Announcing the 2013 PJA Board!

We are pleased to announce the 2013 Progressive Jewish Alliance board:

Chair: Rachel Sandalow-Ash

Vice-Chair of Programming: Josh Blecher-Cohen

Vice-Chair of Finances: Elena Hoffenberg

Vice-Chair of Advocacy: Sasha Johnson-Freyd

Vice-Chair of Education: Sandra Korn

Vice-Chair of Inter-Campus Outreach: Ann Finkel

Vice-Chair of Campus Outreach: Virginia Marshall

Chairs Emerita: Eva Roben and Emily Unger

Congratulations to all the new board members, and wishing you the best of luck in the year to come!

The Crimson on Imprisoned

Check out the article in today's Crimson about last night's event, including quote from first-year Danny Solomon!

And this, from Bryonn Bain:

“If we can use our privilege to raise awareness about these issues, we have not only an opportunity but an obligation to do that in some way.”

Spoken Word Artist and Visiting Lecturer Focuses on Racism, Awareness

By John P. Finnegan, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The fiery rhymes of Bryonn R. Bain, spoken word artist and visiting lecturer, filled the Student Organization Center at Hilles on Thursday night at a performance co-sponsored by the Harvard Progressive Jewish Alliance and Harvard College Speak Out Loud.

Bain, a graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law School, focused on “the prison industrial complex,” a term used to describe the burgeoning inmate population in the United States and the impact of the prison on the African American community.

“Every black man with sagging pants ain’t a criminal,” said Bain, “despite subliminal media messages to the contrary.”

In the first of two spoken word performances last night, Bain criticized those who claim that racism is no longer a problem, telling those people to “check the Thirteenth Amendment; slavery wasn’t abolished, it was just polished.”

As a second-year student at Harvard Law School in 1999, Bain was wrongfully arrested for vandalism outside a New York club. The police threw him against the wall and questioned his law school background, he said.

“The whole process is just dehumanizing,” said Bain, whose essay on his experience, entitled “Walking While Black,” was published in the Village Voice.

“I have all the degrees that the President has, plus one,” Bain said. “He ended up in the White House and I ended up in the jailhouse. How did this happen?”

The experience inspired Bain to educate young students about prison reform and to create a Columbia class called “Youth Voices on Lockdown” in 2003. The class, whose title was eventually changed to “Lyrics on Lockdown,” has been taught at New York University and The New School. Students in the classes spend part of the semester visiting a corrective facility.

Bain is currently teaching a course at Harvard called “Hip Hop and the Spoken Word.”

In addition to discussing mass incarceration and racism, Bain covered topics as varied as America’s fading spirituality and the death of creativity at the hour-long event.

The audience expressed their admiration of Bain through laughter, applause, and snaps at particularly smooth lines.

“I thought it was quite powerful,” said Daniel J. Solomon ’16. “Anytime you connect politics to art, it makes it that much more potent.”

Bain’s new book, “The Ugly Side of Beautiful: Rethinking Race and Prisons in America,” will be published next week.

Bain ended his performance with a call for change.

“If we can use our privilege to raise awareness about these issues,” Bain said, “we have not only an opportunity but an obligation to do that in some way.”

TONIGHT: Imprisoned

[Imprisoned]

a Slam Poetry Performance

and Discussion

with

Bryonn Bain

prison activist, spoken word poet, hip hop artist, actor, author, and Harvard lecturer

on his time wrongfully imprisoned

and the injustices of the American prison system

Rabb Hall, Harvard Hillel

52 Mt. Auburn St.

Thursday, November 29^th at 8:30 pm

Co-sponsored by the Progressive Jewish Alliance and Speak Out Loud

For more information and to RSVP, go to our facebook event!

Students Vote Yes on Referenda!

Congratulations to students in the Responsible Investment at Harvard Coalition, the Divest for Our Future Campaign, and Our Harvard Can Do Better -- students voted decisively in favor of changed sexual assault policy and ethical investment in last week's election.

Post on New Voices: Open Dialogue

Read our post on New Voices blog, news and views of campus Jews!

Open Dialogue at Hillel?

OP-ED, OPINION | NOVEMBER 18, 2012 BY SANDRA KORN | 1 COMMENT

Could it be that posters like this are dangerous at Harvard Hillel?
Credit: Progressive Jewish Alliance

Last week, it became painfully clear to the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) that Hillel is moving farther and farther from being “the foundation of Jewish campus life” that it claims to be.

