At Oberlin, Safe Spaces for All But Jews

When the anti-Semitic rantings of Joy Karega-Mason, a professor at Oberlin College, garnered public attention, Oberlin’s president admitted that “they caused pain for many people” before going on to defend academic freedom and to argue that the “essence” of a liberal-arts education is “interrogating assertions with facts and deep, critical thinking from multiple viewpoints.” Meanwhile, an email from an off-campus account was sent to all of Oberlin’s students claiming that the “state of Israel, Zionist Jews are pure evil. They did 9/11.” Jeffrey Salkin responds:

Imagine a similar verbal attack against blacks. Or LGBT people. Or Muslims. Would [Oberlin’s president] be interested in “interrogating assertions with facts and deep, critical thinking from multiple viewpoints”? I don’t think so.

But when it comes to Jew-hatred, we are supposed to be open-minded, and to entertain multiple narratives, no matter how farfetched, bizarre, and anti-intellectual they might be. But, wait a second. What about all of that academic jargon, that universities should be “safe places”? Or, that we should avoid inflicting “micro-aggressions”?

“Safe places” for everyone—every ethnic group, every identity group, and every ideology. Except for self-affirming Jews and supporters of Israel. No safe places for them.

And micro-aggressions? Let us be overly cautious and oh-so-sensitive against every aggression or perceived aggression—even criticism—no matter how micro. But, micro-aggressions and even macro-aggressions against Jewish students—especially those who defend Israel? They don’t count. They’re not part of the sensitivity club.

Read more at Religion News Service

More about: Anti-Semitism, Israel & Zionism, Israel on campus, Political correctness, University

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society