Penn Hillel Is Not Your Battlefield — It’s Our Home
Image by getty images
Walking into Penn Hillel, we feel inspired to participate in causes we care about and to engage in dialogue across a broad range of beliefs. Our Hillel has that effect. It creates limitless engagement opportunities for all Jewish students. The three of us are all vocal participants in dialogue around gender equality, social justice, racial discrimination, and yes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have chosen to become strong and active voices, and Penn Hillel has nurtured within us a sense of activism combined with an understanding of the importance of tolerance. Here, we feel not only heard, but encouraged to question our own beliefs and include as many voices as possible in developing our methods of action.
But recently, outside organizations have sought to impose their own battles on our campus community in a way that undermines all of the good work we have done to build a supportive, safe, and vibrant Jewish environment on campus. Recently, when we walked into Penn Hillel, we had a sick feeling that we had been used as pawns in a political battle that we had not chosen to be a part of.
This past Sunday, we were shocked to see that Open Hillel used both social and conventional media to misrepresent an event that took place at Penn Hillel — . As if in a battle, Open Hillel claimed to have been victorious by opening up a Hillel which, in our experience as actual undergraduate students attending Penn, is already a model for open dialogue across the full spectrum of views in our active and varied community.
Rather than recognizing our support of this event as an act of unity, tolerance, and openness, Open Hillel chose to publicly politicize it by stating that it signals a break between Penn Hillel and Hillel International.
It is embarrassing to the entire Jewish community that a thoughtful, open, nuanced student discussion on an extraordinarily complex topic should be manipulated and turned into a political combat zone by the organization that is ostensibly arguing for civility and openness.
Fortunately, this is not irreversible. Open Hillel, we ask that you stop attempting to destroy the conversations that we are creating, stop tearing down the comfortable space that so many diverse and committed student leaders have created for all Jewish students from all Jewish backgrounds, and stop framing our community’s dedication to open dialogue as a tool to further your cause.
We are proud to be a part of the diverse and multifaceted Jewish community on Penn’s campus. We are proud student leaders and activists. Please don’t use us as pawns in your political agenda.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
