Editor’s note: Ian Berlin is a member of Yale’s Class of 2024 majoring in ethics, politics, and economics. The opinions expressed in this comment are his own. Read more reviews at CNN.
Last week, I sat in Beinecke Plaza at Yale University, leading about 50 classmates in nigunim — wordless melodies of the Hasidic Jewish tradition — and other Jewish chants and prayers. As is usually the case when I sing nigunim, I went home that day feeling spiritually rejuvenated, but, unlike usual, most of those singing with me that day did not. were not Jewish.
Indeed, Jewish and non-Jewish students, inspired by the anti-apartheid protests on Beinecke Plaza decades earlier, had gathered for a week-long sit-in to demand that Yale divest itself of part of its endowment invested in the stocks of military subcontractors. who manufacture the weapons that Israel is currently using in its war against Hamas in Gaza. The students were protesting as part of the Occupy Beinecke coalition, which includes Yale Jews for Ceasefire, a group of Jewish students dedicated to fighting for a ceasefire in Gaza as well as peace sustainability and equality in the region.
In light of student arrests Monday morning — as well as similar arrests at Columbia last week — campus clashes and concerns about anti-Semitism are once again in the news.
I do not deny that there has been a shocking and upsetting rise in anti-Semitism in recent months, including several cases of anti-Semitism at Yale and New Haven. Last fall, a professor’s post on X (formerly Twitter) appearing to praise the October 7 Hamas attack sparked a petition calling for his firing.
I have had countless painful conversations with close friends trying to explain to them how their rhetoric has sometimes downplayed the killings and hostage taking of Israeli Jews and how this language hurts their Jewish classmates, including me.
But when people see pro-Palestinian protesters arrested just as President Joe Biden and others are warning of a rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses, they apply the same hackneyed framework — pro-Palestinian activists so-called anti-Semites opposed to pro-Israeli Jewish activists. – at Yale. As a fourth-year student at Yale, I find this characterization deeply frustrating, because it could not be further from the truth. At every turn, I encountered a community of activists and organizers eager to listen, ready to learn, and committed to including Jewish voices and perspectives.
For example, as part of the difficult work of building a pluralistic protest environment, the coalition listened to Jewish voices when making collective decisions about what language to use, ultimately agreeing not to raise slogans such as ” There is only one solution.” : Intifada revolution”, which put some Jewish students in danger. Although this chant was heard on the Yale campus, it was not endorsed or initiated by protest organizers as a result of this ongoing dialogue.
Last semester, I lit Hanukkah candles in front of Yale President Peter Salovey’s house each evening of the holiday, followed by communal singing and prayer until the candles finished burning. We demanded that Yale call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and commit to protecting free speech on campus after Columbia University banned pro-Palestinian student groups. This semester, students gathered weekly on Friday afternoons in Beinecke Square while their Jewish classmates led even more chants and prayers to protest the war in Gaza.
Throughout the past week, large groups of students of various faiths have frequently gathered to sing “Mi Shebeirach,” the Jewish prayer for healing, and “Olam Chesed Yibaneh,” which calls for the building of a world where compassion leads. Last Saturday evening, fellow students led the gathering at the havdalah, marking the end of Shabbat. And on Monday evening, students and New Haven residents collaborated to lead the community in a Passover seder, all on the Yale campus.
These experiences were deeply meaningful to me, not only on a political level, but also on a fundamentally spiritual level. Seeing the Yale protests once again swept aside by accusations of anti-Semitism negates that experience and invalidates the Jewishness of those calling for an end to the violence in Gaza.
Indeed, Yale Jews for Ceasefire exists because of – not despite – our Jewish values. On the issue of divestment, for example, the Talmud teaches us that we cannot sell weapons to those we suspect of using them criminally. We therefore have a duty to disrupt the manufacturing and sale of military weapons that kill other people, including those that kill Palestinians.
More than a million people in Gaza are on the brink of starvation, according to a recent UN report, and aid workers are still reeling after seven World Central Kitchen workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beginning of the month.
On Passover, of all holidays, Jews are compelled to feel the suffering of oppressed peoples. We eat bitter herbs to remember the bitterness of slavery in Egypt and we dip parsley in salt water to symbolize the tears of our ancestors. The history of oppression is all too familiar to Jewish people – and it is our duty to fight oppression in all its forms, for Jews and non-Jews alike.
We also teach the story of Nachshon, who took the first courageous steps into the stormy Red Sea as the Jewish people fled Egypt. He didn’t know what was going to happen, but he was confident that he would make it to the other side. By intervening in a precarious moment, he became a leader of his people, convincing them to follow in his footsteps – literally – into the unknown.
Our present moment is precarious for the Jewish people, fraught with disagreement over what our Jewish values mean to us. But Nachshon teaches us that when we have the courage to lead, we can encourage others to move with us toward a world free of oppression and violence. At Yale, organizers of all faiths continue to build a community dedicated to moving forward in collaboration with, not in opposition to, Jewish students.
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