As an affiliated group of Harvard Hillel, PJA tries to promote dialogue and discussion between Jews and Palestinians on campus and to bring progressive voices on the Israel-Palestine conflict to the Hillel community. As such, we planned an event for this Thursday, “Jewish Voices Against the Israeli Occupation,” to feature two Jewish pro-peace activists speaking about their work in non-violent anti-occupation organizing.

After originally approving the event, the executive director of Harvard Hillel, Jonah Steinberg, told us that he had been pressured by groups including the Combined Jewish Philanthropies and Hillel International to forbid us from hosting our event within Harvard Hillel. The rationale? We are co-sponsoring the event with the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), a student group that supports the 2005 call for an international boycott of, divestment from, and sanction (BDS) of Israel. They believe this is a means of pressuring it to end its occupation and halt discrimination against Palestinians. According to Hillel International’s Guidelines for Campus Israel Activities, Hillels may not host, affiliate with, or invite speakers from any groups that “as a matter of policy or practice” support BDS. In fact, the guidelines also forbid Hillels from partnering with those who do any of the following: “deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized borders,” “delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel,” or “exhibit a pattern of disruptive behavior towards campus events or guest speakers or foster an atmosphere of incivility.”  We believe these are vague guidelines that could be applied to many Jewish and Palestinian pro-peace groups.

The “Jewish Voices Against the Occupation” event, since relocated to another building, will go ahead–and will still be sponsored by both PJA and PSC. Yet removing this event from Hillel sends the message that the organized Jewish community on campus rejects cooperation with Palestinian groups. Too often, Palestinian voices are silenced from discussions about their own right to self-determination. Hillel International’s policy perpetuates this, ensuring that most on-campus Palestine groups, like Students for Justice in Palestine, can never co-sponsor with or even walk into Hillel.

We are disturbed that a conversation about non-violent organizing for peace could not happen in Hillel, nominally a campus center for Jewish life and discussion about Israel. If it truly wishes to allow students to engage critically with American and Israeli politics, Hillel International should have no policy on the political affiliation of groups, organizations, and speakers that it partners with, houses, and hosts.

As the pro-peace movement evolves, Hillel International’s narrow political restrictions are increasingly unrepresentative of the opinions of the wider American Jewish community. For example, avowed Zionist Peter Beinart advocates for a boycott of products produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a means of protest against Israel’s expansionism, for he argues that such expansionism both infringes on the rights and future statehood of Palestinians and endangers Israel’s own long-term security. Hillel’s policies led Brandeis’s Hillel to reject the appeal for membership of the Brandeis chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, because JVP advocates for divestment from companies that profit from the occupation.

On Monday, PJA sent an open letter to the Harvard Hillel community in which we noted that “we feel less welcome and included in a community that sets a political litmus test to determine which Jewish students and groups will be allowed in.” Casting all calls for boycott as essentially “anti-Semitic” and unilaterally removing them from conversation actually excludes Jewish as well as Palestinian voices from the Hillel community, and can only hamper efforts to achieve peace in Israel and Palestine.

In the coming weeks, we will be joining with pro-peace students at Hillels across the country to ask Hillel International to change its policy so that Hillel can truly be a campus center of dialogue about Israel and Palestine. No matter what our personal political views are, we know that true peace can only be achieved through open discussion, cooperation, and inclusion. Excluding Palestinian voices and pro-peace Jewish voices from Jewish campus centers is not a move towards peace. Learning from others may be.

Harvard students Emily Unger and Rachel Sandalow-Ash also served as co-authors for this op-ed.

Op-Ed from the Crimson: An Open Hillel

Check out PJA's recent op-ed in the Harvard Crimson!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An Open Hillel

By SASHA JOHNSON-FREYD, RACHEL SANDALOW-ASH, and EMILY S. UNGER

Last week, in an attempt to save money on kosher meals, Harvard University Dining Services put up a sign outside the Hillel dining hall stating that only members and invited guests of the Jewish community should eat there. In response, Hillel’s executive director, Jonah C. Steinberg, asserted that this externally imposed restriction “creates conflict with [Hillel’s] inclusive and welcoming environment.” Indeed, it is true that the Hillel community values the Hillel dining hall as an open space for all regardless of religious affiliation.

However, while this unfortunate situation is HUDS’s fault, not Hillel’s, Harvard Hillel hasn’t exactly proven itself a welcoming space for all in the past week. In fact, Hillel International policies have actively excluded important voices from Hillel—which is deeply disturbing to us, as members of the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance, a Hillel-affiliated group.

