Targeted by campus hate, Jewish students dig back to their roots

Photos: Ruby Studios

It’s a dynamic that’s played out in Jewish history so many times… a spiritual airbag, if you will. When Jews don’t make Kiddush, the world makes Havdalah, and we’re painfully reminded of our unique status. Since October 7, there’s been much discussion about the blatant, horrifying anti-Semitism emerging on university campuses, to the point that Jewish students fear for their physical safety. But at the same time, the cycle is turning upward, as it inevitably does — and campus professionals report an enormous uptick of interest among students exploring their Jewish identity

ON October 7, Rutgers student Gabby Rubin, a proudly Jewish although non-observant sophomore, was studying in her room when her phone began ringing incessantly. It was her mother with terrible news: Hamas terrorists had infiltrated Israel’s security fence and were gleefully parading about on an indiscriminate killing spree, murdering and maiming thousands and taking hundreds hostage. Gabby broke down.

“I just started sobbing and stayed like that the rest of the day,” she recalls. But the next morning, Gabby, who is double majoring in political science and journalism, pulled herself together to go to class. When she got to campus, Gabby saw other students had gathered in protest — but not to support her brothers and sisters across the ocean, victims of a heinous slaughter. Instead, many in the crowd were waving Palestinian flags and sporting keffiyehs.

“That was the last thing I was expecting,” Gabby says. “I never thought anyone could support terrorists. Personally, I know the whole area in Israel, so I understand the reality in ways that I can’t expect from everyone — but how can you be on the other side?!”

That “protest” — held in the heart of an ostensibly inclusive and diversity-obsessed liberal university — shocked Gabby to the core.

“We said ‘Never Again’ — and here it is happening again, just in a different way. We are being attacked because we are Jewish. Not even because of what we believe, just because we are Jewish,” she says. “I’m an understanding person and I was trying to rationalize, but there was no way I could validate them, and nothing I could say to them.”

Gabby’s attempts to engage in dialogue fell on deaf ears.

“Even when someone would tell me it’s important to try to understand on both sides — to respect that there were civilian casualties — I would say things like this is not Israel versus Palestine, it’s Israel versus evil.”

Yet on campus, it felt very much like Israel — which easily translated into Jews — versus the Palestinian cause, and no one was backing up Gabby’s side.

“The SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] demanded that Rutgers cut off ties with Israel,” Gabby remembers. She was aghast. And along with the horror at watching her classmates and colleagues suddenly turn sympathetic to a murderous cause, she felt betrayed. She’d marched in line with her fellow students for a host of social causes and had seen them as ideological peers, but now they openly supported a group that called for the destruction of her homeland and her people.