How to Fight Jew-Hatred

at Columbia University:

A Student's Proposal

This essay is presented in conjunction with Lights in Action: 110 East 59th St, 3rd Floor: 1-800-JEWS-ACT: liahq@aol.com: Website: http://www.lia.org

This essay has been composed and disseminated as an intellectual challenge to its readers, a phenomenon which should not, after all, take one too much by surprise at a university, that great traditional clearinghouse for the free and vigorous exchange of ideas and opinions. The positions expressed herein are "controversial," that is, they are not the current conventional ones - if the author thought a majority of his readers would agree a priori with his assessments and propositions, he would not have written the piece. All he asks is that you give these conceptions, foreign or "radical" though they may initially appear to you, a fair hearing: read the essay to the end. If you choose to ignore this reasonable request, well then, the author knows he has tried. If, on the other hand, you choose not only to tackle this tiny treatise in toto, but actually to engage the author in meaningful dialogue about its contents, he will smile broadly.

Last Monday night Leonard Leffries came to Columbia, and I went to hear him speak. Seldom have I experienced such a welling-up of nausea, such an onslaught of disgust, such a feeling of helplessness in the face of unbounded ignorance, such a feeling of hopelessness for the predicament of my people, as I did that night. Yet strange to say, all those gut-wrenching, heart-searing emotions converged upon me before the esteemed professor began his demagogic discourse, indeed before I even entered Ferris Booth Hall. For it was there, standing in line on that building's patio, that I had the misfortune to witness one of the most saddening and despair-inducing spectacles I have seen in a good while. There on the grass opposite were my fellow Jews, pleading with the crowd to understand that hating Jews is bad, and that (even worse) it has "no place in multiculturalism." They were there "to express our anger, and our fear" (our fear!).

As I listened to these members of my supposedly proud family begging the gentiles (who for the most part ignored them, busy chatting away amiably enough: "We appeal to you, look into our faces, see our pain," my revulsion soared to unprecedented heights; as I watched members of my supposedly creative community standing silently (how fitting) behind a fence (fitting indeed) holding up signs rehearsing the same old useless platitudes, I felt ashamed; and when I heard the pathetically comical "dialogue" between one group of retreating Jews half-heartedly crying, "We want Jeffries fired!" (quite the maximalists, aren't we?) and another group frenziedly hushing the, (no doubt the chant was deemed inconductive to the all important "image" the second group was so "responsibly" and "moderately" seeking to evoke -- after all, the Spectator [the campus newspaper] might get the wrong idea!) -- when my ears caught this finale of idiocy, which produced its share of chuckles and smirks from those standing in line, I confess that I bowed my head and thanked the L-rd that next year I will live in Jerusalem forever, and never again have to subject myself to the flagrant manifestations of the ever-new lows to which some Diaspora Jews will descend.

Have you ever written an assiduously researched, minutely and delicately crafted twenty-five page paper and then lost it in the computer? If so, you might grasp a tenuous inkling of a smidgen of a notion of how frustrating and maddening it is to have to review all over again, from absolute scratch, a proposition which it once took so much effort, so much sacrifice, so much ink, so many words, so many realities, and so much blood to finally and (it was thought) incontrovertibly prove:

YOU DON'T PROTEST JEW-HATRED.

How incredible that it still needs to be said!

A man calls you a pig. Do you walk around with a sign explaining that, in fact, you are not a pig? Do you hand out leaflets expostulating in detail upon the manifold differences between you and a pig ("A pig has a snout, I have a nose; a pig wallows in mud, I only occasionally step in a puddle, and then, of course, inadvertently...)? Do you stand on a soap box and discourse eloquently and eruditely on why, in general, it is extremely not nice to call people pigs, and appeal to the populace to please have no truck with an individual rude and nasty enough to say things about an upstanding citizen like yourself?

Fellow Jews, where in the hell is your dignity?

