When I attended Barnard College in the late 1990s, before the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life was built for Columbia University students, the Jewish community met for services in Earl Hall, a nondenominational gathering space. I recall how different communities would amiably share Earl Hall, and how members of the Muslim community would roll up their prayer mats right before we Jews rolled in for afternoon Mincha services. 

The dissonance between my experiences back then and the current state of violent protests and disunity has left me speechless.  

I look back at my college years with pride, a time when people gathered to speak out about a particular cause. I remember students refusing to cross the picket line as university union workers demanded fair pay. Columbia was, after all, one of the progenitors of the student protest movement, beginning with anti-Vietnam protests in the 1960s.  

Ordinarily, I cheer on people who stand up for their beliefs, but today I am horrified. The protests today are celebrating Jewish hate and embody the very definition of antisemitism.  

In every generation, Jews have been hated simply because they are Jews, regardless of how integrated we have been in the surrounding society. In a midrash dating from the 8th or 9th century (Targum Sheni Esther 3:8), the rabbis record slurs that non-Jews directed toward their Jewish neighbors: “They jump and dance like goats and we don’t know whether they are cursing us or blessing us…. Whenever they sell to us, they cheat us and they do not give the full price when they buy.” 

There is a straight line between these tropes of Jewish outsiders and greed and antisemitism throughout the ages. And while some will quibble over whether inflammatory slogans such as “From the river to the sea” are antisemitic or whether students screaming “Intifada!” as they violently took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia was directed against Jews, history will remind us that at every turn, these diatribes mask a base hatred toward Jews.  

Why? Simply because we are different.  

If integration into American society won’t save us from antisemitism, the answer must be that we need to embrace our distinctions and differences. As I heard a colleague say recently: The response to antisemitism must be extra semitism. 

To illustrate this point, in The Jonathan Sacks Haggada, the renowned late chief rabbi of England tells a story about a British rabbi who went to help reinvigorate Jewish life in Russia in the early 1990s. A young woman approached him upset that her neighbors, from whom she had hid her Jewishness for most of her life, now mutter “Zhid” (a derogative Russian term for “Jew”) when she passes.  

The rabbi replied, “If you had not told me you were Jewish, I would have never known. But with my hat and beard, no one could miss the fact that I am a Jew. Yet, in all the months I have been here, no one has shouted ‘Zhid’ at me. Why do you think that is?”  

The woman responded, “Because they know that if they shout ‘Zhid’ at me, I will take it as an insult, but if they shout ‘Zhid’ at you, you will take it as a compliment.”  

We must have deep tolerance and respect for others, but recognize and honor that we are not the same. While I am grateful that the Anti-Defamation League has provided a Campus Antisemitism Report Card, grading universities based on the current state of antisemitism on their campuses and their responses to it, not every student can choose one of the two schools to receive an A grade. When my son enters Washington University (which has earned a B grade, which the ADL defines as “better than most”) this fall, even though he will not have a beard and wear a hat, I will challenge him to proudly wear his kippah and embrace his Jewish identity. When I ask him how he feels about being on campus given the current climate, he tells me he is ready to step into the spotlight, if need be, to defend his right to be a Jewish American Zionist. 

I have seen Jews at colleges around the country doing just that. Despite the unrest that disrupted their schools to varying degrees, many continued to embrace the sacredness of difference. They attended seders during Passover, continued to access Hillel or Chabad and wore their Stars of David and kippot proudly. Some joined counterprotests, singing “Am Yisrael Chai,” the nation of Israel lives.  

Columbia, indeed all universities, must find a way to ensure that all Jewish students are able to fully express their religion and Jewish heritage. These students have a right to learn in a safe and protected space where they don’t have to push through hostile crowds on their way to classes or have demonstrators disrupt their hard-earned commencement ceremonies or have some graduation ceremonies canceled altogether, as Columbia has decided to do.  

We are currently in the middle of the Omer, counting the days between Passover and Shavuot, which was understood to be a historical period of strife and mourning. The Talmud (Yevamot 62b) tells us that Rabbi Akiva “had 12,000 pairs of students…and all of them died in one period of time because they did not conduct themselves with respect toward one another.” As I look around our university campuses, it’s hard not to think of “Omer 2024” as another period of strife and disharmony. But just as Rabbi Akiva’s students ceased dying on Lag B’Omer, the 33rd day of the counting, I can only hope that this latest spate of antisemitism will also come to an end. 

I look forward to a time when all students at Columbia can peacefully walk together on College Walk and the quad, when Jews at any university have the freedom to speak their truths and celebrate their differences. In the meantime, I pray that Jewish students will have the courage to remain strong and fully embrace their Jewish selves even during these difficult times.  

As the climate on some campuses has turned threatening for Jewish students, we share additional essays from moms with kids at Yale, Northwestern and Brown. We also hear from a mother whose high school junior encountered protests on a recent tour of the University of Texas at Austin and from another whose son has decided to forego problematic schools like Middlebury.

---

Rabba Sara Hurwitz is co-founder and president of Yeshivat Maharat and a rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx, N.Y.