Even after following the situation so closely for the past two years, the news that Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut withdrew his commitment to speak to 1,000 J Street U students at the upcoming J Street conference in Washington, D.C. shocked me in its ineptitude.
Though Hillel credited the presence at the conference of Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official and the PA’s chief negotiator as the reason, it’s now known that Fingerhut accepted J Street’s invitation after Erekat confirmed. Viewed in isolation, this is a highly misguided decision probably motivated more by threats to funding than by Fingerhut suddenly remembering who Saeb Erekat is. J Street says an invitation to speak does not equate an endorsement; clearly Hillel International disagrees.
When viewed in the larger context of J Street U’s relationship with Hillel, what exactly makes this withdrawal feel like such a slap in the face to J Street U students becomes clear. The two organizations’ relationships can best be described like this: Each year, Hillel escorts 1000’s of students to the annual AIPAC Policy Conference while J Street receives yearly reassurances that it is indeed within Hillel’s tent. This sentiment was first expressed In September 2010, when then-Hillel CEO Wayne Firestone had a meeting with a group of J Street U students that then-New Voices editor Ben Sales characterized as “productive” in an article called “J Street Conference: Hillel Hearts J Street.” Since then, most campus J Street U chapters have enjoyed good relationships with their Hillels, though the tension has never gone away.
Last year saw three major developments in J Street U’s quest for full acceptance within Hillel: The most major success happened in December 2013 in the aftermath of Swarthmore Hillel’s decision to become the first Open Hillel, when Hillel spokesman David Eden told the New York Times that “J Street and J Street U… are more than welcome” at Hillel. This message was reinforced at the J Street U Student Town Hall in Baltimore that spring when Sheila Katz, former director of Ask Big Questions, current vice president for social entrepreneurship of Hillel International, told the crowd of nearly 300 students from all over the country that there was “no question J Street U is in the tent.” Notably, she said this as a controversy brewed at Boston University Hillel over whether J Street U should be allowed under its auspices (it eventually was). Now this progress is all but gone.
Part of the reason why may be the third major development, one which people usually don’t think about in connection with J Street U and Hillel: the Open Hillel movement coming to national prominence in late 2013. Before Open Hillel was a household name in much of the Jewish world, Hillel International could voice support for J Street U in theory, then leave it up to individual franchises to determine their own policies. Now that Open Hillel has launched an assault on the umbrella organization’s Standards of Partnership, it has to be extremely careful about what it does and does not allow, lest it be seen as caving to the dissenters’ demands. Harvard Hillel’s “From Selma to Ferguson” event last month featuring a diverse panel of speakers, including BDS advocate Dorothy Zellner, is widely viewed as a victory for Open Hillel, who used the event to launch a national tour of Jewish Freedom Summer vets critical of Israel, meant to pressure Hillels into violating their own guidelines. Yesterday, Swarthmore’s Jewish club announced it will drop “Hillel” from its name following legal pressure from Hillel International in the wake of its plans to host the veterans (but notably not in response to the open dialogue on Israel-Palestine issues it hosted last week).
The same way that the election of President Obama created the Tea Party and the establishment of the Reform Movement created Orthodoxy as we know it today, so too Open Hillel may end up responsible for shifting Hillel’s politics to the right. If it does, the timing couldn’t be worse: each year, hundreds more students attend the J Street conference, Israel politics on campus are increasingly divisive, PM Netanyahu’s Congressional speech and dirty, last-minute appeals to the far-right on the eve of reelection have divided the American Jewish community in ways unseen in recent memory, and Hillel International’s response is to take sides. Taking Fingerhut at his word that Erekat’s presence was the real reason he backed out, he wasn’t even scheduled to share a stage with Erekat, and even if they did get into dialogue, he could have taken it as an opportunity to model for students how to respectfully have a debate with someone you vehemently disagree with, thus demonstrating how to engage in dialogue and effective advocacy on campus.
Instead, he chose to demonstrate that all we can learn from the other side is how not to “normalize.”
In light of this and yesterday’s news from Swarthmore, it should now be obvious that as long as Fingerhut is in charge, the more pressure exerted on Hillel International, the further to the right they will go and will expect their campus affiliates to go as well, and everyone in Hillel needs to realize that this is playing into Open Hillel’s hands. In other words, the more Fingerhut embodies Open Hillel’s negative caricature of him, the more attractive Open Hillel (or no Hillel) will become to an ever-increasing number of alienated students. Campus Hillels must play a role in easing the damage. They can begin fighting accusations of being in the pockets of right-wing donors, endear themselves to students who distrust them, and counteract some negative PR in one fell swoop by simply touting their delegations to J Street the way they tout their delegations to AIPAC. The University of Chicago has done this and I hope others will follow suit. It’s not too late.
The Rabbinical saying, “All Israel are responsible for one another” is more than just a proverb, it has proven itself true time and again. In an era of increasing anti-Semitism and assimilation, the open, pluralistic, and proudly Jewish atmosphere Hillels offer in the laboratory of identity that is the college campus is irreplaceable. Though it’s impossible not to offend somebody if you’re doing your job right, the Jewish People can’t afford the risks Hillel is taking with its future.
Derek M. Kwait graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and is editor in chief of New Voices.