Yesterday, PJA co-sponsored an event entitled “Jewish Voices Against the Israeli Occupation” with the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee. The event featured two Jewish speakers—one Israeli and one American—involved in peaceful activism opposing Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank. The speakers discussed the relationship between their Jewish identity and their present activism, as well as ways in which students going on Birthright could encounter a more diverse array of perspectives on their trip.

Originally, PJA planned to hold this event within Harvard Hillel, believing that the center for the Jewish community on campus would be an ideal location for an event featuring Jewish speakers and dealing with a very salient topic for young Jewish Americans. However, Hillel’s leadership forced us to relocate the event, explaining that according to Hillel International’s “Guidelines for Campus Israel Activities,” Hillel will not “partner with, house, or host organizations that... support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions…against the State of Israel,” which PSC does. This policy prevents not only PSC but also Students for Justice in Palestine, the major Palestinian group on U.S. campuses with chapters at 50 colleges and universities around the country, from ever co-sponsoring events or even speaking in Hillel buildings. While Hillel International claims to “welcome a diversity of student perspectives on Israel” and to “create an inclusive, pluralistic community,” its guidelines encourage exclusivity rather than inclusivity and conformity rather than diversity.

As progressive Jews working for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine, we believe that a Hillel policy that encourages dialogue and collaboration with Palestinian groups is an essential step on the path toward peace. If we cannot reach across the divides of ethnicity, religion, and politics on our own campuses, how can we ever expect Israeli and Palestinian politicians to do so?

Many of those who defend Hillel’s current policy claim that the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement—or BDS for short—is anti-Semitic. However, while some who advocate for this position may be anti-Semitic, the movement as a whole is not. If Hillel allowed its members and the members of PSC to engage and work together, more Hillel students might come to understand, as we have, that PSC members support BDS not out of prejudice but as a non-violent political strategy that aims to change Israeli policies that they find unjust. While PJA does not endorse the international BDS movement—we believe that there are better ways to promote a two-state solution and the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians—the fact that we or others disagree on a political position is hardly grounds for banning that view from Hillel.

Hillel must embrace the values of open discussion in order to be truly pluralistic and serve all Jewish students. As we explained in an open letter to the Hillel community, Hillel International’s current policies exclude not only Palestinian perspectives, but also many progressive Jewish viewpoints, including a wide variety of opinions that are more moderate and mainstream within the Jewish community than the International BDS movement. For instance, Brandeis Hillel rejected an appeal for affiliation from Brandeis Jewish Voice for Peace, because the group had held an “Israeli occupation awareness week” and advocates selective divestment from companies that profit off the occupation. Prominent liberal Zionist Peter Beinart, who supports a boycott of the Israeli settlements as a strategy to pressure Israel to preserve its democratic character, could also be prevented from speaking at Hillel under these policies. Jewish student groups that support his position could be excluded from organized Jewish campus life. As progressive Jews, we do not feel comfortable in a religious and cultural community that maintains such political litmus tests.

In the coming days and weeks, we will be reaching out to students at Harvard and other colleges and universities to petition jointly Hillel International to remove these ideological requirements for affiliated groups, organizational partnership, and invited speakers. We hope that the wider Jewish community will support us as we advocate for a more open and inclusive Hillel.

Rachel J. Sandalow-Ash ’15 is a social studies concentrator in Lowell House. Sasha Johnson-Freyd ’15 is a human evolutionary biology concentrator in Pforzheimer House. Emily S. Unger ’13 is an organismic and evolutionary biology concentrator in Quincy House. They are on the board of the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance.

An Open Letter to the Hillel Community

The following letter, written by the members of PJA, has been sent out over various Hillel community listservs in response to the recent events at Hillel (outlined in the Crimson article posted below).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Hillel Community,

We, the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA), are writing to inform you of something deeply troubling that happened recently. Several weeks ago, PJA—a Hillel affiliated group—began working with the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) to plan a speaker event, “Jewish Voices Against the Israeli Occupation.” As two campus organizations that both work for peace and justice in Israel and Palestine, PJA and PSC often co-sponsor events. We planned to bring an Israeli Jew and an American Jew to talk about their work doing non-violent activism against the Israeli occupation, such as peaceful protests against the demolition of Palestinian homes. The speakers would also discuss how Jewish students going on Birthright could extend their stays in order to visit the West Bank in addition to Israel on their trip. Since this event is explicitly Jewish in nature and directed mainly at Jewish students, we believed that Hillel would be the ideal location for the event.

