A Tale of 3 Campuses - Chronicle Online/The WORD 05/29/2025

Weekly On-line Rabbi's D'var-Torah

May 29, 2025

2 Sivan 5785

Parashat Bamidbar

Last Thursday, my family had the pleasure of attending the Yeshiva University graduation. It would have been an amazing experience hearing Jonah’s name called and watching him walk across the stage no matter what. However, it was a particularly meaningful experience being at that ceremony the day after Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were murdered on the streets of Washington, DC.  

We sang the national anthems of both the US and Israel. We recited a prayer for the hostages. We watched the graduates dance the hora in the middle of the ceremony. Whenever anyone bumped into another person, after saying “Excuse me,” everyone added, “Mazel Tov!” It was incredibly comforting to be in that Jewish space as we tried to make sense of what had happened the night before.

Four days later, our family came together again to celebrate a graduation—this time on the campus of Oberlin College. During the procession, Jodi and I started counting the number of graduates wearing keffiyehs with growing unease. However, that did not prepare us for their rude and inappropriate display during the Chairman of the Board’s speech. About one quarter of the graduates stood up, turned their backs to the speaker and chanted the words, “Free, Free Palestine,” over and over again until he completed his speech. 

There is a real famine taking place in Sudan. Far more Muslims have been killed in Syria than in Gaza. Far more Muslims are wrongfully imprisoned in China than in Israel. Somehow, though, the lone democracy in the Middle East is more deserving of scorn than the perpetrators of evil in Sudan, Syria, and China. No one from the university did a thing to stop the keffiyeh-clad protesters. We felt like outsiders at our own daughter’s graduation, and there was nothing we could do.

Then, yesterday, I went to the campus of St. Elizabeth University in Morristown. I sit on the advisory board for the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education. It was the last meeting of the year with an eye toward the next academic year. The first program of the year will be a summit on antisemitism in which other local schools—including Drew University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Kean University, and Ramapo College—will be invited to participate. The second event will be the annual commemoration of Kristallnacht, and the speaker will be Rabbi Diana Fersko, author of “We Need to Talk About Antisemitism.” It was the antidote I needed after my experience at Oberlin.

After the two graduation ceremonies, I might have been tempted to conclude that Jews should try to stay in Jewish spaces given the rise of antisemitism in this country. But then our friends at St. Elizabeth came to remind me that we have allies. We are not alone in our fight against antisemitism. We must continue to fight for our right to feel safe anywhere and everywhere in this country.  

Shalom,

RAF.