Last night, I spoke at the JCC before a panel gathered together to discuss antisemitism on college campus and our children. A special thanks to Brent Osborne and Eliza Millman.
I remember being told in high school that I needed to work incredibly hard because I needed to be ready for the challenges of college. My high school teachers warned me – “if you think I am being tough, then get ready for college where the professors won’t give you any breaks at all.”
I was scared. From what they seemed to say, going off to college was like going to academic boot camp.
And then, of course, I arrived at school and like so many other college freshman…
I found out that my high school teachers were lying to me.
College is not that hard.
At college, I had a lot, and I mean a lot, of free time. At most, I had three classes a day. On some days, I had no classes. And yes, I had to study but after studying, there were still many hours of free time. And so, I did theater, I joined a fraternity, I got involved with some clubs but yes, I still had plenty of free time – and so, I did, what all kids at college did, I played many many hours of Super Nintendo.
Truth is—the college experience is not only about academic rigor—college is not only about the demands that are made on kids by college professors. College is also this unique opportunity for kids to figure out who they are and what they want to do with their lives. College provides them with this incredible chance to try new things, to take risks and to figure out who they want to be.
Of course, college also helps our kids navigate what is right and what is wrong – the college experience helps to empower our kids to make real and effective change in a world that remains quite broken.
But what happens when our kid’s optimism to start anew is met with a harsh reality.
What happens they go off to school only to see other students and yes, even professors, who are calling out Israel as a racist state, who are defacing posters with caricatures of Hitler, who are tearing down mezzuzot from walls?
What happens when our kids go off to college and are met with protests where they hear chants asking for a “new intifada” and for a Palestinian state that extends from river to sea inferring that there will no longer a Jewish presence in the region?
Worst of all, what happens when our kids are experiencing this antisemitism on campus under the guise of a moral cause, under the banner of some perverted sense of social justice? What happens when the progressive causes that our kids care most about suddenly includes the demonization of Jews?
A few weeks ago, author Dara Horn wrote an incredibly important piece for the Atlantic entitled The Big Lie.
In it, she argues that there is one foundational lie that rests at the very center of antisemitism –this is the lie that antisemitism itself, “is a righteous act of resistance against evil, because Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist.” Horn goes on to say that at schools like Harvard, students are now being told under the precepts of this lie that there is “nothing wrong with wallpapering America’s premier universities with the demonization of Jews.”
On October 7th, we all witnessed the worst atrocity on Jews since the Shoah. In the few days after that horrific event, there was some sympathy – but as the days went by, so many of us felt alone and now at the places where we send our children to grow and to develop and to embrace their identities, now at these places, we are witnessing antagonism, prejudice and yes, pure hate.
We are here tonight to understand how we can navigate this environment, how we can help our kids and how they can help one another to stand up to hate in all of its forms, to stay safe when there are active threats and to still have that incredibly important college experience that my high school teachers totally lied to me about.
I am thrilled and honored to be here and to listen to our esteemed speakers.
