The American Jewish community spends a good deal of time and money worrying about campus life these days, particularly regarding how Israel is criticized, attacked and delegitimized by professors, students and outside agitators. But our community makes little sustained effort to hear from Jewish students themselves – about what they are thinking, how they choose to identify (or not) as Jews, and their views on Israel.
Jewish Community’s Blind Spot: Not Listening To Our Students
Gary Rosenblatt • The Jewish Week
The American Jewish community spends a good deal of time and money worrying about campus life these days, particularly regarding how Israel is criticized, attacked and delegitimized by professors, students and outside agitators.
But our community makes little sustained effort to hear from Jewish students themselves – about what they are thinking, how they choose to identify (or not) as Jews, and their views on Israel. And so it is that the Jewish Student Press Service, which publishes the lively online magazine New Voices (www.newvoices.org), the only national magazine written for and by Jewish college students, is once again facing a financial crisis, unable to meet its grand annual budget of $90,000.
Editor Ben Sales notes that Jewish organizations want to connect with students on campus, but “very few of those groups take Jewish students seriously enough to listen to what they have to say. And these are the future leaders of the community.”
Sales is proud of the journalism New Voices posts online each week, courtesy of student journalists from campuses around the country. (Founded 20 years ago, the publication made the switch from print to online magazine a year ago.) He says New Voices was first to report that Jewish Voice for Peace – the group whose members heckled Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at the GA in New Orleans in November – was as the forefront of the BDS (boycott, delegitimization, sanctions) movement against Jerusalem. And recent articles explored Jews in ROTC programs, the green movement on campus, and how Orthodox students deal with gay and lesbian friends.
With college students reporting and writing personal essays, it’s not surprising that New Voices has a liberal tone, sometimes criticizing Israel and the Jewish establishment. But there’s a conscious effort for balance, Sales says, and a sense of authenticity in the writing.
New Voices has served as an important training ground for budding journalists and has played a role in the effort to create a national Jewish campus community. So it’s more than a shame that it has always been seen as a marginal endeavor, always seeking a few more dollars to scrape by from year to year.
Sales, one of New Voices’ two employees, hasn’t paid himself over the last two pay cycles as he concentrates on raising funds. It’s embarrassing -- for him and for a community that prides itself on doing all it can to strengthen the Jewish future.
The Jewish community has been deaf to the opinions, needs and wants of its college and university students for at the very least the past 40 years.
In the early 1980s. when the North American Jewish Students Network, the North American section of the World Union of Jewish Students, had a convention we'd draw 400 to 600 students from across America and Canada. We had enough money to give full stipends to perhaps 5 of those students and partial stipends to another 10 or so. Our highest paid staff member (we had three in total, one a part time employee) could have made more money flipping burgers at McDonald's. Most of us worked long hours throughout the year as volunteers, spending our own money we earned doing things like flipping those fast food burgers to keep Network running. We were student run, student led. We were on the forefront of what were then controversial issues, and we accomplished more each year than most big name Jewish community organizations accomplished in decades. One of the things we helped create is the Jewish Student Press Service.
Contrast that to Hillel, which was run as a top down, non-student-directed community organization. It had buildings across North America, a huge national staff and then all the local staff at each location, and compared to us, a giant budget.
Hillel's national conventions were lucky to draw more than 150 students. And that's saying a lot because each Hillel had money to fully subsidize at least one and often more students, and those that did not make that cut still had access to large subsidies.
Hillel was woefully unsuccessful at most of its locations at doing anything of significance, or somethines anything at all, and its attitude toward independent Jewish student groups was overtly hostile. It worked to block community funding to Network, it worked against many of the independent organizations students started, and it often took positions on key issues impacting Jewish university students that were counterproductive.
When Federation and UJA leaders wanted to know what was happening on college campuses, they asked the middle age staffers at Hillel – who invariably reported that campuses were calm and that students were happy. Hillel's programs were said to be well attended. Things were good. Just give us more money, Hillel would say, and we'll do even better for you.
The truth was that campuses were bleeding Jews. The assimilation rate was skyrocketing. So was antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Student-led organizations, from Network to the Jewish Student Press Service, did most the successful work combating this. But we did it in poverty and without the ear of Jewish community leadership. (About the only time we could get Federation leadership to listen to us was when we staged a takeover of its General Assembly.)
The Jewish community eats it young. It is how it is.
The Jewish Student Press Service has to beg for an annual budget that is less than what many Federation staffers make individually. And the Federations will continue to expensive fund studies that try to determine why so few young Jews get involved with the community, and why even fewer give any money.
The Federations will fret about Jewish continuity. They'll keep funding asinine programs run by friends, cronies, and relatives. And they'll keep hunting for the next mega donor.
As they do all this the affiliated Jewish community will continue to grow smaller, and Federation leaders will wonder why.
Perhaps the Jewish Student Press Service, if it still exists, will publish an article containing the answer.
But Federation leaders will never see that answer because they don't read – let alone fund – the Jewish Student Press Service.
[Hat Tip: Dr. Rofeh-Filosof.]