The names of certain individuals have been changed or altered to protect the identities of student New Voices stands with campus organizers and honors their right to privacy.
I furiously paced back from the second vigil in two weeks as the only person to attend both. I wanted to scream at the utter futility of it all. How did we get here? On Connecticut College’s sleepy campus, the world turns slowly.
In my first three years at Conn, I wasn’t all that religious. Although as a teenager I broke with the large majority of my Reform B’nei Mitzvah class by taking the extra step of Confirmation at 16, within a couple years I lost the motivation I once had to ground myself in Jewish practice. However, in college, Hillel was always around when I wanted to make my mother happy by showing up for the High Holy Days, Pesach, and maybe Shabbat once in a while. I didn’t know many people there, but it was usually comfortable.
The leadership at Conn Hillel, one chapter among hundreds under Hillel International, know situations like mine are one of many in the tapestry of the American Jewish diaspora. A member of Conn Hillel’s student board explained their approach to me: “Because we are the sole institution for Jewish life [at Conn] I think CC Hillel has been a bit more widespread in our approach, and we kind of do what we think is best fit for the Connecticut College community.” However, as years went by and classes grew harder, I found myself unable to spare even a couple hours a week for services.
And yet, returning to Conn in January from medical leave, my urge to seek comfort among the tribe in the wake of October 7th led me right back to Hillel with a renewed sense of necessity.
Walking into Zachs Hillel House, the first thing that caught my eye was the whiteboard sign by the front door: “CONN HILLEL STANDS WITH ISRAEL.”
“This is where Shabbat is?” I asked the student greeter.
“You’re in the right place,” she replied. Am I in the right place?
I have nothing but good things to say about the service. Great pains were taken to make everyone feel included. Conn Hillel’s board, who are partially in charge of programming in collaboration with the Rabbi, are content to keep it that way. Another board member explained why: “[If you] grew up super religious, you’ll come to our events, and you’ll be like ‘they’re explaining the Hamotzi again, every Shabbat. We did this last weekend, last weekend, every week of my life.’ But that’s just something we do in case there’s one person who doesn’t know what the Hamotzi is.”
My evening turned from pleasant to wildly uncomfortable when at the post-service dinner, I was too stunned to speak as two underclassmen next to me euphemistically referred to Palestinians and their supporters as “those people” with “their media,” such as Al Jazeera. One of them bantered about how he had repeatedly harassed a now-former-friend over her support of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions [on Israel]) movement. Our Rabbi joined us midway through the story and gently pushed back on his methods – “Did you have to be so rude about it?” — but the table seemed to agree his heart was in the right place. The atmosphere was wildly different from how I remembered it before the 7th.
I was ready to never come back, but my mother convinced me to give it one more shot. “You’ll know who to avoid now,” she assured me. I’m glad I took her advice; armed with the knowledge of where not to sit, I quickly found warmth and comfort among the community at Hillel. The community was amazingly friendly, and I was grateful to find the company of Jewish peers that I once sought. That comfort was soon interrupted.
Within a month, the students from Conn’s Gender & Sexuality Programs refused to attend the annual Pride Shabbat due to Conn Hillel’s prior pro-Israel messaging causing allegations of pinkwashing. The Hillel board would soon decide to stop working with Gender & Sexuality Programs altogether. I was barely coming to terms with being nonbinary, so these rejections of and from the queer community stung in a way that I couldn’t articulate yet.
On a cold Thursday night in March, I spoke to Sonia while our friends took a smoke break outside the on-campus bar, Humphrey’s. She was a friend-of-a-friend, as most people at Conn are to each other. My buddy was describing his work with the Office of Spiritual and Religious Programs when, with my inhibitions lowered, I interjected about Hillel. This was about a month after the Pride Shabbat incident, but I was still reeling. I told the group how badly I wished I didn’t have to contend with Israel advocacy in my Jewish practice, and how painful it was to not be able to do anything about Gaza. Sonia met my frustrated gaze. She told me if I really wanted to enact change, she was among a group of activists working for just that. We traded contacts, and she added me to a group chat for the organization that would come to be known as Connecticut College Students in Solidarity with Palestine (CCSSP).
