Good Monday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the Brandeis Center demanding action after a Harvard professor was found to have discriminated against Jewish students, and feature an opinion piece by Alex Pomson and Wendy Rosov about Israel-Diaspora relations. We’ll start with a look at how interfaith initiatives in the U.S. are faring in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
In the wake of the Oct. 7 massacres and the country’s subsequent war with Hamas in Gaza, tensions have soared between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups and individuals, causing a schism in many interfaith communities even as others try to push forward, seeing a demand from individual Muslims and Jews yearning to mend the divide, reports Jay Deitcher for eJewishPhilanthropy.
“In the places where interfaith relationships were very strong and established, they’ve been able to maintain this,” Adam Teitelbaum, vice president for public affairs at the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and the executive director of the Israel Action Network, told eJP.
On college campuses, this rift seems larger than ever as politics are increasingly polarized on the issue of Israel and Palestine, yet students crave connection, Rabbi Ira J. Dounn, associate director at Princeton Hillel’s Center for Jewish Life, told eJP.
Last Wednesday, over 400 Princeton students participated in an hour-long walkout in solidarity with Palestine, with some protestors chanting “Intifada, intifada, long live the intifada!” Nearby, a group of students rallied for Israel. As the protests died down, Dounn watched as Israeli and Jewish students crossed over and spoke to those rallying for Palestine.
In the end, the conversations between protestors turned tense. “[It] wasn’t the right time,” Dounn said. “It’s too difficult and too scary. There’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of anger. There’s a lot of big emotions happening right now… In a climate of fear, it’s very hard to know who to trust, and so that’s what we’re trying to overcome.”
Since the massacres in southern Israel, antisemitism has skyrocketed 388%, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Islamophobia has also been on the rise. “We cannot allow the conflict to be imported into the American scene and contribute to antisemitism and other forms of hate in the American homeland,” Noam Marans, the director of interreligious and intergroup relations for the American Jewish Committee, told eJP.
“We are very concerned that is what is happening now,” he said. “It’s up to religious leaders of diverse denominations to call it out, and to do everything in their power to make sure that it doesn’t erupt further.”
Read the full report here.
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