In July of 2014, sirens pierced the Jerusalem air, warning of rockets coming from Gaza. Nathan Young, then a 22-year-old junior studying abroad, leaped off the bus heading toward his dorm room at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and hurried into a gas station store-turned-bomb-shelter, feeling numb.
Young recalls being on the phone with a fellow student abroad at the time the sirens went off. “I was talking about how things were so terrible,” he said, “and then it got worse.” This experience and others like it opened Young’s eyes to realities on the ground in Israel-Palestine and influenced his path to becoming an anti-occupation activist.
Young’s story is of a person-in-progress, crossing implicit boundaries between groups of people and making his own decisions.
Upon returning home, Young decided to take time off from Brandeis University to recover from living in a country in active conflict. Now 27, he has not yet returned to Brandeis, but lives in Boston in a black hat yeshiva, an ultra-orthodox house of study where people learn Talmud and don black and white attire.
Outside of work, Young is involved in IfNotNow and the Workmen’s Circle. The former is a progressive movement founded in 2014 to oppose Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while the latter is a secular organization dedicated to celebrating Jewish culture and promoting social and economic justice.
Young grew up in Albany, New York alongside two sisters. His parents, both librarians, raised their children Modern Orthodox. “I did not have a TV growing up,” he recalled. As a child, he attended a Modern Orthodox day school run by Chabad-Lubavitch.
During the summer after 10th grade, a teenaged Young jumped at the opportunity to attend an academically intensive program at Yeshivat Har Etzion, located in a West Bank settlement. There, among a global cohort of students, he learned Talmud for the first time and toured biblical sites such as Beit Shemesh. “When I got back I wanted to take Jewish learning more seriously,” he said.
Fulfilling this commitment meant attending Brandeis University, where Young found a home in the “very strong Jewish community.” There, he became the Beit Midrash coordinator for an Orthodox affinity group, helping run Shabbat and keeping the books organized. His junior year, Young attended his first J Street U event, intrigued but nervous. He clearly recalls a friend, who heard that he would be going, telling him “please don’t give up any land.”
“As if it was my decision,” he laughed.
That summer, alongside friends from J Street U, Young decided to go back to Israel as part of a partnership between Brandeis and Al-Quds University, a Palestinian University in East Jerusalem. There, Young and his fellow Americans “got to know these Palestinian students and had a good time and…some difficult conversations.” Fittingly, the barrier-crossing conversations between the American and Palestinian students occurred against the backdrop of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
A turning point during his trip, he said, was seeing the wall surrounding Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem — a cement wall built in the early 2000s to incorporate the holy site into the Israeli side of the West Bank barrier even as the rest of the city remained under Palestinian authority. The tomb has been the site of a controversial struggle for control over the years.
“We were outside the wall of Rachel’s tomb and I realized that the wall cuts off Kever Raḥel so that it’s on the side of Israeli citizens. I was just shocked,” recalled Young, upon recognizing the political ramifications of the wall’s placement. “For the rest of the day, I didn’t speak,” he said. “I was so mad.”
Another turning point for Young came in June of 2014, when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped by Hamas members, causing a major uproar in the region and inciting violence. “I was in a friend’s dormitory and I just screamed ‘no!’ when I heard the news,” Young said. At synagogue, they prayed for the soldiers searching for the boys. Speaking to his new Palestinian friends gave him a more nuanced perspective. They told him about being woken up in the middle of the night by the noise of soldiers coming to arrest their neighbors.
“I saw a lot of my friends posting things like ‘if rockets were coming down on you what would you do?’” he said. “I was thinking, well they are coming down on me and I don’t want this to escalate.” His friends’ words on social media were mirrored by his lived experience, in which the sound of rocket sirens could be heard at least once a week, and running to a bomb shelter became an all-too-frequent part of his reality abroad.
Although Young described his attitude before this trip as “occupation agnostic,” his experiences in Israel-Palestine have transformed him into a passionate anti-occupation activist.
Upon returning to the United States, Young decided to take time off from Brandeis. “I needed that time to recover – to acclimate to the fact that there’s a war going on right now,” he said.
In place of attending University, Young got a job as a mashgiach, or kosher food supervisor, in Boston, where he lives now. Currently, he is one of four men living in a black hat yeshiva. His living situation comes with its ups and downs, he said. Despite the attire of those around him, Young himself wears neither the black hat nor black and white clothing, which can make it hard to fit in. However, living above a synagogue gives him the opportunity to commit to more intensive Jewish learning.
Young’s life in Boston is not only defined by where he lives but also by his extracurricular activities and advocacy work. Through the Workmen’s Circle, he has taken Yiddish classes and attended numerous Shabbat services.
As a way to extend his interest in J Street U to his life off-campus, Young also joined the local chapter of IfNotNow and has participated in anti-occupation protests. The protest against President Trump’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem stands out as particularly memorable for him.
The week of the embassy move, Young joined fellow IfNotNow members in a protest in Washington D.C. in front of the Trump hotel. “I told myself I’m gonna go, but I’m not going to block traffic. I didn’t want to risk arrest,” he said.
Bleary-eyed and empty-stomached thanks to Yom Kippur Katan fasting, Young arrived on the early May morning excited to protest. As co-master of ceremonies, he directed the march and spread IfNotNow’s message to hundreds of people.
Despite the crowd blocking off the street, no one got arrested. However, that same day, many Palestinians in Gaza were shot and killed for protesting. In comparison, his own protest “didn’t feel like a victory at all,” Young said.
Young acknowledged that, as a Modern Orthodox Jew, he does not fit the usual demographic for IfNotNow members. “It can sometimes be awkward,” he acknowledged, describing how Shabbat dinners often don’t serve kosher food and how many group members share childhood connections that he lacks. Despite the difficulties, however, Young is committed to the organization’s cause.
Young is still discovering his role as an activist and a Jewish learner. Wherever his path takes him, he says that he carries with him a belief in a brighter future, one buoyed by standing up for his beliefs and remaining open-minded.
Kayla Lichtman is a sophomore at Middlebury College studying anthropology and political science. She serves as a writer for the Middlebury Campus and her past work has appeared in Study Breaks Magazine.
Featured image credit: Pixabay.com/sgottschalk.