And if you care so vehemently, so neurotically about what the Black Student Organization and the other non-Jews on campus might be led to think about you, know then that these feeble, defensive, reactive pleas for justice and for people to be nice to you achieve the opposite. These actions (more correctly, these inactions, for that is basically what such demonstrations amount to, nothing) only make you further despised. As so many of our great leaders and thinkers have taught us, as so many events in even our most recent past have shown us (for G-d's sake, crack a Jewish history book!), it is only when we stop begging for approval from the world, only when we have enough self-respect to look inward for our strength, to walk tall and aim at living up to our own rigorous moral and ethical standards and not those that others none too disingenuously set up for us -- only then, our luminaries, our experiences and our common sense tell us, will others begin and continue to respect us.

Do you really think you can protest Jew-hatred away?

Do you really believe that protest number seven-hundred-and-fifty -six-thousand-for-hundred-and-twenty-three is going to accomplish what all the others clearly haven't? How long will you stand there and reason with a man who keeps punching you over and over and over again in the face? A day? A week? a year? three thousand years? Enslavement, expulsion, crusades, pogroms, inquisitions, massacre upon massacre, every type of specious accusation has been hurled at us, every form of persecution known to man has been heaped upon us. Less than fifty years ago the entire world watched as six million of our people were grounded into dust - less than one year after that there was a huge pogrom in Poland. Is this a phenomenon you can reason with? Even the blood of almost one half of our entire nation did not satiate the Jew- hatred (sometimes I wonder if it educated us).

In our history we have seen time and time again that our appeals and our screams are useless, that those who, rather than appealing and screaming, choose to build, to educate towards cultural and national revival, to defy anti-Semitism not with Jewish pleas and Jewish hand-wringing, but with Jewish learning, Jewish pride, Jewish strength and Jewish achievement - such are those who bring out people survival, flourishment, salvation, a future. The immensity of the gap separating these two approaches is impossible to underestimate.

How often, my fellow Jews, we gather to "oppose"; how rarely we gather to create. When, may I ask, was the last time any of us got together to form a movement to real change? When was the last time we stayed up all night debating and planning how to build and improve Israel, how to arrest and reverse assimilation in America (these are real Jewish issues, the true imperatives of our time, not the pathetic, wasteful, futile attempts to temporarily sway the opinions of a few non-Jews on subjects about which they cannot and should not have any lasting concern or effect).

Once upon a time such pragmatic, productive idealism was the pre-eminent pre-occupation of Jewish college students, this was how they spent their evenings, dreaming, planning, implementing. What has happened to us? How have we become bureaucratized, mediocratized, too cynical to dream, too complacent to struggle? The most we can muster in the face of our enemies, in the face of our own future, is routine (even our projects and solutions are routine), inertia, and sameness. For G-d's sake, if nothing else, aren't you bored?

Some Jews just can't tear themselves away from their "image" obsession. I remember about three years ago at the beginning of the intifadah, Brigadier General Amnon Straschnow of the Israel Defense Forces was invited to address the students over at the Law School. I brought a class of 10th graders I was teaching at the time. A relatively small group of Arab students stood at the back of the auditorium, and each time the general rose to speak, they opened up with "P.L.O.!, P.L.O.!, " and "Nazi! Fascist!" After the honored guest had been thrice thus humiliated at his opening word, the Jewish Student Union finally decided to act. One oh-so-professional, oh-so-tolerant, oh-so-moderate member of this august association after another mounted the rostrum, and in soothing tones pleaded with the Arab students, spoke about freedom of speech, about an "agreement" they had reached previously with the Arab Club that the speaker would not be disturbed. The general got up again, approached the microphone, opened his mouth to speak, and "P.L.O.! P.L.O.! Nazi! Fascist!" This went on for an hour. At one point the Jewish establishment descended from the "bimah" to talk "heart-to-heart" with the offending student. I actually overheard one Jew say petulantly, "but you promised..."

Many student, including myself, when the shame and embarrassment of allowing an Israeli General to be thus treated at a Jewish event had risen into our throats, advised having the police, who were present, eject the Arab student, which was in fact entirely legal or, short of that, doing it ourselves. Other, wiser students in the upper echelons of the JSU counseled against this, however. Over the microphone they assured us that in days and weeks to come the Arab students would be the ones to look bad, to be condemned, pilloried by the "press," banished from the Olympian corridors of student political power. We should not spoil that image by doing anything whatsoever untowed. Brigadier General Amnon Straschnow was led, barely concealing his shame and rage, down the aisle and out of the room, as a few of us, awkwardly and with stupid looks on our faces, tried to sing Hatikvah.

