From Budapest to Brussels
Julian Voloj Dessauer, Chair, European Union of Jewish Students
On a Friday night, five years ago, during a leadership-training seminar hosted by the European Union of Jewish Students in Budapest, Hungary, I went to a small synagogue. By coincidence (or fate) in this synagogue I found a prayer book from 1858 that had the name of the great-grandfather of my great-grandfather, Julius Dessauer, inscribed on the second page. My great-grandfather had the same name and I have a variation of his name. More than a century before, my ancestor had prayed with this same book. I felt that this was a sign for me to become more engaged with my Jewish heritage.
At the time of the seminar I was involved in Germany’s Federal Union of Jewish Students. But at the seminar in Budapest I met many interesting people from all over Europe. I came to realize the importance of fostering a European network of Jewish students from different countries, especially since most of the European Jewish communities are very small. While studying literature and linguistics at the University of Munster in northern Germany, I began helping to organize international events for the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS). In 1999, I became a member of the organization’s presidium, and finally last summer I was elected chair of EUJS.
In November, I started my work as EUJS chair at the organization’s office in Brussels. I feel that EUJS is the most important Jewish student organization in the world. We have a mission to recreate Jewish life in Europe in a post-Holocaust and post-Communist world, combat increasing anti-Semitism, and confront virulent Islamic fundamentalism. Unfortunately, we have a very limited budget and securing funds is our main problem.
Our “Summer University” is the highlight of our annual calendar. This is a unique gathering of Jewish students from all over the world–a mixture of education, political activism, and fun. Over 500 young Jews from nearly 40 countries, speaking more than 30 languages, come together for one week to exchange ideas and construct a positive Jewish identity.
I am also very proud that this year there will be the first student-run international Jewish seminar in Belgrade since 1988. We plan to have around 100 students from all over Europe in Belgrade in March. The idea is to build a bridge between Europe and Yugoslavia after nearly a decade of boycott and isolation.
Since the outbreak of the second Intifada, Europe and particularly France have had their highest number of anti-Semitic incidents at any time since World War II. In France alone there were more than a thousand attacks against synagogues, Jewish institutions, and individuals, mainly perpetrated by Arab youngsters. Anti-Semitism is a fact of life in Europe, more so than in the United States, but we believe that there is a Jewish future in Europe and therefore we will fight for our right to be European citizens.
EUJS is responding to anti-Semitism with a leadership training program for European Jewish student leaders in which we educate them about the Middle East, with partnerships with moderate Islamic groups, and by initiating a task force that will deal with all kinds of anti-Semitic incidents.
I feel very fortunate that I came across my ancestor’s prayer book in Budapest and that I am able to contribute to European Jewish life as chair of EUJS. I believe that my task is to enable Jews to live as Jews without fear. I want to help Jewish students have a positive identity, learn about their heritage, and be Jewish and European at the same time.
Remembering Our History
Ania Zieliska, President, Polish Union of Jewish Students
“There are no Jews left in Poland.” This statement can be heard all over the world. It is not true.
The question is will the world Jewish community take care of the young people here in Poland who do have Jewish roots, or will we forget them and allow them to assimilate completely? Do we as Jews have a moral obligation towards all our brothers and sisters, who would have been killed as Jews during World War II, or only towards those who have Jewish mothers? At the Polish Union of Jewish Students not all of us are halakhically Jewish, but we all are struggling to understand what our Jewish heritage means to our identity.
After all, we young people in Poland are fighting every day to gain something that was taken away from us: our Jewishness. We are not responsible for the decisions that have been made by our grandparents or parents to walk away from Judaism. Our responsibility is to do everything that is possible to become Jews again and to create a Jewish life here in Poland. Yes, in Poland! Why should we have to leave this place that many of us consider our motherland?
We young Jews in Poland are proud of living here because we feel that we are part of the long Jewish history of this country. We feel that we have an obligation towards our ancestors to continue the tradition of Polish Jewry. No one can deny the great history of Polish Jewry. That is why two of the Polish Union of Jewish Students’ main projects are to work to preserve Poland’s rich Jewish heritage and to help maintain our links to our ancestors.
Zeydele, named for the Yiddish word for grandpa, is a project that creates links between the oldest members of our community and the youngest ones. Each student “adopts” a Jewish “grandpa” or a “grandma” and visits him or her at least once a week. The student volunteers help older people take part in the regular life of our community. Together the two will take a walk, read a book or a Jewish magazine, discuss news of the Jewish community, or celebrate Jewish holidays.