Initially, Jonah Steinberg (Hillel’s executive director) approved this event and told us that we could hold it in the Hillel building. We believed, after this first conversation, that Jonah had understood that PJA and PSC would be co-sponsoring the event, although we later learned that he had not. Once we put out advertisements for the event, Jonah began receiving complaints about this co-sponsorship, and he expressed uncertainty to us about whether this event could in fact be held in Hillel. Hillel International’s standards of partnership declare that “Hillel will not partner with, house, or host organizations, groups, or speakers that... support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions [BDS] against the State of Israel,” which PSC does. After major donors threatened to withdraw their money from Harvard Hillel, Jonah informed us that the event could no longer take place in the Hillel building.

We are disturbed and saddened by this decision to remove our event from Hillel. As progressive Jews working for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine, we believe that collaboration with Palestinian groups is essential.  We see such cooperation as a step on the path to peace, and we are disappointed that even when Palestinian groups reach out to partner with us, their overtures are rejected by our Jewish community.

The BDS movement is the largest non-violent campaign protesting the injustices of the Israeli occupation. Although we may have disagreements with this movement, we believe it is essential to find common ground and collaborate where we can. Completely shutting out any groups that advocate for BDS cuts off a huge portion of the population that cares about Israel/Palestine, including almost every Palestinian student group across the country. Excluding these ideas from the Hillel building does not make them disappear, but serves only to prevent productive dialogue and alienate people from Hillel. Jewish people who care about peace must frame our disagreements respectfully, allowing for discussion and thoughtful exchange of ideas, instead of putting up barriers to cooperation with others who seek peace.

Hillel International’s policy also excludes some Jews and Jewish groups from Hillel. For example, the Brandeis chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, which advocates for divestment from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation, was recently prevented from affiliating with Brandeis Hillel. We are disturbed to see progressive Jews excluded from Hillels for their political views. Although PJA is not currently in this situation, we feel less welcome and included in a community that sets a political litmus test to determine which Jewish students and groups will be allowed in. Such a community is not one that reflects our Jewish values of social justice and vigorous debate.

Within the Jewish community, boycott calls are becoming more mainstream. Peter Beinart, a well-known liberal Zionist who spoke at Harvard Hillel last spring, recently called for Jews who care about Israel to boycott the settlements as a protest against Israel’s continued expansion into Palestinian territory and the unequal treatment of Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank. Many progressive Jews agree with his position, yet Hillel International’s policies would exclude these voices from its Jewish community. If Hillel truly wants to be “the foundation for Jewish campus life,” it must represent and support all of the diverse views held by Jewish people.

Universities should promote open discussion, critical thinking, and debate, and Hillel should similarly uphold these values—values essential to a democratic society. This, of course, does not mean that Hillel needs to provide space for the expression of racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise hateful views. However, Hillel must not fall prey to the common fallacy that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. BDS is not an irrational, hate-based ideology—rather, it is a political position that can, and should, be discussed and debated.

Finally, we strongly object to the idea that outside organizations and donors can step in to prevent student-initiated programming in Hillel whenever they disagree with it. Hillel is, and should be, a student-driven community, and students ought to play the primary role in determining its policies and programming. Jonah wrote that Hillel’s Israel policy should be determined by “students, Board of Directors members, and stakeholders.” We wonder who these “stakeholders” are, and why they are given influence over Hillel’s policies equal to that of students. If students’ programming can only go forth according to the whims of Hillel’s donors, Hillel will quickly cease to be a meaningful center for Jewish student life.

In response to these recent events, we conclude that Hillel should have no policy on the political affiliation of groups, organizations, and speakers that it partners with, houses, and hosts. We ask that Hillel International remove its guidelines for Standards of Partnership for campus Israel activities, which currently work to exclude groups and individuals with particular political views from campus Hillels. Regardless of the actions taken by Hillel International, we believe that Harvard Hillel should not establish policies that put in place a political test for its co-sponsorships or affiliated groups. Rather, we hope that Harvard Hillel will lead the push for more inclusive policies on a national level.

PJA and PSC will still be holding the “Jewish Voices Against the Occupation” event—now in Emerson Hall 305 at 7:30pm this Thursday. We invite students from Hillel to attend and to talk to members of PSC, so that Hillel’s current restrictions will not stand in the way of dialogue between Jews and Palestinians on campus.