*
Lurking in the CCSSP group chat, I came to understand who was involved in the movement and what they wanted: mainly the college’s commitment to BDS, which I was initially ambivalent about. Almost everything I’d heard about boycotting Israel had been negative – Maybe Palestinians were mistreated, but defunding the Jewish state is beyond the pale. However, this wasn’t a moment where I was comfortable relying on the same sources I used to; seeing wildly reactionary rhetoric from even the Anti-Defamation League of all places made it clear that my understanding was incomplete. I admired the more established CCSSP members’ conviction; they didn’t wring their hands nearly as much as I tended to, and they embodied Tikkun Olam (“repairing the world”) naturally. After a couple weeks of listening and learning, there was a call to action: We need people to come talk to some of the Deans.
Upon meeting the Deans, we stressed the urgency of the situation in Gaza. They said they were on their way to some concessions, like building a Halal kitchen. It was civil, but the Deans never indicated they’d act on anything outside our campus. With the pressure off, why would they? Divesting from Israel remained just as far as when we walked in.
During the meeting, I recognized one of the other attendees from Hillel, an upperclassman named Esther. I finally found someone like-minded from there! Even though I was more than comfortable enough at Hillel – controversy aside, it was a weekly fixture and I’d certainly made friends there – the tension from those early Shabbats lingered. I eagerly asked Esther if she thought divestment was going to succeed. It immediately became apparent she wasn’t aware divestment was a goal here at all. “Maybe they’ll get to it later,” Esther shakily exclaimed, avoiding eye contact.
Although that moment made me briefly fear for my social and spiritual life at Hillel, nothing came of it. I suppose Esther wouldn’t have wanted it getting out that she was sitting beside a BDS advocate, either.
Despite an agreement with the Deans preventing CCSSP from staging a full encampment in exchange for a line of contact with them and the Board of Trustees, the door was wide open for smaller-scale actions, like the chalk murals that began cropping up in front of our student centers and dining halls. The murals were blunt; they condemned Zionism, accused Israel of genocide, and called Connecticut College complicit in the whole ordeal. One mural, depicting Aaron Bushnell burning in uniform, brought the artists into a stern meeting with administration; “ZIONIST VIOLENCE KILLS,” it read.
One chalker told me about an incident where things didn’t go smoothly: “A student came up to us. They asked us, like, why we’re doing this and what we’re doing. And… we kind of explained, you know, ‘We want Palestine to be free from living under an occupation’. And they were like, ‘Do you want Palestine to be free from Israel or from Hamas?’ Which then got into them being like, ‘Do you condemn Hamas?’ And we were like, ‘You know, that’s not what we’re doing. What we’re talking about, what we’re focusing on, we’re focusing on the fact that a powerful country who’s backed by the entire power of the West is hurting people.’ … For an Arab student who is trying to do this work, to then be asked ‘Do you condemn Hamas?’ It seems very racially targeted.”
When I asked if she thought the encounter would have gone the same if her group only had white students, she replied “I can’t say for sure, but I think the way that Arab students are treated is distinctly different.”
Fearing for my privacy, I didn’t show my activist face in public like some other CCSSP members. No one in Hillel knew about my double-life as a BDS advocate, but they didn’t have to. It was easier that way. I loved coming back every Friday to perform mitzvot with friendly faces, especially after the whiteboard message was changed to read “Shabbat Shalom.”
Another member of Conn Hillel’s board told me why that change happened: “The reason it was up [since the] first semester was because we had a board member who was very, very insistent on it being there, and you could not argue … while certain folks probably didn’t think anything of it, there were definitely a lot of folks who were like, ‘I don’t want to go to Hillel if they’re going to be supporting policies that I don’t agree with.’”
*
The minutiae on campus changed with furtive glances and strongly worded emails. While CCSSP organized in whatever spaces people lent us, Israeli bombs continued to rip through Gaza. In May 2024, the United Nations estimated over 35,000 Palestinians were killed in the carnage, among whom only 24,686 were “fully identified.” An untold number were languishing under rubble. An even greater number had suffered debilitating injuries and trauma. Negotiations to make Conn’s Board of Trustees vote on divestment continued to stall, and CCSSP was deeply frustrated. We decided a show of force was necessary.
