Thirty-three years ago, I stood amid the ivy-covered architecture on the campus of Princeton University and proudly tossed my cap in the air along with my fellow graduating students.
The feeling of elation upon completion of our studies at the august institution, which was founded in 1746 and was the site of a famous battle in 1777 during the American Revolution, was hard to contain. We all felt a sense of accomplishment, and I was proud to call myself a Princetonian.
But in recent years, amid rising antisemitism at my alma mater, as well as other Ivy League colleges, I am sorry to say that my youthful sense of school pride has unfortunately withered.
I may still be a Princetonian, but I am first and foremost a Jew, and I grieve over the rise in anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiments on campus and the school administration’s failure to curtail them.
Take, for example, the report on Ynet this past Sunday, which revealed that a new course at Princeton this fall includes a book in its syllabus which claims that the Israeli army harvests Palestinian organs.
The course, titled “The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South,” is scheduled to be taught by assistant professor of Near Eastern studies Satyel Larson.
Part of the required reading is a book called The Right to Maim, which alleges that Israeli soldiers deliberately shoot Palestinians with the intention of maiming rather than killing them so as to make use of their organs.
This is nothing less than a modern-day version of the medieval antisemitic blood libel. Incredibly, when contacted by Ynet, Princeton University refused to comment, as though the fact that blatant Jew-hatred will be taught on campus is not worthy of a reaction.
And yet, we all know how different things would be if the book in question was directed at African-Americans, Latinos, or any other ethnic group. But when it comes to Jews, reviving an age-old slander is apparently considered acceptable in the halls of academia.
IN FEBRUARY, in yet another example of anti-Jewish hostility, Princeton hosted a writer named Mohammad El-Kurd, who is perhaps best known for labeling “Zionist settlers” as “sadistic, barbaric, neo-Nazi pigs.” He has also glorified terrorism, praised the Second Intifada, and even claimed that Israeli soldiers consume the organs of dead Palestinians.
When a group of 41 Princeton undergraduates asked the university’s English Department merely to condemn El-Kurd’s outrageous bile, the learned professors refused to do so.
Sadly, Princeton is hardly alone in the Ivy League in experiencing widespread antisemitism.
Last December, a report by the AMCHA Initiative (a nonprofit organization dedicated to investigating and combating antisemitism at institutions of higher education in America) about Jew-hatred on campus found that Harvard University had more antisemitic incidents in 2021-22 than any other institution of higher learning in the country. These included tearing down posters from Harvard Hillel advertising Jewish events, attempts to disrupt pro-Israel speakers, and the painting of a swastika on a college dorm.
Ira Stoll, a Harvard graduate who works at the university, told The Jewish Chronicle (UK), “The level of antisemitism on campus over the past year is shocking, embarrassing, disgraceful – like nothing I’ve seen before.”
Another report, issued in September 2022 by the Stop Antisemitism organization, gave failing marks to both Yale and Columbia universities. Regarding Yale, it found that “Students do not feel that the school administration take antisemitism seriously enough and feel that complaints of antisemitism on campus are ignored.”
Moreover, many Jewish students at Yale said they do not feel comfortable “in expressing their Jewish identity or their support for Israel and believe that they are held responsible for Israel’s actions.”
As for Columbia, students indicated that there exists “a hostile and antisemitic environment when their identity or Zionist beliefs are expressed.”
THE HOSTILITY that Jews face on Ivy League college campuses is not confined to the classroom. It also seems to extend to admissions offices too, as there has been a dramatic nosedive in recent years in the number of Jews being allowed to attend.
A revealing article published in Tablet Magazine this past April noted that “The number of Jews on major Ivy League campuses has been cut in half or more over the past decade.”
This is largely due to “new elite doctrines that downplay merit in favor of amorphous definitions of ‘diversity’ and ‘privilege.'” Put more bluntly: Deserving Jewish students are being turned away because of their skin color.
Indeed, whereas just two or three decades ago, Jews constituted 25% to 33% of the student population at some of the top schools, those numbers have fallen precipitously. As Tablet put it, “Today, it has become a perceivable reality that Jews are no longer being admitted to Ivy League schools in their former numbers.”
Whether or not there are quotas on the number of Jews is anyone’s guess, but the sizable drop in Jewish students being admitted hardly appears coincidental.
Why does all this matter?
America’s top universities are, in many ways, the crucible in which the nation’s future leaders are forged, their minds are shaped, and views are sculpted. The poisonous anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment in the air is bound to impact how graduates view Jews and the Jewish state, even as the growing dearth of Jewish students makes it less likely such attitudes will be challenged.
As institutions which purport to preach tolerance, openness, and understanding, they need to move swiftly to combat the growing Jew-hatred that has infected their campuses.
And given their historical legacy of anti-Jewish admissions policies, when Jews were subjected to quotas until as late as the 1950s and 1960s, it is the height of chutzpah for Ivy League schools to once again be engaging in such restrictive practices.
Since 1859, Princeton’s school song has been “Old Nassau,” whose lyrics include “In praise of Old Nassau, we sing, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! Our hearts will give, while we shall live, three cheers for Old Nassau!”
Regrettably, those cheers have been increasingly drowned out by antisemitic slurs and anti-Israel vitriol on Princeton’s campus.
The time has come for the university leadership to stand up to the hate so that Old Nassau can once again evoke hurrahs rather than harrumphs.
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The other nations have always wanted unjustly to take the promised inheritance of Israel, children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for themselves. (Rashi also brings an interesting midrash of R. Tanchuma below) “Because the enemy has said against you, Ahah, the eternal high places are an inheritance FOR US!!!” (v 2). The mountains of Israel are called BAMOS OLAM, ‘the high places of the world’, because the Land of Israel is higher than all the other lands” (RaDaK ad loc.). These “high places” are “on the lips of talkers and the gossip of the people” (v 3). Never has this been more apparent than today, when Israel is the talk of the entire world – in the United Nations etc. and the world media. Every day the “Palestinians” and their backers, most notably President Ahmadinejad of Iran, declare that Israel must be “wiped off the map” and the land snatched from its rightful owners.