Most of all, we hope that a broad coalition of Hillel students of all political affiliations can come together in support of more open and inclusive policies. If you have any questions or concerns, members of PJA will be in the Hillel dining hall from 5-7 pm tonight, tomorrow, and Wednesday, and would be happy to talk to you. You can also contact Emily, the chair of PJA, at eunger@college.harvard.edu to bring up any thoughts or to find a time to talk about this in person.  

With hope for a more peaceful and inclusive future,
The Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance
Emily Unger
Rachel Sandalow-Ash
Sandra Korn
Eva Roben
Sasha Johnson-Freyd
Elena Hoffenberg
Joshua Blecher-Cohen
Ann Finkel
Virginia Marshall

PJA Queers the Hillel Library

Check out these books, purchased by PJA and BAGELS, now available in the Hillel lounge!

PJA movie night: Young, Jewish, and Left

Join the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance

for a screening of the film

Young, Jewish, and Left

with free Chinese food!

Saturday, November 10th at 6:45 pm

Harvard Hillel Student Lounge

52 Mt. Auburn St.

Meet Shira Hassan. After she and her trans-gender partner "were literally laughed out of synagogue,” she created a radical Machzor (prayer book) for the high holidays and organized her own queer-positive celebration.

Listen as Loolwa Khazoom, an Iraqi Jew and editor of Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage, recounts her experience in a U.S. Hebrew School when the Rabbi told her it was a sin to use a Sephardi (non-European) Jewish prayer book.

And follow Micah Bazant as he praises the feminist possibilities within Jewish masculinity.


A celebration of diversity, Young Jewish and Left weaves queer culture, Jewish Arab history, secular Yiddishkeit, anti-racist analysis, and religious/spiritual traditions into a multi-layered tapestry of Leftist politics.  Personal experiences from many of today’s leading Jewish activists reframe the possibilities of Jewish identity. It presents a fresh and constructive take on race, spirituality, Zionism, queerness, resistance, justice, and liberation.

Photographs from Feminist Shabbat!

We had a wonderful shabbat dinner with the Harvard College International Women's Rights Collective, whose awesome tumblr is here. Check out photozzzzz below!

PJA bakes challah!

PJA kneads challah dough

Welcome to feminist shabbat!

Conversations about judaism and feminist after shabbat dinner

From the Crimson: Hillel Cancels Event Reservation

Wondering why Jewish Voices Against the Occupation isn't in Harvard Hillel anymore? Read this article from The Harvard Crimson, on Thursday, November 8:

Hillel Cancels Event Reservation 

Just a week before an event on Israeli and Palestinian activists’ peace efforts was set to take place, Harvard Hillel decided Monday that it would no longer host the discussion after administrators learned a Palestinian student advocacy group was a co-sponsor.

Harvard Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Jonah C. Steinberg said that he canceled the venue reservation for Harvard Progressive Jewish Alliance’s “Jewish Voices Against the Occupation” talk because, according to Steinberg, co-sponsor Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee’s platform conflicts with Hillel International guidelines.

They state that Hillel organizations “will not partner with, house, or host organizations, groups, or speakers” that support the “boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the state of Israel.”

Steinberg said that because PSC promotes boycott, divestments, and sanctions—commonly referred to as BDS—with regards to Israel, this policy prevents Hillel from hosting the discussion. “It is very important to find ways for pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups to enter into meaningful and substantive conversation here at Harvard and beyond,” Steinberg wrote to the Harvard Hillel Board of Director in an email he later gave to The Crimson. “Co-sponsorship of an event with a BDS-endorsing group is another matter.”

PJA chair Emily S. Unger ’13 and PSC member Alexander R. Shams said that at first Hillel, not realizing that Shams’ organization would also sponsor the talk, seemed comfortable with hosting the event.

“At our initial meeting, we were given approval and were assured that there would be efforts to see this event through,” said Shams, a student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “But we later found out that there was a lot of uproar about the event when people from higher up heard that PSC was co-sponsoring it.” The event will still be held on Nov. 15, but now in Emerson Hall. It will bring together Israeli Jew Noam Lekach and American Jew Jeff Stein to talk about Israeli-Palestinian relations.

“I thought that it was clear that it was a co-sponsorship because we were both there and both shared interest in the topic of the event,” Unger said. “But Jonah apparently thought it was a dialogue, not a co-sponsorship.”