On May 2nd, CCSSP announced a Palestine solidarity rally scheduled five days later. That same day, 90 Conn faculty members signed a “Statement of Solidarity with Student Protestors”, explicitly aligning themselves with the collegiate Palestinian liberation movement across the country. Not everyone knew what was planned for the rally, and to some Conn students, that plus the faculty statement being publicized in quick succession caused grave concern – so much concern, that at 10:59 PM I received this email:
“Dear CC Hillel,
The CCHillel board invites you to join us at 7:30 pm on Monday, May 6th, in the Zachs Hillel House Great Room. This informal gathering will be an opportunity for us to discuss the ongoing events on college campuses including those that have taken place here and are currently being planned. There is no RSVP, and we look forward to seeing you there.“
I read the message again. And again. I grew queasy as it dawned on me what I needed to do.
The venerated Jewish sage Hillel the Elder once said “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” In the comparatively less venerated Hillel the Student Organization At Conn, my Jewish community was in distress. Having been involved in planning the same rally the Hillel board made an open forum about, I knew perfectly well they weren’t in any danger.
If I am not for myself, who is for me? The tension of doing the very thing that was making my community so scared was eating away at me, even before this rally was announced. I needed to resolve it somehow.
And if I am only for myself, what am I? On the other hand, my turmoil paled in comparison to that of the dozens of people who’d show up at this forum. Even if theirs wasn’t all rational, the suffering it inflicted was very real and needed to be remedied.
And if not now, when? There was a clear time and place to do this. I needed to show up at the open forum, tell them how I knew what was going on at the rally, and assuage their fears.
I lost sleep over that second part. No one in Hillel, save for Esther, knew about my involvement in CCSSP. Anything I’d say about the rally wouldn’t be credible unless I gave that up. What would happen to my reputation? It wouldn’t be grounds to kick me out, but people have ostracized each other since forever. Would anyone speak to me during Shabbat dinner anymore? Would I have a minyan here?
Three days passed. On the evening of the fourth, I walked trepidatiously down the damp street. As I approached Zachs Hillel House’s front lawn, I recited the Shema under my breath. It felt appropriate. Only a year ago I would’ve laughed if you told me I’d ever sincerely pray again. This time, I was asking God to let me keep the place where I learned to love prayer.
I showed up early. The fluorescent lighting in the Great Room burned into me like opening the curtains after sleeping in. As dozens more people trickled in, my heart pounded further through my chest. If I hadn’t taken an antacid earlier I might have thrown up. Isaac, a Conn Hillel board member, sat to my left. To my right was the professor of a class I took two years prior. He didn’t recognize me. Our Rabbi took a seat at the head of the elongated table, almost opposite to myself. The distance between us had never appeared greater.
After the meeting formally began, my memory of it is mostly a blur. Some attendees were red in the face. A couple of us seemed to be outright crying. When I related this part of the story to a friend months later, he asked if those were crocodile tears. He referenced a viral video from Twitter where Israel-advocate students were seemingly exposed for fake-crying to get media attention. “There were no cameras,” I responded. “Who could they be crying to except each other?”
We first discussed the faculty statement, and what an antisemitic thing it was. Some folks were concerned for their well-being as students of the signing faculty, especially given the letter’s disavowal of Zionism and use of the phrase “Jewish supremacy” referencing the Israeli government. Anyone who’d sign such a (purportedly) bigoted statement shouldn’t be trusted to lord over a young person’s future, after all.
The meeting turned to tomorrow’s rally. I perked up. As others began to speak about it with contempt, my sense of “If not now” was fighting tooth and nail against my sense of being scared shitless. A number of us were sincerely worried the rally would be a pretense for assaulting Jewish people; at that point, a third sense began to boil up: anger. Who are they to slander the justice movement I’ve been helping to build? All of a sudden, I indignantly raised my hand.
