampy waters of social media. She sees them living with the tension between taking a stand against it and getting along.

“When you arrive in a country, you are a minority and all you want to do is integrate,” says Golodryga.

The veteran journalist who co-hosts CNN International’s “One World” and her friend Yonit Levi, lead anchor for Israel’s N12 News, wanted to provide their preteen offspring with a road map for solving this problem. They delivered it in their co-written young adult novel “Don’t Feed the Lion.”

The book, intended for ages 9 and up, centers on Theo Kaplan, a soccer-obsessed Chicago middle school student whose world is shaken when his favorite soccer player makes an anti-Semitic remark about a team owner. Hatred hits closer home when a swastika and an anti-Semitic hashtag are scrawled on Theo’s gym locker, leading his younger sister to assume a secret online identity to seek justice.

Golodryga recently spoke to The Times about “Don’t Feed the Lion.”

The central plot point of this book is informed by life experience. Your son had a hard time when NBA star Kyrie Irving touted documentary film with anti-Semitic tropes on social media. Irving was suspended by his team before apologizing.

My son is a big sports fan. He asked me point blank, “Why do they hate us? Can’t I go to basketball games anymore?” I remember we were on the Brooklyn Bridge watching a Brooklyn Nets game and he asked this question and I didn’t have a good answer. I thought I would just contact their school and see what they are doing about anti-Semitism since they have invested so much in other forms of hate education. I found out they had nothing. Basically it was, “Well, when they ask a question, we sometimes discuss it at school. » And so that really struck me, that there were no resources for children on anti-Semitism.

Did the Hamas attack on Israel that led to the war in Gaza accelerate the need for such a book?

Yonit and I have known each other for many years and unfortunately predicted that once again we would see a huge rise in anti-Semitism. Her children are around the same age. She spent many of her formative years here and she knows the United States very well. And I said, “Let’s write the book that we can’t find, because this is bound to be a problem in the weeks and months to come.” » It’s not a panacea, but at least there will be a resource that will also be a good story, for Jewish children, non-Jewish children and the adults in their lives.

(Arcadia Children’s Books)

After your main character Theo sees the swastika and hashtag on his locker, his school’s reaction has been pretty lukewarm. Are schools not taking this problem seriously enough?

That’s part of the problem. We let this fester. Other forms of hatred have been addressed head on. Whether it’s a swastika here or there or a social media post, or a statement or a comment, whether it’s from the right or the left, it’s sort of treated as isolated incidents and not with the level of alarm that I would say other forms of hatred or comments directed at other minorities would be. And again, this is a personal experience of other family members going back five or ten years where there were swastikas at school, and the response was, “Let’s have a kumbaya session and talk about why that’s not a good thing and why we shouldn’t allow that.” » I experienced this as an American Jew.

How complicated has this discussion become in light of how public opinion has turned against the Israelis because of their handling of the war in Gaza?

I think that’s one of the reasons why no one really wants to address this issue for this age group, because they confuse it with the Middle East. This is obviously the longest, deadliest and most painful war resulting from the horrific October 7 attacks that we have covered. But we see that every time there is an infraction, skirmishes or war in the short term, there is a rise in anti-Semitism around the world. …There is no other country where I would rather be Jewish than in the United States. But there’s not a time that I don’t remember growing up, whether it’s in Texas or New York now, where there wasn’t one or two or three armed guards, or a bomb threat issued, in a house of worship, a synagogue, a Jewish institution, and that became normal. I mean, now I don’t feel comfortable going into a Jewish institution without security. And again, this is before October 7th.

Bianna Golodryga, center, with Malki Shem Tov, left, and hostage Omer Shem Tov during her interview with Omer.

(CNN)

Was it difficult to sell this book?

We started bringing it to the attention of publishers about two or three months after October 7, so late December 2023 and early January 2024. And I have to say, I was a little surprised that we weren’t able to get many people to bite. We’ve never written a book and we’ve been told — and I take them at their word — that this is a very difficult age group to reach and target in general, which in itself is a problem, because as we noted, they are very intelligent, curious and need materials. They should not be belittled. We didn’t want to write an educational book. Then we’d hear six months or a year later that maybe it’s not the right time to write a book about anti-Semitism. Maybe give it a year or two and we’ll see. It seemed like the perfect time to write a book. We got to the point where we decided to self-publish, if that’s what it takes.

How did you finally find a publisher?

Fortunately, Yonit and I didn’t hesitate to tell everyone about this project. One evening, I was sitting at a dinner for the Metropolitan Museum of Art next to Michael Lynton, former head of Sony Entertainment and now chairman of Snap. And I told him about this book, and he said, “I’m going to publish it.” » He and his sister run Arcadia, which publishes regional children’s books. He said that’s not usually the type of book we publish. But I think he really believed in the idea, and so we’re very grateful to him.

There are some similarities between your 13-year-old son and Theo. When he read the book, it was Was he worried it would be too revealing?

No, it’s funny because I think he really enjoyed the plot and intrigue. Unfortunately, I think his main concern now is that this is simply the reality we live in. He’s just worried about safety and pushback and doesn’t want to draw too much attention to me or the family. I think that’s kind of a typical response that you get from kids. He actually became much closer to his Judaism and his heritage. And he did his bar mitzvah in Israel last year. He wanted to go to synagogue more and he really immersed himself in its culture, which we are very proud of.