From openly anti-Semitic professors to swastika graffiti, the campus can be a hard place for Jews, and is certainly a hard place for Zionist Jews. The hype is true: anti-Zionism is alive and well. But my experiences at Brown University have taught me there is also hope to be found in pro-Israel activism. My first…
Forty years ago, I was still living in Washington DC and was still a member of Fabrangen — one of the earliest havurah-style minyanim –– when I noticed something odd that one of our members was doing when the Torah scroll was joyfully carried around the community on Shabbat morning. The member was Rabbi Max…
In June 1969, I was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. My first “pulpit” was rabbi of the Hillel Foundation at the University of Florida. I was 26 years old and married with a three-month-old child. I grew up in Boston, intensely aware of the ideas and thinking of the Catholic Church. In retrospect, I…
A lot has happened at Brown RISD Hillel over the past few days after a group of Jewish students planned an event that they framed as a dialogue on competing Jewish and Palestinian narratives around the 1948 War of Independence. As members of Brown Students for Israel (BSI), we don’t shrink from discussions that challenge…
On May 11, more than 70 students crowded into the Hillel meeting room at Brown University/Rhode Island School of Design for a screening of three short films produced by the Israeli NGO Zochrot, and for a discussion about the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion), the politicization of memory, and the…
When I arrived at Wesleyan last fall, I thought I would be involved in Israel politics despite the campus political climate. Instead, I got involved because of it. Wesleyan’s reputation as a strongly pro-Palestine campus had preceded it, and I admit that I had been anxious about coming in a Zionist, even a progressive one….
The poster on the door of the Hillel at John Jay College of Criminal Justice reads “Safe Zone.” Above it hangs an Israeli flag, an American flag and another sign: “Israel wants peace.” Take two steps down the narrow hallway on the ground floor of this Manhattan campus, and there is another, very different message….
Hillel Rio announced it would not close down just three hours after lamenting that it would, all via its Facebook page. Before posting the second “official note,” the campus organization’s branch in Rio de Janeiro drew hundreds of supportive messages hailing the work led by its volunteers. Afterward, the group was slammed for what some…
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