My four years in college were some of the most formative of my life. Having grown up in suburban Kansas City, spending my early adult years in New York City was a big change. Being at Columbia was bigger than anything I’d ever known. My classes were certainly bigger than the one I graduated high school with (which had 25 students). The campus itself was bigger than any space I’d been familiar with (though I realize now by college standards it’s small). Those six New York City blocks were full of towering buildings that felt both ancient in their construction and in the ideas that they held, but also new, always emerging with exciting young energy and vibrant new ideas. And the ideas were bigger than ones I’d encountered before. My first semester political science course, in Hamilton Hall, opened my eyes to new thinking. It was a powerful place to begin to have my own real thoughts, to begin crystallizing who I was going to be in this world and how I would engage with that world.
I watched that world - the one that helped shape me - descend into lawlessness and utter chaos this past week. I felt such utter disbelief, pain, sadness, and anger about how this political situation resulted in such violence. With complete confusion I wondered how honest political debate and protest somehow turned into glorifying a terrorist organization.
As I’ve poured over articles and images in these past few days, and ones that were less gruesome and violent in the last month or so, it’s clear to me that this is of course not localized to one campus. This is not about a particular subset of schools (which is also evidenced by the fact that many of those arrested are not even affiliated with the university). This seems to be the product of a faulty ideological paradigm which has swept many in our country, one that denigrates the Jewish right to a homeland - even a shared one! - while it eliminates any possibility of dignified political discourse.
Since October 7th, I’ve often felt that many in our world are too eager to see an exaggerated binary of victim and oppressor. With that lens, they see a country with an army and power, fighting a smaller group of people, and label the former as the oppressor. Nevermind any attention to what they are defending in the first place, onlookers who created an opinion without much knowledge and without any room for nuance. It’s an entirely reductive position that eliminates the possibility of supporting Israel’s right to exist and also criticizing some of Israel’s positions. It fails to understand how we got here in the first place.
And now, this unsophisticated understanding of right and wrong is further warped to allow justification for any action that supports one’s position. Violence, destruction, and complete lawlessness are somehow justified if they are done in the name of the victim; violence is grossly masked as free speech. It would make more sense to me if this were an anti-war protest. But in calling for an intifada, it’s just advocating for a different kind of war, one on my people and my homeland.
I’ve been thinking that this new wave isn’t really about who is pro-Israel or pro-Palestine (can I be both?) and I reject the false binary that’s fueling this narrative. But I have been stuck in figuring out where my place and my power are at this moment. I’ve often advocated for a Judaism that is counter-cultural, and that has never felt more relevant. Yes, when I am in situations where I witness antisemitism I call it out; when I have the opportunity to engage in productive, meaningful, and nuanced dialogue, I engage. But more than that, I long to engage in a Judaism that is worth loving even against adversity. I want to help create thick Jewish identities that are rooted and stable enough that we have something to fall back on when, inevitably, the world doesn’t understand. In the face of those who break windows and tear down, I adamantly want to build up a community of Jews who love being Jewish not because of those who hate us, but because Judaism is beautiful and enhances our lives. And I refuse to give up on a Judaism that is based in hope; that is based in the understanding that Torah values and our rich engagement with Judaism can help bring about a better, more peaceful, more loving, more understanding world.
