The goal of the organization “Open Hillel,” which recently held its first conference at Harvard, is to convince Hillel Houses on college campuses to sponsor anti-Zionist events and speakers, welcome Jewish groups supportive of boycotting Israel, and allow for events jointly sponsored with such anti-Israel groups as Students for Justice in Palestine. Although it couches its agenda in the language of pluralism and free speech, writes Aiden Pink, that agenda is highly particular:
For all their complaints about their feelings of exclusion and limited discourse, my clear sense at the conference was that they—rather than Hillel International—are the ones attempting to forcibly impose a monolithic discourse. And it is the promotion of this kind of discourse—disingenuous, postmodern, radical, and often hateful—that is one of the biggest threats facing the future of Jewish communal life. . . .
Instead of abandoning Jewish communal life due to Hillel’s perceived exclusionary policies, the Open Hillel activists care enough about their Jewish “home” to work to fix its perceived errors from within. And so you end up with something paradoxical and bizarre: a group that longs for acceptance while advocating rejection, that wants Jewish life but not the version of it embodied in Jewish self-determination and statehood, that acts radical but pines for belonging.
More about: Anti-Zionism, Hillel, Israel on campus, Jews on campus, Students for Justice in Palestine