Epilogue:

My friend in the JSU lamented to me the next week that the university senate had inexplicably refused to condemn the Arab students; nobody was pilloried in any press campaign and the "Spectator" barely reported the event once if I recall; General Straschnow went home to Israel and wrote a contemptuous article in Maariv about how timid American Jewish youth are. As in the macrocosm, so in the microcosm, the panderings to public image, the imaginationless protests simply don't work.

Dear G-d, my brothers and sisters, if you've learned nothing from twentieth century Jewish history, it is too much to expect that you will at least learn from the recent past at your very own institution? Two years ago it was Professor Griff, three years before that it was Stokley Carmichael, with a delectable smattering of pseudo-scholarly, maliciously anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist bigots spread lavishly in between. All the protests and the "speaking out" haven't changed a thing; indeed, it could be argued that the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel atmosphere has become far more pervasive.

Well, by now you're indignant. I've not only insulted you and your venerated establishment (wait, I'm not done!), but I've offered only destructive criticism while advancing no proposals for a more fruitful approach. Well, to remedy that, I'll tell you what I told a high-ranking member of the J.S.U. whilst standing on Columbia's steps shortly prior to the Professor Griff incident (the individual in question was so high-ranking, in fact, that he actually requested that we not discuss the issue so vigorously on the steps, as he had a "reputation to maintain as a representative of the Jewish etc., etc...").

I told him that the only answer to Jew-Hatred is Jewish growth, is Jewish knowledge, is Jewish joy, is a deepened Jewish commitment, a more powerful internal Jewish chesion, a more vigorous dedication to Jewish and Zionist outreach. I told him that you combat Jew-Hatred by promoting that which the Jew-Hater wants to crush: Jewish vitality. I told him that affirmation, not negativity, is the way to fight, the way to win. I told him that instances of Jew-Hatred are often, sadly, the most powerful catalysts of Jewish identity resurgence. Don't just sit there with ashes on your head bemoaning and "condemning" them (as if a Jew-Hater or potential Jew-Hater gives a damn about your condemnation) - exploit them against their own ends, toward your own ends (ah, but do you have ends? Look in the mirror and ask yourself: "do I have ends?")

Tachlis: I told him that at the Library meeting the week prior I had seen more unaffiliated Jews coming out of the woodwork that ever before - they were angry, confused, looking for some way to respond, for something to do. For G-d's sake, it's the only time you may have such an opportunity, such a wide Jewish audience - don't use them as bodies to stand and chant inanities aimed at uninterested non-Jews and then send them home with nothing! Show them Jewish rejoicing, impart to the, Jewish lore, have a massive Kumzitz smack in the middle of campus with 5 guitars and fifty Israeli flags and sing till your soul comes out of you and give divrei Torah and tell stories of Israel and hand out positive, inspirational, thought-provoking literature and distribute invitations to Shabbat dinner and make new Jewish friends! If you feel the need, in the middle of it all put up a sign:

"Professor Jeffries, go suck an egg, Am Yisrael Chai."

Let Stokey Carmichael rant, let Professor Griff rap, let Leonard Jeffries rave -- in the meantime you build (Zionism taught us this -- in many ways, this is the essence of Zionism).

The Jewish Student Union's response to the above suggestion/exhortation was, after "taking it under consideration" in consultation with "the appropriate constituent committees," to not only reject it in favor of their impotent, one-size-fits-all, anti-Semitism-isn't-a- Jewish-problem-its-everybody's-problem (funny how we're the only one's who seem to suffer from the problem), generic "anti-hatred" rally (even a Palestinian Arab was brought in to give it that really "multicultural" feel) -- they further alternately insisted and hysterically implored that we suggested that we not bring even one Israeli flag (to a rally against a man who had suggested that all Israelis should be killed) as it would detract from "the atmosphere of unity we are trying to foster" (in other words, as long as I'm not me, as long as I'm not a demonstratively proud Jew and Zionist, I can join that great unified broth of cultural and ethnic homogeneity -- where have I heard that argument before?)

