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A conveniently timed conference offers Israel educators a safe space to explore complex feelings
CHICAGO (JTA) – At one point ahead of an international conference on Israel education, as raucous anti-government protests filled the streets of Israeli cities, conference organizers considered leaning into the tension created by the news: What if they focused one day of the gathering on conflict, and the next day on hope?
Ultimately, they decided “you can’t divorce the two,” in the words of Aliza Goodman, one of the organizers.
“If you separate them, then it means one is devoid of the other and vice versa,” said Goodman, director of strategy and research and development for the iCenter, the Israel education organization that hosted the conference in Chicago in March.
Israel educators, Goodman said, need to hold “the complexities together with the hopes for us to be able to move forward as human beings.”
That emotional challenge lay at the center of the conference, the iCenter’s fifth, called iCON 2023. The conference covered standard topics in Israel education, ranging from Hebrew literature and language to representations of Jews and Israel in popular culture to a bevy of subtopics related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But the turmoil that has rocked Israel this year felt no less prominent. In sessions and on the sidelines, the more than 500 participants discussed the Israeli government’s proposed judicial overhaul, its far-right cabinet ministers and the preservation of Israel’s democratic character.
Conference attendees said they faced dual challenges: understanding the political issues at play and reckoning with what they mean for teaching about Israel. Their thoughts on the current historical moment suggested that those challenges would persist even though Israel’s government announced a pause on the judicial overhaul shortly after the conference concluded.
“We are responsible for doing something, don’t get me wrong, but my immediate responsibility is trying to really get a handle on understanding it for myself and for my students,” said Rebecca Good, the assistant director of education at The Temple, a Reform synagogue in Atlanta.
Good has found herself fielding new questions about Israel, mostly from adult congregants, “but we know that the questions and the feelings that are coming from the adults naturally play out in the home,” she said. In response to the perceived need she has recognized from her students, her synagogue planned a town hall-style meeting that took place in late March.
“It’s almost like you do triage, right? When things like this happen, it’s like, ‘OK, how are you?’” Good said. “You have to address that first and then you figure out what is needed and try to make that happen for people.”
Conference attendees included Hebrew school and day school teachers, executives from communal organizations, summer camp professionals, campus activists, young adult Israeli emissaries and more. iCON Program Director Ari Berkowicz estimated that 75% of the conference participants came from North America and 24% from Israel. Others joined from places like Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Educator Noam Weissman addresses the audience at a session of ICON 2023 at the Marriott Marquis in Chicago, Illinois, March 15, 2023. (Rachel Kohn)
“One of The iCenter’s approaches to education is to make all that we teach and all that we learn about both timely and timeless, but the current moment obviously has an impact on who we are as educators and who we are as learners,” said Berkowicz. While the sessions scheduled for iCON 2023 remained mostly unchanged, the facilitators, speakers, and educators were “different people” from what they had been three or six months ago due to the upheaval in Israel, he said.
“They aren’t the same people that they were even yesterday or two days ago,” Goodman added in an interview at the conference. “All of this is impacting them at the core.”
Questions and anguish about the judicial overhaul — and other Israeli government policies – filtered into the conference programming. A campus professional, who asked not to be identified because she wasn’t authorized by her employer to speak to the press, shared a practical concern during a breakout group: If the government follows through on its call to limit the Law of Return, which currently affords automatic Israeli citizenship to anyone with one Jewish grandparent, what should she say to a student who wants to go to Israel but no longer falls under the government’s revised definition of who is a Jew?
In a nearby group, an Israeli expat from Dallas named Meirav said she likes that Israel doesn’t separate between religion and state. But she fears for women’s rights under a religiously conservative regime.
Another group endeavored to understand the specifics of the proposed judicial overhaul, comparing newspaper articles with Wikipedia text as they struggled to confirm how judges are appointed in Israel.