In a second project, which takes place during our summer camp, we clean Jewish cemeteries, which are in disrepair throughout Poland. Last year we cleaned a Jewish cemetery near the border with Germany, and we even invited German and Israeli students to work with us. For all of us it was a remarkable experience. We felt like we were creating the future and overcoming the past. We talked a lot about World War II and our feelings about it. We managed to share this experience and still be friends.
Both the Zeydele and cemetery preservation projects are very important to us as young Polish Jews. We learned many things about ourselves, our roots, and our history. Both ensure that our Polish Jewish ancestors are not forgotten and build our community so it will continue to develop and grow in the next century.
A Meeting of Diasporas
Martin Kalenberg, Fourth Year, Universidad ORT
“What the weak Western European civilization thinks about me does not matter…Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?” Adolf Hitler, preparing his officers for the invasion of Poland, cited the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turkish Empire between 1914 and 1918 as proof that mass murder is forgotten.
Last November, Uruguay Hillel hosted the “Dialogue Between Diasporas,” bringing together Jewish and Armenian Uruguayan youth. The objective, beyond considering the common history of genocide of both peoples, was to share traditions and perspectives that serve to bring us together as minorities in our small South American country. Although most of Uruguay’s population of three million is of Spanish and Italian extraction, there are now between 15,000 and 20,000 Jews and approximately the same number of Armenians.
I came up with the idea for the meeting last July when Enrique Dreisis, the director of Hillel Uruguay, told me about Hillel International’s initiative to create joint activities with the African-American community in the United States and suggested that we create similar events in Uruguay. His suggestion brought to mind an exchange I had with an Armenian student at my univers
ity a few years ago. As my Armenian classmate shared with me the history of her people, I had been struck by the similarities between the histories of Armenians and Jews. Why not create a dialogue between our two diaspora communities?
I approached Diego Karamanukian, an Armenian activist who conducts a daily radio show for his community in Montevideo, and proposed creating a dialogue between our two communities. After consulting with his colleagues, he accepted the invitation and, four months later, the anxiously awaited “Dialogue Between Diasporas” took place. Those who participated in this relatively informal event were Jewish youth, mostly from the Tzedek Hillel social justice committee, and Armenian youth from the Hnchakian Armenian House, an Armenian cultural center.
From exchanging ideas, both sides were surprised to discover many similarities between our two peoples. For example, both groups marry mainly within their own group, and both groups have preserved their thousands-of-years-old languages.
The dialogue also brought to light differences between our two communities. For example, during an exchange of opinions about emigration from Uruguay to Israel and Armenia, the Armenians noted that Armenia’s economy is experiencing difficult times, which makes it more difficult for it to absorb immigrants than Israel. The Armenian participants in the event were also struck by the infrastructure and organization we have at Hillel Uruguay.
The outcome of the event was truly positive. For the first time in Uruguay’s history, a group of young Armenian and Jewish adults came together to discuss their past, present, and future, demonstrating to those who wanted to exterminate our cultures and traditions that they did not achieve their objectives.
Creating a Culture of Discussion
Uriel Kashi, Fourth Year, Free University in Berlin, Germany
To some American readers this might sound like a story out of a history book, but Jewish life in Germany does exist. Because of Germany’s history, however, Jewish life in Germany is fundamentally different from Jewish life in other European countries and the United States. The Holocaust left its mark here.
Since World War II, the German Jewish community has generally avoided any questions that might cause controversy. The German Jewish community, whose numbers dropped from 500,000 before World War II to 30,000 members of Jewish congregations in the 1980s, has rallied around the notion that its survival depends upon a powerful commitment to sticking together. But now, with the influx of 80,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union, it appears that the continuity of German Jewish life is assured.
After graduating from school in Stuttgart, a town with very few Jews, I knew that if I wanted to lead an active Jewish life, living in Berlin was one of the few alternatives. In most German cities, there is typically just an Orthodox or “Conservadox” service, even though there are very few Orthodox members of the community. Berlin is one of the very few cities in Germany where there is more than one synagogue–seven, in fact. Here, religious Jews have the choice to attend Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox services. Still, the options open to Jews, especially activities for children and students, are both limited and uniform.
There is no such thing as different streams of Jewish student life in Berlin. Instead, there is only one student group, the Berlin Jewish Student Union, which organizes weekly activities. Once a month at the Berlin Jewish Student Union there is a Kabbalat Shabbat sponsored by the Jewish Community of Berlin that attracts 50 to 60 participants.