Steinberg, realizing that he may have misunderstood PSC’s presence at the meeting, said he scheduled a second conversation. But before that meeting could take place, Steinberg said, he received emails from concerned parties including Boston-area Jewish organizations and the vice president of Hillel International. Upon receiving these emails, Steinberg told Unger and Shams that they could no longer hold their event at Hillel.

“He told us that it would cause too much, far too much outrage and conflict and wouldn’t be worth it,” Unger said.

She added that the Jewish community is “particularly sensitive” to any mention of boycotts, divestments, and sanctions, as such actions can be perceived as undermining, and threatening, the Israeli nation.

Though many Israeli Jews think that settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is justified, not all may agree with this position, Shams said. “I think it’s problematic that Hillel takes a particular political stance on the issue, which may be alienating,” he said. “This silences anyone with a different opinion and pushes them out of the Jewish community.”

Jewish Voices Against the Occupation - now in Emerson!

EDIT: Jewish Voices Against the Occupation, the even we're co-hosting with Harvard PSC, is now taking place in Emerson Hall 305, not in Harvard Hillel's Rabb Hall. See the poster below!

PJA has a twitter!

Our new twitter is @harvardpja;  you can follow us at https://twitter.com/harvardpja. Also, check out the new twitter feed on our blog!

Power ~ a poem for this shabbat

Adrienne Rich, a jewish lesbian poet

Power, by Adrienne Rich (1929 - March 27, 2012). Shabbat shalom, all!

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end the source of
the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman
denying
her wounds
denying her wounds came from the same source as her power.

EVENT: Jewish Voices Against the Israeli Occupation

Taken in 1973 during a protest outside of the Israeli Embassy

Harvard Progressive Jewish Alliance and Palestine Solidarity Committee are proud to present “Jewish Voices Against the Israeli Occupation” Thursday, November 15 at 7:30 PM in Rabb Hall of Harvard Hillel.  

This event brings together two speakers, Jewish Israeli Noam Lekach and Jewish American Jeff Stein, to speak about the forms of peace activism work they have been engaged in across the Holy Land in the hopes of achieving a more just and more peaceful status quo for Jews and Palestinians. The speakers will reflect critically on the role their Jewish identities and upbringings have played in their activism and how it has informed their understanding of what a “just peace” looks like and how we get there.

They will also be discussing Birthright Israel and the ways Jewish Americans going on this trip can see more than just the mainstream Israeli perspective, as well as practical ways to extend your ticket and get involved in various kinds of peace activism work to get a sense of on-the-ground realities rarely discussed on the trips.

RSVP on the Facebook event here.

SPEAKERS:

Noam Lekach grew up in Israel along the Lebanese border and has been active in peace work for many years. He has participated in campaigns against the targeted evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, marches against the Israeli security fence winding through West Bank villages, and worked as a communications coordinator for Amnesty International's Israel division. Noam is currently working on his BA in Brandeis University where he is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine.

Jeff Stein grew up in a liberal Jewish family in Seattle and recently graduated from Boston University. Earlier this year he went on Birthright Israel but extended his ticket for nearly 5 months to engage in solidarity work in the West Bank, where he supported Palestinian activism against the Israeli occupation and the seizure, confiscation, and demolition of homes and land for Israeli settlement activity.

Feminist Shabbat tonight!

How do we deal with gender in the context of religion?

Why do all our prayers use masculine words for God?

What does it mean to be feminist and Jewish?

Join PJA and IWRC in a feminist community dinner to discuss these topics and more.  Kosher catered food will be provided, in addition to freshly baked challah -- come in the afternoon to help bake!

All are welcome, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or gender.

Friday, October 26^th

Challah baking: 2:30 pm

Dinner: 7:45 pm

Eliot small dining hall

Phone bank with BAGELS for marriage equality!

The Harvard Democrats, QSA, BAGELS, and HLS Democrats present...

Phone Bank for Marriage Equality in Maine

This Monday, 5:30-7:30pm, Boylston 103

Bring your laptop and phone

Three years ago, gay marriage was defeated in Maine by 6%. This year, it's back on the ballot, and we could win. But we need your help to win gay marriage at the ballot box for the first time ever in the United States. Marriage equality proponents currently have a slight polling advantage, but polls can be misleading and the election is going to be close.

RSVP here!

BAGELS Brunch today!

Check out this event, sponsored by our friends at BAGELS, the Jewish queer group!

Don't have Sunday brunch plans? 

Come to Hillel's....

BAGELS brunch!!

From 12:00-1:30pm TODAY, Sunday, September 30 in the Hillel Student Lounge. Bagels, lox, and juice will be served. Food is Kosher!