When Isaac called on me, fear gripped me once more. I reconsidered everything before finding a compromise:
“I’m friends with some of the organizers,” I uttered in half-truth, every fiber in my body working overtime to stay composed. Some people’s eyes narrowed, but I continued. “They’re good people, I promise. All they’re doing is marching and making speeches. Nothing more. No one is attacking anybody.” The student who spoke after me was skeptical; I was under such a cocktail of hormones I could barely focus on what she said, but I remember she expressed doubt that any anti-Zionist could be a good person. However, the widespread condemnation I’d been bracing for hadn’t come yet.
A couple responses later, Isaac leaned over to me and whispered. “What else do you know?” I tensed up, then I saw his face. He was genuinely curious. “I’ll get there,” I whispered back. I raised my hand again.
Now I didn’t have to work quite as hard to appear calm, and my speech was much clearer. This time, I outlined the whole plan for the rally, down to which buildings we’d be passing by. The rest of the meeting passed in a flash.
I was still breathing a little heavily when we got up from our chairs. While I checked my phone, Abigail, an underclassman, approached me. She told me I’d helped her sleep tonight. We laughed about how much drama a letter could cause. Another student closer to my age approached me next. He shook my hand and told me I ought to be a writer. I walked out of Zachs Hillel House with a fuller heart than when I entered.
Realizing my work that night was only half done, I made a beeline to CCSSP’s last-minute meeting before tomorrow’s rally; the other organizers needed to know how scared Hillel was. I arrived panting, and immediately recounted the open forum. The others’ reactions ranged from confused to incredulous, and understandably so. The assumption of violence from Arabs and Arab-world-related causes seeps through American culture.
We made some last-minute changes to the rally, including a statement specifying that we condemned Political Zionism in particular. After much arguing, we also altered the “From the River to the Sea” chant to avoid scaring people. None of that amounted to much; our crowd of ~100 still got a few vocal counter-protestors who made up their minds about us long ago. The crowd misheard our modified version of “From the River…” and just rolled with the original. One attendee told me months later “[The statement about Political Zionism] seemed like very much a political tool to differentiate themselves. It felt like an addendum almost, that’s how I felt, but I didn’t like that very much … I was just not sympathetic to the way they said it.”
A week after the semester ended, my Rabbi from Hillel forwarded an email: two board members created a letter responding to the faculty statement, in an effort to “help those who signed recognize the harm of their words on Jewish students,” and they wanted signatures. Their letter positioned them as speaking for Conn’s Jewish population in accusing the faculty of “quot[ing] Nazi propaganda” and “facilitat[ing] the erasure of Jewish history,” among other charges. I started a reply, asking them to please, for our safety, make the letter say clearly that it didn’t speak for everyone. I sighed, and left it sitting in my drafts; only fourteen people signed anyway.
*
That summer, a Dean’s proposal bounced through my head: he wanted Hillel and CCSSP to talk directly instead of each group complaining to him individually. I anxiously fixated on the moment where I’d come to this meeting, and Hillel would finally discover my real leanings. I ought to stand up for my actions. I ought to stand up for my friends.
In an effort to speak eloquently when the time came, I devoured essays, books, lectures, and debates about Israel-Palestine. As the situation in Gaza worsened, my news feed became increasingly Levant-centric. The line between studying and doomscrolling grew ever more thin. I practiced talking about the issue in real life by canvassing with Jews for Jamaal, which put me in contact with JFREJ, for whom I eventually commuted a couple hours via bus and train to attend a heartfelt seminar about “Hard Conversations on Israel-Palestine.”
In August 2024, Gaza’s Health Ministry announced that 40,000 Palestinians had been killed in a devastating campaign whose genocidal intent was clear enough for 13 countries to join a case against Israel in the International Court of Justice. Due to Gaza’s crippled health infrastructure, the “official” count has since plateaued around there, but analysis in The Lancet estimated 186,000 deaths in July.
Once the semester began, Hillel kept going as per usual. My offhand comments about growing up with Debbie Friedman’s music resulted in my hiring by the Rabbi to play guitar for our services, an honor which made my time at Zachs Hillel House that much more meaningful. A first-year told me about how she came to enjoy Hillel: “I wanted more Jewish community because I come from somewhere that doesn’t really have any Jews, and I think I found that immediately … it was just really welcoming, and it was nice to be able to see everybody there.”