“It’s not only in America or everywhere else – I’m not sure everyone in Israel understands exactly what’s going on and the ramifications,” said Etty Dolgin, the Israeli-American principal of a Chicago-area Hebrew-immersion preschool and after-school program, in a different session. “I don’t know that anybody really knows what the ramifications are going to be.”
Former Jewish day school principal Noam Weissman, whose lecture at the conference drew a standing-room-only crowd of some 150 people, said in an interview that the current moment is an important one for Israel educators to be able to contextualize.
“Part of why cultural literacy is important is because history informs the present,” Weissman said. “People like to jump to judicial reforms, but if people don’t know about Israel’s lack of a constitution, it’s hard to be conversant in that.”
Weissman, the former head of Los Angeles’ Shalhevet High School who is now executive vice president of OpenDor Media, where he develops educational content on Judaism and Israel, said in his session that the goal of Israel educators shouldn’t be defending the country but “understanding and connecting.” He’s grateful, he said, that “the Israel education world has really, from a professional perspective, moved on from hasbara,” a Hebrew term for public relations or advocacy on Israel’s behalf.
“When someone recently said to me, ‘I don’t envy Israel educators at this moment’ … I actually said I feel zero pressure,” Weissman told his audience. “You feel pressure when you’re trying to defend everything Israel does. That’s the world of Israel advocacy, where you train young people to defend Israel. … If my job is to defend something that I have no interest in defending, this doesn’t work.”
Good said she appreciated the “brain trust” of fellow Israel educators she gets to interact with at the conference. At the same time, she likened the sense of uncertainty she is feeling these days to the concerns many Americans have felt in recent years when looking at their own fraught political landscape.
“That kind of feeling we all get, like, ‘Where could this go?’” she said. “That’s as best as I can put it.”
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Pomona College Agrees to Settlement Over Civil Rights Complaint Alleging Antisemitism on Campus
A pro-Hamas activist posts a banner near an encampment to demonstrate at the Claremont Colleges on May 7, 2024, in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Qian Weizhong via Reuters Connect
Pomona College in Claremont, California, has settled a civil rights complaint which accused school officials of having “permitted severe discrimination of Jewish students” in the months which followed Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, and Hillel International were part of the coalition of civil rights groups that brought legal action on behalf of Jewish students. According to a statement they released this week, the settlement calls for the college’s adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, updating its non-discrimination policy to stress that antisemitism is verboten, and hiring a new official to manage the college’s compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“After Oct. 7, Jewish and Israeli students and teachers across the country were forced to live in fear on their own campuses. But there were many, including those at Pomona, who exemplified strength and stood up to the bigotry and hatred that threatened them,” Brandeis Center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement commenting on the resolution of the case. “The action steps outlined in this settlement will address the blatant and egregious antisemitism faced by Pomona’s students, therefore protecting students from facing similar treatment in the future. And we hope it encourages others to take legal action against those who violate our constitutional rights.”
Pomona College president Gabrielle Starr issued her own statement on Wednesday, saying, “Antisemitism has persisted for thousands of years, and this settlement is not a one-size-fits-all toolkit. It’ll be up to our community to put it in place — and to live it. We will work with the Executive Committee of the Faculty, Staff Council, and [Associated Students of Pomona College] to navigate the complexities and challenges together. I am grateful to their leadership in these times.”
The settlement announcement comes just over a month after Pomona College, working with its sister institutions in the Claremont consortium of liberal arts colleges in California (5C), imposed severe disciplinary sanctions on some of the members of a pro-Hamas student group who attempted to raid a campus Jewish event held to commemorate the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre, which claimed the lives of 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages being kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, footage of the incident showed the group, whose members concealed their faces with keffiyeh scarves, attempting to storm the event venue while screaming expletives and pro-Hamas slogans. They ultimately failed due to the prompt response of the Claremont Colleges Jewish chaplain and other attendees who formed a barrier in front of the door to repel them, a defense they were forced to mount on their own because campus security personnel did nothing to stop the disturbance.
Later, the group behind the incident issued a disturbing open letter on social media.