BAGELS is Harvard's Jewish queer group. Come hang out with us!

Everybody is welcome, regardless of gender, sexuality, religion, or any other identity- or other-related thing. You don't have to be queer to come! Or Jewish! We will like you regardless of the labels you assign to yourself. 

Yay BAGELS! And, er, bagels! 

PJA Intro Meeting!

Interested in a range of progressive political and social issues?

Want to tie Jewish culture and religion to current topics of justice and social change?

Care about

Worker's rights * Gender equality * Environmentalism * Israel-Palestine * Social justice * LGBTQ rights * and more

?

Looking for a community of progressive people to talk to, collaborate with, and occasionally sing folk songs with?

You belong in PJA.

Progressive Jewish Alliance Introductory Meeting

Thursday, September 20th

5:30-6:30 pm

Harvard Hillel Solarium

(at the top of the stairs on the second floor of Hillel, 52 Mt. Auburn St.)

Everyone is welcome, regardless of religion, cultural background, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, physical ability, sleep schedule, or preference (or lack thereof) for chocolate.

For more information, contact Emily at eunger@college.harvard.edu

Screening Budrus in Hillel

Join the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance for a screening of 

Budrus

Monday, September 10th

6-7:30 pm

Rabb Hall, Harvard Hillel

"This film will single-handedly change how many people view the conflict. It’s that good, and that important." The Boston Globe

"The must-see documentary of the year."  Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

It takes a village to unite the most divided people on earth.

Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier. Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women’s contingent that quickly moves to the front lines. Struggling side by side, father and daughter unleash an inspiring, yet little-known, movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is still gaining ground today. In an action-filled documentary chronicling this movement from its infancy, Budrus shines a light on people who choose nonviolence to confront a threat.

For more information, contact Emily at eunger@college, or visit http://www.justvision.org/en/budrus

Havdalah by the Charles

The Progressive Jewish Alliance Havdallah by the Charles is tonight!

The river is really beautiful at night, and it's a great place to come together for the end of Shabbat -- meet at 8:15 in the Hillel lobby and we'll walk over together.

Shavua Tov!

Op-ed from The Crimson: The Illuminations of Birthright

My article about Taglit-Birthright Israel was published in The Harvard Crimson yesterday! Text below or online at The Crimson.

The Illuminations of Birthright

By SANDRA Y.L. KORN

This summer, I left North America for one of the first times in my life. On an El-Al jet surrounded by dozens of other Jewish college-aged students, I flew across multiple continents before landing in the Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv to embark on my “birthright”: an all-expenses-paid ten-day trip across Israel.

Unlike Crimson editorial writer Samuel Doniger, my compunctions about travelling to Israel were not about the safety of public buses or the loneliness of Israel’s desert terrain. Rather, I feared what I would learn on the trip: Taglit-Birthright Israel, the organization that currently sends 40,000 students and young adults per year on ten-day tours of the Holy Land, is notorious for its role in influencing the political ideology of American Jews. (After all, Birthright gets much of its funding from the right-wing Israeli government and right-wing American Jews like casino magnate and Romney supporter Sheldon Adelson.)

At first, I was surprised to find that my Birthright trip was less explicitly political than I had feared. Our tour guide, a young Israeli who is also a reserve officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, gave us a thorough and objective history of the Israeli border and otherwise seemed to focus on describing Israel’s tourist attractions, ruggedly beautiful landscape, and Jewish culture.

However, I soon realized that a trip around Israel aimed at fostering Jewish identity cannot avoid politics. From its name—“Birthright” implies that all Jews have the right to the land of Israel, while ignoring the Palestinian refugees who have been prevented from returning home for decades—to its itinerary—which includes ventures into the disputed Golan Heights, where participants gleefully take pictures of the ruined shells of “abandoned” Syrian homes—Birthright advances the political agenda of the Israeli and American right. The fact that it does so in an insidious way makes its messaging all the more dangerous.

As all Birthright trips do, my group travelled to the Holocaust history museum, the Yad Vashem. Most of the museum is centered around a long, dark tunnel with exhibits on each side detailing the horrors inflicted on Jews in Europe. The “light at the end of the tunnel,” the symbolic conclusion of the Jewish saga, is a balcony overlooking Jerusalem. The tour guide at the museum asked us, “Why did God let the Holocaust happen?” One American on my trip dutifully responded, “If it weren’t for the Holocaust, there might never have been a state of Israel.” The existence of a political state hardly seems to justify the extermination of over 10 million innocent people, but this was the message conveyed by the architecture of the Yad Vashem and seemed to be the narrative our tour guides desired us to understand.