Yet grief and anger festered as classes started. I wasn’t the only one who felt this way; when CCSSP first formally convened in September, one of our first resolutions was to hold a vigil in October to mark one year of bloodshed. While we tossed around ideas in the group chat, Hillel reached out:
“Hello Claire,
Abigail and I (Hillel board members) would like to meet with some of the members in the Palestine student group to have a discussion about what a collaboration for a vigil would entail. Could we find a time to meet in the near future?
Thanks,
Esther”
The CCSSP chat was pleasantly surprised, if not a little cautious. After a semester of antipathy toward our work, was the Hillel board changing their tune? Personally, I was just trying to calm myself down. The moment I had fixated on for half a year was now imminent. The Hillel board wouldn’t just find out about my activism, I’d be speaking directly to them as an activist. It was now or never.
Or was it? No one was making me come to this thing, after all. I could always just not express interest, and the board (except Esther) would be none the wiser. But then what would be the point of everything I did all summer? If I really wound up losing my job over this, was it worth keeping? I steeled my nerves, and asked Claire to bring me into the meeting with her.
In the meantime, I tried to project optimism in the chat: “I think it’s really good that they reached out first though! This looks like a show of good faith.” I was reassuring myself just as much as the others. One reply underscored the coming struggle: “True and I appreciate them reaching out, but I am concerned they may have different concepts for said vigil.”
The more we discussed the upcoming meeting with Hillel, the more our optimism dwindled. I learned that prior attempts in Fall ‘23 at getting their board to work with us on ceasefire phonebanking sessions had been soundly rejected, so CCSSP’s expectations were on the floor; an organizer told me “I can say at least I, personally, have tried very hard not to make assumptions about how our [Hillel] chapter feels, but I think between saying they stand with the state of Israel, holding a pinkwashing event, and not wanting to collaborate with us on a ceasefire event … it was hard to get any other impression.”
I desperately tried not to let the growing cynicism affect me as I walked into the last CCSSP meeting before our joint discussion. We agreed to send Claire, myself, and another member to speak with Esther and Abigail. What points would we push? What could we concede? Was this worth anyone’s time?
I brought up Hillel International’s Standards of Partnership, which prohibit chapters from collaborating with organizations that “delegitimize” or “support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against” Israel. We’d proudly done both of those through our activism. Claire thought of this before I did – Esther had told her that since CCSSP didn’t have a published constitution yet, Hillel technically didn’t have any points of disagreement with us. They’re bending the rules for us, I thought. I smiled; maybe something really would come of these talks.
The conversation turned to what we were or weren’t willing to bend on. We immediately agreed never to cede the word “genocide” under any circumstances. Not calling the genocide of Gaza what it is would disrespect the memory of its victims. Some other ideas could be flexed as long as we could broadly acknowledge Israel as the main perpetrator of not only the conditions that led to October 7th, but the vast majority of injury and death afterward.
The room heated up as we struggled to agree more specifically on our vision for the vigil. Paul, a first-year CCSSP member, wanted us to also hold space for the Israeli victims of October 7th.
A more established member rebuked him – “There’s never been anything dedicated to Palestinian victims on this campus, and now you want us to lump settlers in with them?”
I was taken aback – “Israel’s policy led to their murders! They’re victims too!” I wasn’t very eloquent about it.
An upperclassman called time-out. We stopped, and collectively took a breath. Paul picked up where we left off – “If we leave out any of the dead,” he said, “we’re no better than Zionists.”
I tried to find a middle ground – “We could mention the Israeli victims but keep it proportionally brief?” No one liked that idea; unable to reach consensus, we shelved the issue.
A couple weeks later, I asked Paul about the meeting. He responded “It was filled with ambition, and I feel like a little bit of, not necessarily anger – I use the word ‘anger’ because in the past, these students haven’t been able to actually hold their own vigil the way they want to, or the ones that have been held should’ve been held differently because they didn’t talk about certain topics.”
Paul saw much of the room, including me, as disagreeing with him, which confounded me. Looking back, I think I understand where he was coming from. Whether or not I realized it, I was asking to minimize talking about the Israeli victims by asking for it to be “proportionally brief”.
