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Celebrating Community and Mourning Tragedy at Brown University
The campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Two recent events took place at Brown University, one of joy and one of tragedy.
Under a tent on Pembroke Field, Cantor Lizzie Shammash sang Shalom Aleichem and Rabbi Ayelet Cohen recited the Motzi and Kiddush, beginning a glorious weekend celebrating 130 years of Jewish life at Brown.
A few weeks later, a former Physics graduate student killed two Brown students, and wounded nine others, in a mass shooting event on campus.
The juxtaposition of these events demonstrated Brown’s commitment to its Jewish community, and also that community and support networks are central to campus life.
On the weekend of November 7-9, more than 1,000 Jewish students, faculty, and alumni convened on College Hill. There were hundreds more attendees than the university expected, spanning nearly eight decades of life at Brown.
Some of us attend a daily minyan; others rarely see the inside of a synagogue. The faces of today’s Jewish students demonstrate we have ancestry from every corner of the globe. For a weekend, we came together as one, emphasizing our common values and heritage.
We participated in lectures, panels, and religious services, celebrating alumni and our school’s accomplishments in business, academia, and the arts.
Even before the shooting tragedy on our campus, we knew America’s college students were struggling with a fractured environment. Mental health is a serious issue in our country, but especially among our young people. Three-fifths of younger adults reported serious loneliness in the past month, compared to 24 percent of people 55-65.
Younger adults are no longer anchored in their families, but still must grapple with decisions about relationships and career paths. They spend more time on their phones and alone in their dorm rooms, and 40 percent less time in group venues like the gym, library, or cafeteria.
Contrary to initial fears, the Brown shooting does not appear to have a political or religious dimension. Still, being a Jewish college student is harder now than it was just a few years ago.
Between 2019 and 2024, cases of antisemitic assault, harassment, and vandalism rose by over 300 percent, with college campuses seeing an 84 percent increase between 2023 and 2024.
People who subscribe to a dichotomy about oppressors and the oppressed common on university campuses are especially likely to hold antisemitic views.
Our “J130” event demonstrated the vibrancy and resilience of Brown’s Jewish community. Brown sprang from the tolerant and ecumenical traditions of Rhode Island. From its founding, Brown foreswore religious tests in admitting students. And there is no historical evidence that Brown used the formal Jewish quotas common at other elite institutions.
The weekend also highlighted how Jewish faith and community are not only essential to Jewish students, but also a force for good at the university. In one of the event’s faculty seminars, Judaic Studies scholar Professor Michael Satlow explained the relevance of religious wisdom. Jewish texts teach gratitude, patience, personal connection, the dignity of the individual, and the combination of purpose with humility — all somewhat counter-cultural when college students often focus on ideological conflict or careerism. That guidance resonated in November — and it’s only more important now.
Many Jews have found inspiration in a covenantal relationship with God, in which we bear a shared responsibility with the Almighty. The Pirkei Avot tells us, “What you do, do for Heaven,” and reminds us that, “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
Since the shooting, Brown students of every faith have wrestled with confusion, rage, and grief. Jewish students have sought out rabbis to make sense of these events, as other students have received pastoral care from clergy in other denominations.
Brown RISD Hillel must be a center of gravity on campus — a place of rich community, deep meaning, intellectual rigor, and spiritual resilience, even in the face of tragedy. Close to 1,000 Jewish students (and hundreds of non-Jewish students) walk through the doors of the Hillel building each semester. We must make it even more of a destination, a welcoming, bustling hive of activity, where Jewish students know they can go to be with other Jews — and where students of every faith and background can convene in fellowship.
We can make Hillel central to the intellectual life on campus. We can extend the exciting programming we’ve done on the Jewish tradition in the visual arts to include music and theater. We can innovate in the way we provide religious education to students and we can examine the way that AI may enhance the study of Jewish religious texts. We can provide more pastoral care to young men and women seeking to make sense of their world. And we can engage our alumni to mentor students, not how to ace a job interview, but on how to build meaningful and rewarding careers they can sustain over decades.
What happens at Brown RISD Hillel (and every other Hillel on every campus) matters for the wider Jewish world and the university ecosystem.
When Jewish students are grounded, supported, and educated, they become better Jews, students, and citizens. They also can help heal a wounded campus, and represent the resilience of the Jewish tradition and community in America.
James M. Kaplan chairs the Board of Trustees for Brown-RISD Hillel. He graduated from Brown University in 1992.
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Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff
(JTA) — Sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia won the Democratic nomination Tuesday in Texas’ 35th Congressional District, defeating opponent Maureen Galindo following a race shaped by scrutiny over Galindo’s antisemitic rhetoric.
The runoff in the San Antonio race drew national attention after Galindo, a local housing activist and therapist, came under scrutiny for comments that included vows to turn a local immigrant detention center “into a prison for American Zionists” and claims that it was her “perception that Zionist billionaires run the world.”
Following Galindo’s surprise first-place finish in the march primary, national Democratic leaders and Jewish organizations condemned her rhetoric and urged voters to reject her candidacy, including Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, who revealed to JTA earlier this month that he would not back or campaign with Galindo.
The district, which stretches between San Antonio and Austin, was heavily affected by Republican redistricting this year, one of several factors that local political observers and Democratic Party leaders said contributed to Galindo’s earlier win.
The race also attracted outside spending, with Lead Left PAC, a newly launched super PAC apparently tied to a Republican donation platform, pouring over $900,000 on ads and mailers promoting Galindo. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a $35,000 ad buy against Galindo, an unusual step for the DCCC to take against a Democratic candidate.
“Republicans just spent weeks and almost a million dollars propping up an antisemite, and they should be ashamed and embarrassed — it was a disgrace,” the president of the Democratic Majority For Israel PAC, Brian Romick, told JTA in a statement. “Tonight is a victory for the voters of TX-35, for the Democratic Party, and for every Democrat who believes that antisemitism has no home in our coalition.”
Romick told JTA Tuesday night that he believed the results of the runoff signaled that Democratic primary voters “aren’t going to elect antisemitic candidates, and in the districts that we need to win, pro-Israel candidates are our best bet.”
Garcia will now face Republican nominee Carlos De La Cruz, who defeated opponent John Lujan, in the Nov. 3 general election.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
The post Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’ appeared first on The Forward.