At the end of our trip, our tour guide brought us to Mount Herzl cemetery, Israel’s national cemetery. At the area of the cemetery reserved for civilian victims of acts of terror, our guide told us why it was important for us as Jews to support Israel: because “Arabs are different from us,” and teach their children to hate in school. As members of my group supplied other examples of “Arabs” killing innocents—“Syria.” “Iran.” “Al-Qaeda, 9/11.”—we reflected on the necessity of defending Israel from the Palestinians, who, after all, have plenty of Arab brothers and sisters to support them, right?

Throughout the rest of our tour, we spoke to young IDF soldiers who dismissed human rights abuses against Palestinians as a forgivable consequence of a Jewish state. We spoke to older Israelis who informed us that Israel was the only place in the world safe for Jews, invoking the racism that seems to run unquestioned through Jewish Israeli public discourse—one told us, “there could be another Holocaust in America any time. Jesse Jackson, or another one of those black people…” Our trip leader supplemented these interactions with a quip about Israel’s thriving biotechnology industry: “Israel doesn’t have many natural resources, but we do have the Jewish mind.” We posed for a picture atop an old tank, shouting, “Israeli power!” And meanwhile, throughout the entire tour, we were encouraged to return to Israel, to make aliyah.

Zionists look to Birthright Israel as a way to inspire Jewish pride among largely assimilated, ethnically Jewish college students. Even liberal Zionist Peter Beinart, when he came to speak at Harvard last semester, critiqued Birthright only for failing to expose participants to a Palestinian perspective (it’s true: we didn’t speak to a single non-Jew during a full ten days in the Middle East).

But Birthright’s idea of engaging with Israel means supporting an illegal and oppressive military occupation, claiming citizenship to a state that deports African immigrants, glorifying “the Jewish mind,” and decrying all Arabs collectively for their hateful terrorist tactics. Simply introducing a Palestinian voice could not begin to correct for the fact that Birthright is firmly entrenched in right-wing rhetoric, from racism to militarism. If liberal American supporters of Israel truly hope for their children to engage with global Jewish politics in a meaningful way, they should stop sending them on a trip to Israel called “Birthright” and start teaching critical thinking about the role of Jews in promoting justice around the world.

Sandra Y. L. Korn, a Crimson editorial executive, is a joint history of science and studies of women, gender, and sexuality concentrator in Eliot House.

A Postcard from Palestine

Earlier this summer, I traveled around Israel and Palestine, first with Taglit-Birthright and then by myself. I wrote this Postcard from Bethlehem, which was published in the Crimson this week:

An American In Palestine 

BETHLEHEM, the West Bank—Near one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, a shop sells postcards with photographs of the separation wall. In one of the pictures, the English phrase “TO EXIST IS TO RESIST” is painted on the Wall.

Picture taken along the separation wall in Bethlehem,
near a Palestinian refugee camp

Just a kilometer away, in downtown Bethlehem, we watch tourists pour out of buses. They are Christian pilgrims, here to visit religious sites like the Milk Grotto, where a drop of milk that fell from the Virgin Mary’s breast turned an entire cave white. We walk into a small store in the downtown market, or souk. The store’s name in English is simply “Nativity Shop”: it is located near the Nativity Church, on the land where Jesus was born. The church is now a major tourist site, at least for those who don’t mind going through a checkpoint to get here.

The owner of the shop is a friend of a friend, so we linger to talk to him about his business, the city, and the weather. He asks me my religion. Cautioned not to tell Palestinians that I am Jewish, I say, “I’m just American.” But here in the Holy Land, religion is of utmost importance; the shop owner presses me for an answer. Eventually, I admit that I am Jewish.

His face breaks into a grin. Handing me a cup of Nescafé, he informs me, “Jewish people are always so shy! If I didn’t want Jews in my shop, I would not sell these!”—he dangles some Magen David charms in front of my face—“or these!”—he shows me some small metal Menorahs.

Later that day, we run into the shop owner again in a restaurant. He pulls me over to the table where he is sitting with two older men in suits, maybe having a business conversation. “This girl,” he asks them, pointing at me, “What do you think she is? Italian? Something else?” “Italian,” nods one. “I don’t know,” says the other.

Leaning back, the store owner shares a smile with me and laughs, pleased. “No! She is American.”