“Satan dared not look us in the eyes,” the note said, while attacking event guests and Oct. 7 survivor Yoni Viloga. “Immediately, zionists [sic] swarmed us, put their hands on us, shoved us, while Viloga retreated like he did on October 7th, 2023.”
Appearing to threaten murder, the group added, “We let that coward know he and his fascists settler ideology are not welcome here nor anywhere. zionism is a death cult that must be dealt with accordingly [sic].”
After an exhaustive investigation which drew in every member of the 5C, Pomona College determined that two of the young people involved in the raid are enrolled in sister schools it would not identify due to privacy laws. It has banned them from the Pomona campus. Two other individuals remain at large.
“Given the gravity of the alleged offense — and the published statement that has raised significant concerns about similar disruptions in the future — I have initiated an interim campus ban for both individuals, pending further inquiries, and in line with our policy,” Starr said in her last update on the matter. “The alleged behavior here is serious, and to ensure an appropriate adjudication is reached, the college is committed to maintaining a fair process.”
She added, “I assure you that Pomona hopes for — and will advocate for — an outcome that ensures our campuses are free of the kind of targeted harassment we witnessed.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Bill to Help Recovery of Nazi-Looted Art Passes US Senate Unanimously, Heads to House of Representatives
A drone view of the “Arbeit macht frei” gate at the former Auschwitz concentration camp ahead of the 80th anniversary of its liberation, Oswiecim, Poland, Jan. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
The US Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a bill that would help Holocaust survivors and their families reclaim artwork stolen by Nazis during World War II.
The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (Hear) Act of 2025 updates and expands on the original 2016 HEAR Act, which created a six-year window for a Holocaust survivor or their family to file a legal claim starting from the time they discovered the location of their stolen art. The 2016 HEAR Act is set to expire at the end of 2026.
The new bill passed by the Senate this week clarifies legal protections for Holocaust survivors and their families who are seeking the return of art looted by the Nazis by making sure that their claims are considered based on factual merits and not dismissed due to legal deadlines or time-based technicalities. The new bill states that if a Holocaust survivor or their family members file a claim within six years of discovering their artwork’s location, their case cannot be dismissed just because of how much time has passed.
The bill now heads to the House of Representatives, and if it’s passed there, it will be sent to US President Donald Trump to be signed into law.
“This bipartisan effort will assist Holocaust survivors and their families who are seeking the return of artwork now held in museums and collections across the United States,” said Mark Weitzman, chief operating officer of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, which supports world Jewry in pursuing claims for the restitution of Jewish property stolen during the Holocaust.
“By clarifying and strengthening the legal framework, the bill helps ensure that these claims can be evaluated on their merits, advancing justice and accountability,” added Weitzman. “The bill now moves to the House of Representatives, and we encourage swift support to bring us closer to ensuring that claims for Nazi-looted art can be heard on their merits.”
The bill was cosponsored by US Sens John Cornyn (R-TX), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Fetterman (D-PA), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), and Katie Britt (R-AL). Cornyn spearheaded the 2016 HEAR Act.
“The thousands of missing pieces of art looted from Jewish families by Hitler’s regime during the Holocaust are a painful reminder of a time when cruelty and hatred reigned,” Cornyn said in a released statement. “This legislation renews our commitment to Holocaust survivors and their families by ensuring cases are heard on their merit, offering a path to restitution and assurance that such injustices are never forgotten.”
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Middle East Scholars Hope New Book on Oct. 7 Will Combat the ‘Promotion of Fallacies on Campus’
Pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University in New York City, US, April 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
A consortium of Middle East scholars, as well as one student, has published a new book examining the impact of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel on geopolitics, media, and the landscape of higher education, The Algemeiner recently learned.
Edited by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East executive director Asaf Romirowsky and Smith College professor Donna Robinson-Divine, the book, titled October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds, includes essays by esteemed thinkers such Andrew Fox, KC Johnson, and Alex Joffe and it has already been acclaimed by professors representing higher education institutions across the Western world, from the University of California, Berkeley in the US to Kings College London in the United Kingdom.