One may fairly ask the question why, considering the approach employed by the JSU to campus Jew-hatred has effected little if any change, why do they persist it utilizing the same methods, year after year, without regard to efficacy?

The answer is simple, and extremely important (so listen up!): The Jewish establishment is not about to change. It's not about challenge, it's not about new ideas, it's not about dynamism, it's not even about "leadership" -- it is about maintenance. It's part of a relatively recent, rueful phenomenon on the University campus, what you might call the establishmentarianization of the college student body. And here it is essential to perceive the charmic difference between a "movement" (of which we Jews have none of this, or most any other campus) and an "organization" (of which we have, Baruch Hashem, more than our share). A movement has a clear enough purpose: to take an environment of individuals and move them, intellectually, emotionally, even physically from point A to point B (take, ooh I don't know, Zionism for an instance). In the case of a University Campus, such folk would have in mind the object that one or more aspects of that environment and a given population in it, indeed even of a much larger environment outside of the university arena, would look vastly different, reshaped, redirected, by the time they left the institution. they would accordingly judge and plan any and all active and reactive tactics and methods by this criterion. In many situations which an organization would view as a threat or aberration from the smoothly flowing norm, and which they would therefore inevitably attempt to "cautiously" and quietly" (and generally ineffectively) "defuse," a movement would see an opportunity, would take advantage of a seemingly negative phenomenon and turn it into something positive, would try to make the best of it, would utilize it for internal and external growth -- because, you see, they're going somewhere.

(I wonder how or even whether elements in the establishment will choose to respond to this rather undisguised challenge. It is, of course, quite possible that they will not even deign to remark upon it, secure in the belief that their deep entrenchment, the perceived lack of alternative, and the very student apathy which I touch upon in this article will all render this lone opinion is it?) Negligible in effect (they may be quite right here). On the other hand, they might actually address some of the points outlined herein in some format or another; indeed, if sufficient student interest and initiative is displayed, they may be forced to do so. This in turn may possibly inaugurate some element of critical dialogue on these issues and be ultimately beneficial. I suppose we'll see. But I should state that for my part, I want it understood that I believe there is much that is, and far more that could be, praise-worthy about the Jewish Student Union, and many devoted and even highly effective people in it, a number of whom complain about the same serious deficiencies I have discussed here. Remember that it is your Jewish Student Union, and enough of you concerned and actively involved can change it.)

Am I getting through? Are you too far gone already with your student "boards of directors," your "chairpersons" (a particularly appropriate title) and "proper channels" to remember that you are young people and changing the world is your job?

Perhaps. history, not I, will someday ask what earth-shattering or even not-so-earth-shattering metamorphoses for the better you banded together and achieved in your four years at the single most watched, most influential university on earth, at a crucial time in the history of our people and our country.

I leave you with the Channukah candles we will all light. We light them to commemorate a time when a courageous movement of Jews took an altogether different line than their established 'leaders' who counseled "moderation" and self-effacing "multi-culturalism" in the face of Jew-Hatred. Many of us light them because this holiday was deliberately raised out of comparative insignificance by another movement, 2000 years later, that struck out in a new direction over against the "cautious," "moderate" and assimilationist approach of the "established leadership" in their time, and effected the greatest miracle in modern history.

The candles are fire, and any good physics student will tell you that fire produces heat, and heat makes things move. Stop trying to "cool things down" my friends, heat 'em up! Ideological controversy, intellectual challenge, outreach, guts, passion, direction, movement. That's what the energy of being young is all about. That's what the beauty of being Jewish is all about. That's what our Torah, the most dynamic, revolutionary book in the universe, is all about: movement.

Movement from ignorance to knowledge, from study to practice, from slavery to freedom, from exile to redemption.

Wake up, my strangely content Jewish brothers and sisters!

Wake up and see what's going on around you.

Wake up and see what's not going on around you and make it go on.

You are the most powerful people in the world, if only you knew....

-Ze'ev Maghen GSAS '92