I also understand the others who got upset at my suggestion. Our vigil was shaping up to be not just about grief, but a reaffirmation of our commitment to stopping the genocide overseas. While the October 7 attacks ended that same day, the death toll in Gaza continues to rise. Of course a truly liberated Palestine still includes safety for Jewish civilians; reasonable people will take this as a given. Thus, when we qualify “Free Palestine” with footnotes, like a token “proportional” mention of Israelis whose polity doesn’t face nearly the same existential threat, are we still saying the same thing?
On the morning of our conversation with Hillel, I was surprised at my composure, considering that unlike the open forum, I couldn’t cop out anymore. Abigail, Esther, our Rabbi, and the rest of the board knew exactly why I was there. There were a few things that reassured me: for one, I’d gotten to know both of these board members much better since the Spring. I had found out that both of them were quite level-headed, and we’d broken challah bread together more times than I could count.
Furthermore, I’d done my share of preparation. Back in March, I was suddenly thrust into the grim, high-stakes world of activism almost by accident. Everything I learned about it was on the fly. Taking the summer to recuperate and practice talking about Palestine, often with complete strangers, gave me the confidence to carry that skill into my personal life. In the days leading to our meeting, I pored over my notes from the JFREJ seminar, and made peace with the fact that whatever might happen, I’d only ever done what my conscience said I should.
*
We met up with Abigail and Esther in sunny September weather in front of the library. We exchanged pleasantries, as I quickly found out my CCSSP cohort also knew them. As we moved indoors to begin formally talking, I thanked my lucky stars for an amicable start.
It took five minutes to figure out that a joint vigil would never happen. Abigail made it clear from the outset – “We can’t sign onto anything that calls the war in Gaza a ‘genocide.’” It turned out our red line, the word “genocide,” was the same as theirs, but for the opposite reason.
Later, I asked one of the board members who weren’t there how they got to that stance; they said “While there are many people who say this is undoubtedly a genocide, there are many people who say this is not a genocide. [The board] voted, and we said if they were going to use the ‘genocide’ terminology, we did not want to be part of it. And while I recognize that there are horrific things going on in Gaza, that’s something that every single person on the board recognizes. No one agrees with what’s going on, that this is the right way to achieve peace.”
We spent most of the remainder figuring out how to stay out of each other’s hair; the Hillel board, far from any explicitly political goals, mostly just didn’t want to stir trouble. They were already planning a Yizkor (memorial service) for the Hebrew calendar anniversary of October 7th, and as the same board member told me, “[A joint vigil] would be a very good demonstration of solidarity with each other, being like, this isn’t about politics, this is about humanitarian efforts.”
That refrain of rejecting “politics” kept coming up, both during the meeting and when I was speaking to board members afterward. Conn, historically, hasn’t exactly been a hotbed of bleeding-edge leftism, so seeing the Palestinian liberation movement work its way into this quiet little campus, to someone who’d only ever heard fearmongering about it, might appear as a fundamental violation of the way things are. Standing with Israel isn’t political, it’s just what we do. By that standard, anything to do with (even nonviolent) Palestinian resistance isn’t merely political, it’s radical.
After the meeting, Esther and I stayed behind. Even though by all accounts the meeting was genial, I was a little shaken. I’d put untold hours into being ready for this moment, and it had just uneventfully come and gone. I told her “I’ve been telling the other organizers not to treat Hillel as a monolith, but I’ve been afraid of that imaginary monolith all the same. It’s been tough, you know?” Esther understood where I was coming from – “I’m trying my best, too,” she said.
Chilly winds stirred as I and about twenty others approached the steps of Fanning Hall. Our first public action for Palestine since May was borne of despair. We’d spent a couple hours the prior day making artwork, and the fruits of our labor were displayed on a small table illuminated by candles whose flames fought the night sky. An organizer went over some ground rules – this wasn’t a space for bigotry – then we read statistics about the carnage in Gaza, and now Lebanon. Dozens of neighborhoods razed, hundreds of false “safe zones”, thousands of families ended, an infinity unto one soul. We opened the floor for anyone to speak.