Although there is a sense of Jewish community, a political and religious consciousness hardly exists among most of the members of the Jewish Student Union. Most of the students who attend know some Israeli or Jewish songs, but almost no one really knows about the content of Judaism, neither in a religious nor in a political sense.
But Germany does have an actively political group of Jewish university students called the Federal Union of Jewish Students. The core members of this group wanted to recreate the vibrant exchange among German Jewish intellectuals that had been so common in pre-war Germany. Together, we came up with the idea to organize a nationwide seminar to serve as a meeting place for Jewish students who often do not have contact with other Jews and to spark new discussion within the Jewish community.
This first Jewish Winter University took place in Würzburg this January. Some of our guest speakers included thinkers whose ideas have been neglected or not discussed in Germany. For example, in the German Jewish community today, any criticism of Israel is very quickly attacked as “anti-Israel,” “anti-Zionist,” or even “anti-Semitic.” To approach this subject we invited Moshe Zuckermann, an Israeli sociologist and historian at Tel Aviv University, who has critically analyzed the relationships between the different segments of Israeli society, as well as the Arab-Israeli conflict.
We also offered representatives of Orthodox and Reform Judaism the opportunity to describe and discuss their approaches to Judaism, reflecting a trend in recent German Jewish history towards openness and pluralism. Finally, we had workshops dealing with topics like German-Jewish history in general, Jewish resistance during and after the Nazi reign of terror, and the Jewish history of the city of Würzburg.
The words of encouragement from the participants in the seminars encouraged us to proactively create a dynamic German Jewish community. It taught us that as German Jewish students we must build new structures, communities, and relationships, or we will fade away. Only a society that creates a culture of discussion can develop its viewpoints and profess its own identity. For that to happen, each German Jewish student has to consider what it means to be a German Jew and to have the desire to breathe new life into Jewish culture in Germany.
Zionism in the Land Down Under
Karyn Lurie, Third Year, University of Melbourne, Australia
Shortly after the beginning of the current Intifada, I walked into the Union House, the building where students congregate between classes to eat, and discovered tables piled high with anti-Israel propaganda, a video screen displaying images intended to make Israeli soldiers seem like murderers of Palestinian children, and bulletin boards covered by anti-Israel posters. I felt angry and emotional. After confronting this exhibit for a week, I felt compelled to become active in the Australasian Union of Jewish Students.
The Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) is run entirely by and for students. It provides social events, Israel programs, educational seminars, religious programming, conferences, political activism, and training. While AUJS is a pluralistic organization that represents over 3,000 Jewish students throughout Australia and New Zealand, it is AUJS convention to support the current Israeli government irrespective of its members’ own political beliefs. In this way we present a strong and united stance to deal with issues related to Israel when they arise on campus.
A few months later, I was elected president of AUJS at the Melbourne University, where there are approximately 400 Jewish students out of a population of 34,000 undergraduate and post-graduate students. One of my primary activities as AUJS campus president was working to combat anti-Israel activism. Initially, we spent many days putting up AUJS posters only to have them continually ripped down by other students.
We then decided that the best approach to combat anti-Israel sentiment was to encourage Jewish students to become involved in campus student politics. This campaign proved to be extremely successful and we now feel comfortable that, with
Jewish students elected to prominent positions on their student unions, anti-Israel activity will be reduced at the Melbourne University.
But the anti-Israel activism at the University of Melbourne was not an isolated incident. Since the beginning of the current Intifada, Australian university campuses have witnessed a significant increase in anti-Israel activity. This is largely due to the dominance of extreme left-wing student groups on campuses. Socialist and Trotskyite students dominate Australian student representative bodies. It is these student bodies that usually control the student newspapers and so they tend to print articles extremely critical of Israel, while often failing to print the Israeli perspective.
This year, I am the AUJS national political affairs director. In preparation for the March 2002 elections, we have organized a new proactive campaign to promote Israel on campus. This includes a series of large stickers that students can place on their diaries, cars, and textbooks. The stickers are aimed at both Jewish and non-Jewish students. Each attempts to convey a different message such as Israel’s defensive needs for using force, the geographic size of Israel, the corruption within the Palestinian Authority, and the contrast between what the Palestinian Authority says in Arabic and what is said in English. We believe that these stickers will be more effective than posters because they cannot be ripped down or purposely covered up by opposing groups.
We have also built and consolidated many valuable relationships with other moderate groups on campus and our success in campus elections has earned us a reputation as an efficient and effective student group. The overall approach of AUJS is to provide for the unity of Australasian Jewish students, look out for their interests and needs, promote Jewish identity, and above all express our love for and solidarity with the State of Israel.