On Friday, The Algemeiner spoke with Romirowsky and Robinson-Divine for nearly two hours to discuss their hopes for the project. One hope, they said, is breaking higher education’s dialogue on the Middle East out of a conceptual prison in which the convulsions of campus activism preclude careful analysis of a region whose rich history and effect on global stability demand seriousness. Wars Over Words and Deeds, they said, achieves this objective by contributing to “the academy” sound scholarship on the Middle East which respects the complexities it has posed to statesmen, scholars, and presidents since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the conclusion of World War I.
“We saw constantly a dearth of information and the promotion of fallacies on campus — a kind of rapid fire of lies and disinformation. We felt that we needed to actually look at the question of Israel and the Middle East from a rigorous academic standpoint,” Romirowsky said. “As historians, politic scientists, and analysts, we came together as a group to actually look at the historical patterns of behavior and historical evidence and describe the events which led up to Oct. 7 and what has transpired since.”
As previously reported by the Algemeiner, since the Oct. 7 massacre college faculty and students have treated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the subject of regional order in the Middle East, as a political and ideological issue, holding rallies, occupying buildings, and demanding sweeping policy changes such as divestment from Israel and the expulsion of Jewish academics. In dozens of incidents documented by The Algemeiner, they translated their zeal into speech which drew from Nazi-era rhetoric and other classic antisemitic tropes.
These activists have created an unusual convergence of interests connecting political Islamists, classical, white supremacist antisemites, and even far-left activists who advocate non-heteronormative gender roles and sexualities, Robinson-Divine noted.
“Anti-Zionism seems to be a vehicle for cementing ties between progressives who might not otherwise share a policy consensus,” she explained. “Muslim activists might have little in common with LGTBQ activists striving freedom and expanding social rights but they can unite around the issue of Israel.”
A coalition comprising factions which are normally at odds over the biggest political questions can only arise in a climate of deception, she noted.
“The incentives for distorting terms and concepts, for pushing an agenda, have been powerful over the past 10 years,” Robinson-Divine continued. “Higher education confers valuable material and social rewards to those who join the anti-Israel movement. But there are people who want information and accuracy, and I haven’t entirely despaired.”
One of the issues explored by The Wars Over Words and Deeds is the anti-Zionist left’s denial of reports that Hamas fighters sexually assaulted men and women on Oct. 7 and continued to do so after the fact to hostages it kidnapped and transported to Gaza. The Yale Daily News, for example, helped to popularize this denialism in higher education in November 2023, when it censored a column which discussed the sexual assault, calling the accounts of victims “unsubstantiated” — an outrage for which it later apologized.
“What is interesting about some Western responses to Oct. 7 is that groups which fall on the liberal side or the political spectrum, who claim to be invested in the well-being of women and disposed peoples,’ contribute to mass dehumanization which enables conditions for horrific gender-based violence to occur on nationalistic grounds,” writes Smith College student Skylar Ball in her contribution to the book. “When we turn our backs on truth, we enable dehumanization, and we subsequently turn our backs on humanity.”
Romirowsky, Robinson-Divine, and the scholars they brought together have a tall task, as anti-Zionist extremism in higher education has proven to be infectious.
Just last month, a New York City college saw a portentous incident in which a student and local imam disrupted an interfaith event by issuing a verbal fatwa which called for imposing sharia law on Americans, defended amputating the limbs of misdemeanor level criminals and the wealthy, and denigrated a Jewish co-panelist, Baruch College professor Ilya Bratman.
“If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately,” said Abdullah Mady, who is enrolled in the Master’s in Translational Medicine (MTM) program. “Sharia … stands against the oppressor. When sharia is implemented, pornography — gone. Alcohol industry — gone. Gambling system — gone. Interest is gone, which is what they use to enslave you.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.