“Measure for measure” God swears that he will judge all the residue of the nations and Edom with the fire of His jealousy “because they have appointed My land to themselves for a possession with the joy of all their heart, with disdainful minds, to cast it out for a prey” (v 5). Things will turn out the very opposite of what Israel’s enemies imagine. “Surely the nations that are about you shall bear their own shame” (v 7) – as when the Arab armies that vowed the destruction of Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973 were roundly defeated. On the contrary, “You O mountains of Israel shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to My people of Israel, for they will soon be coming” (v 8). “When the land of Israel will give forth its fruits generously, that is when the end will be close – for throughout the Bible you have no more clearly revealed end than in this verse” (Sanhedrin 98a). The last century has witnessed the miraculous revival of agriculture in Israel after two thousand years of desolation!
The prophet explains the underlying reason for the destruction of Edom ‘s cities and their devastation: “Because you have had a perpetual hatred and have hurled the children of Israel to the power of the sword at the time of their calamity” (v 5). Again and again this prophecy emphasizes that God’s retribution against Edom is strictly “measure for measure”. The first expression of this comes in verse 6: “Surely you have hated blood – and blood shall pursue you” (v 6). If Edom unleashed the sword against Israel (v 5), in what sense can it be said that they “hated blood”? Rashi (on v 6) gives three explanations: “(1) You despised the right of the firstborn, to whom My service was entrusted, but you did not want to dirty yourself with the blood of the sacrifices of which My service consists – therefore the blood of the slain shall pursue you. (2) Like all men, you fear killers, but killers will pursue you. (3) You hated blood – you hated your brother, who is your own flesh and blood”.
A second expression of the principle of “measure for measure” is in vv 9-10, which explain that the reason for the devastation of Edom is “because you have said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine and we shall possess it” (v 10). In explaining this verse, Rashi (ad loc.) says that the simple meaning is that Esau wanted to inherit both Israel (the Ten Tribes) and Judah . However, Rashi also brings an interesting midrash of R. Tanchuma explaining that Esau went to marry Ishmael’s daughter (Gen. 28:9) in order to rouse him to challenge Isaac over the inheritance of Abraham so that Ishmael would kill Isaac, leaving Esau as the “redeemer” of his father’s blood so that he would have the right to kill Ishmael, and this way Esau would inherit both Isaac and Ishmael. This midrash is of particular interest given the present war of the “West” (Esau) against Ishmael (Islam).——–
taken from Azamra Avraham ben Yaakov teachings on Ezk. 34-38.
I will add all this goes back to the first promise made to Abraham Gen 15 and v.18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. These people fighting over who owns the Land and who will become Messiah is being played out today right before our eyes. They are all the offspring, descendants, seed of Abraham. Stay tuned, it’s not over yet!!
Ted is right. The Christians and Muslims saw their faiths as”sucessors” to JUdaism, They could not wrap their heads around the idea that Jews did not feel any need for their faith to be “succeeded” by a newer one. Hence the paradox that two religions that were to a large extent based on Judaism became virulently antisemitic.
However, many liberal Jews are at the forefront of the disaster taking place in the country!
In the USSR they were among the leadership!
A number of Jews in academia are among the worst Jews haters.
There are more antisemitic Jews in the US than in any other countries.
liz44,
Whole paragraph blaming everyone but the culprits. The Jew and Israel haters today are the LEFT: Communists, Progressives, Muslims (who vote 90% for the Left in all Western nations), Democrats etc. The “Alt Right” are also Leftists as they voted for Biden, detest free markets and Christians and they proudly say so.
If can’t identify or name your enemy and you are in deep trouble or in denial. There are no Conservatives, Christians, Republicans or Libertarians left at Ivy League Schools – just Democrats. I went to Harvard years ago so I know. The rest of the world knows this and either agrees with this truth or lies about it not being so.
Why 75% of Jews in US vote Left is a mystery, but these Jews are consequently voting for their own demise.
Liz: No argument here….
Our problem is our morality ! My opine is to remove them permanently !
Morality sez no !
We’re stuck !
Eddie
@liz44, the hate of Jews is caused by fear. Mark Twain once explained that the Jews always get over all difficulties. The rest have noticed and would like the same but cannot because they are not Jews. Their fear comes from jealously.
@Lizz
Your comment got me to wondering why Muslims are tolerated and Jews hated by both Christians and Muslims.
It is not enough to say;
Could it be a product of the need of both Christianity and Islam to supersede Judaism. Both the New Testament and the Koran and antisemitic.
Ivy League universities were founded by upper-class Americans, mostly descended from wealthy British or German immigrants. In those social classes there has always been antisemitism, usuall disguised but sometimes openly admitted or – at least until the 1940’s – even flaunted. After the world became aware of the Holocaust, the antisemites tended to keep a low profile, but did not abandon their prejudices. This is why the British Foreign Office always favoured Arabs over Jews, with a few notable exceptions. The British upper classes identified with Arab overlords, and shared many of their interests, including hunting, and their attitudes towards the lower classes. Jews, on the other other hand, seemed completely alien and were despised for their occupations and their refusal to conform to upper class hobbies and norms. Now that this latent antisemitism has been joined by the open hatred issuing from Muslim academics and rulers, and given an academic platform, other academics and politicians feel free to express their own hatred of Jews. I fear nothing will be done until these expressions are banned, including the horrific academic courses mentioned in the article. Nothing short of such a ban will change anything, and the antisemitism will be allowed to proliferate.