Under the cover of night, we freely expressed our desperation. Each of us had been putting on a brave face for so long, but deep down we knew things would get worse before they’d ever get better. We took turns yelling, weeping, and brushing the snot off our faces. The candles we held were a reminder that life, fragile though it may be, could still persevere. A CCSSP member in attendance later told me “It’s hard showing up at events [like this] and not fully breaking down. Sometimes I think I’m being a little disruptive when I’m in shambles, like I can’t hold my tears. And this has been like the first time ever in my organizing career where I couldn’t keep my composure, where I couldn’t be the strong face or the person that was comforting others.”
As the vigil came to a close, I saw Esther in the crowd. We embraced.
*
Two weeks later, I sat in front of a short table in Zachs Hillel House, otherwise empty except for three candles and eleven people gathered around them. Our Rabbi invited us, as we lit them, to ponder what each one might mean. “One for the murdered on October 7th, one for the hostages, and one for the Israeli first responders,” someone suggested. Ultimately, we were left to consider our own meaning as we began praying. Then, the Rabbi gave us space to talk.
Roughly half of us spoke, most deeply connected to the tragedy of October 7th. One mourner was in Tel Aviv on the 7th. Another witnessed testimony of a Nova Festival survivor whose friends were shot in a ditch by Hamas soldiers, herself only spared because she abandoned the group. Someone else had personally known a young Israeli who was taken hostage on the 7th, the world unsure of his fate until video of his last words before being executed emerged in September.
Once everyone had said their piece, we prayed once more. I was devastated by what I heard, and touched by the service’s tender humanity, but my stomach dropped as our prayer books turned from Am Yisrael (the Jewish people) to Medinat Yisrael (the state of Israel). I mouthed along, but I found my voice simply couldn’t manifest for the Israeli government. As the service closed with Hatikvah, I was at a loss.
And so I furiously paced back from the second vigil in two weeks as the only person to attend both. I wanted to scream at the utter futility of it all. I thought we had come within grasping distance of CCSSP and Hillel putting their differences aside to mourn together, but clearly we were never even close.
No one was close to anything substantive, really. Conn’s Board of Trustees hadn’t voted on divestment after a year of advocacy. Even CCSSP’s smaller demands, like the Halal kitchen we’d ostensibly see funded, mostly still haven’t yet materialized. After those Hillel board members responded to the faculty statement, they received neither the “public statement [of accountability],” nor the “facilitated dialogue” they asked for. One involved Hillel member later told me that a Dean had arranged it so that some of the signers could be exempted from classes with professors they found uncomfortable, but this was far from a permanent arrangement. These students will leave the college eventually, and nothing will have fundamentally changed.
What’s the point, then? Why put so much effort into reconciling two groups with a litany of reasons to never even talk? Why apply pressure to a small liberal arts college whose investments probably don’t make a meaningful difference to Israel anyway?
Jewish thought teaches us that “whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” Even if all of Conn’s investments collectively afford the IDF one bullet to murder one person, it is as though we save a world by stopping that. This illustrates not only the value of life, but the fact that no person is an island, and one life can alter so many others for generations to come. Even when the stakes aren’t life and death, by actively fighting our prejudices towards each other, our actions reverberate into a less prejudiced world for those who come after us.
Yet it would be missing the forest for the trees to come away from this year with the simple impression that life is valuable and we should be nicer to each other. Looking back, I feel angry at all the effort I and others in CCSSP wasted trying to appear more palatable, particularly at May’s rally. Such posturing is immensely unproductive, especially considering how our staunchest opponents constantly felt threatened anyway. Open-minded folks were still able to talk to us, regardless of appearances.
Hillel International actively repulses progressive students, including many Jews, with its aggressively reactionary Israel policy. This doesn’t stop individual chapters, like Conn’s, from being incredibly caring, supportive, and worth visiting to find an enriching Jewish community. Hillel doesn’t always make it easy, but be sincere in your convictions and take up space; your authenticity might inspire those too quiet to speak out. The more that individuals engage in communal life, the easier it gets to self-actualize, whether that involves making like-minded friends or starting new collectives. Alternatives are emerging. Coalitions are strengthening. Make the best of what you can but never stop looking towards the future.
It’s easy to feel catatonic coming to grips with unimaginable violence, oppression, and complicity, but a better world is possible where we create it together. Keep on loving. Keep on fighting.
