(RNS) — “Is it safe?”
This is more than a famous film cliche (and dental nightmare) from “Marathon Man.”
A young woman in Warsaw asked me that question. She is not yet Jewish, but like many young Poles, on a path toward joining the Jewish people.
After Yom Kippur services, she sat down next to me and said: “Rabbi, I have a question for you. Are the Jews safe in America?”
Get your minds around that. I am in Poland. I am in the middle of what was once the Warsaw Ghetto — where buildings are built on mounds of rubble, and where some say if you kick the ground hard enough, your foot will uncover fragments of human bones.
I begin my answer.
Yes, there are dangers to the Jews — on the right, and on the left. I describe the antisemitism and racism on the right; how one presidential candidate has said if he loses, blame the Jews; that some of his supporters openly display swastikas and openly express Jew hatred; how that same candidate engages in eugenics theories, which are barely a centimeter away from Jew hatred; how a congresswoman in Georgia believes Jews have space lasers. While none of these ideas physically threatens Jews, there is always that danger lurking in the background.
“I know about that, and it is frightening. But, for people closer to my age. On college campuses.”
I gulp.
Because here is the ironic truth.
It might be safer to wear a kippah while walking down a street in Warsaw than to wear a kippah on the campus of Columbia University.
Consider the headline in The New York Times: “Pro-Palestinian Group at Columbia Now Backs ‘Armed Resistance’ by Hamas.”
The article discusses a group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by:
distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for it: “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. And the group posted an essay calling the attack a “moral, military and political victory” and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.
Let us go further. A student who was associated with Columbia University Apartheid Divest had said: “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” The group apologized for his statement.
Then the group walked back their apology. Basically: Sorry — not sorry.
Please understand what is going on here.
These people think Zionists have no right to life.
Which means they can be killed.
Consider the slogan “Globalize the intifada!”
What does that mean?
Intifada means this: cafeterias at Hebrew University blowing up; bombs in pizzerias; limbs and heads torn from Jewish bodies.
“Globalize the intifada” can only mean: Death to Jews everywhere. There is nowhere Jews are safe.
And so, to return to that young Polish woman’s question: “Are Jews safe in America?”
Here is my answer.
Yes, Jews are safe in America — with the caveats and the “ahems” I mentioned earlier.
But here is where it sticks in my throat.
Can I honestly say Jewish students are safe on college campuses, like Columbia University, where such hate groups are active?
No. I cannot say that.
I cannot say that, because there is a 100% probability that hateful talk will become hateful actions; that slogans will become violent; and that, despite their better intentions, college administrators will be incompetent in fending off such violence. (I have written about these campus trends in the recent past.)
Which makes me think of the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl.
Theodor Herzl was a flamboyant, urbane journalist and playwright — until he found himself in Paris for the 1894 trial of Alfred Dreyfus, an officer accused of treason. Herzl heard the cries of the mobs in the streets: “Death to the Jews!” According to the legend, those cries were enough to convince Herzl there was no future for Jews in Europe.
Similarly, it would not surprise me if Jewish students, encountering a growing anti-Israel and antisemitic movement on campuses, simply decide there is no future for them there, as well — and they move to campuses more conducive to Jewish identity.
Many of those colleges will not be the “elite” universities.
OK. So be it. There are many good colleges in America.
So, I turn to those anti-Israel and increasingly antisemitic campus groups, and I say, paradoxically: Thank you.
You have just proved and demonstrated why political Zionism came into existence in the first place.
Because Jews were not safe in Europe, nor in the Middle East.
It is time — long past time — for administrators, students, parents and givers to stand up against these outrages.
That is why I herald the work of Alums for Campus Fairness, which “harnesses the unique power of alumni to combat hatred at their alma maters, promoting open dialogue and respectful debate for all students.”
Enough really is enough.