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Arts & Culture
Israeli’s updated choreography highlight of Fiddler tour
Arts&Culture
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The company of the North American tour of Fiddler on the Roof
Joan Marcus
Dayton Live presents the North American tour of Fiddler on the Roof, June 21-26 at the Schuster Center, 1 W. 2nd St., Dayton. Tickets are $26 to $109 and are available at daytonlive.org.
When Hofesh Shechter agreed to update Jerome Robbins’ iconic Fiddler on the Roof choreography for Bartlett Sher’s 2016 Broadway revival, the Israeli native knew his friends and colleagues were nervous for him.
“I have to say, I normally suffer when I make work, but with this one, I had a great time,” Shechter told The Observer from his home in London, where he is artistic director of the Hofesh Shechter Company of international dancers.
Audiences here will see his Tonynominated work when the North American tour of Bartlett Sher’s production of Fiddler comes to the Schuster Center, June 21-26.
“I was very happy to be involved in that project. I was excited to be asked,” he says. “I wasn’t too worried about the original choreography. I first connected to the music and the story from my own angle.” Hugo Glendinning
He says he knew from his discussions with director Sher — who had previously directed revivals of South Pacific (New York) and The King and I (London) — that this Fiddler revival would incorporate some elements of Robbins’ original choreography, but that he could rely on his own experiences to expand upon it.
“I grew up in Israel. I was doing a lot of folk dancing,” Hofesh Shechter Shechter says. “That was the first connection I have. Then it felt like a very natural connection to the musical, the music, the story.”
But first he had to convince the Jerome Robbins estate to give him permission to adjust Robbins’ original Fiddler choreography.
“I had to go and meet with them and we met for breakfast in New York in the offices of the producers,” he says.
“I landed from a flight from Melbourne the night before, so I was as jet- lagged as you get. And we just had that meeting and had a conversation. And one elderly gentleman kept looking at me and kept on saying, ‘Oh my God, he’s just like Jerome.’ And I thought, that’s a good sign.” Shechter’s creative style might even be similar to that of Robbins, known for his trial-and-error approach. “I tell people always, you know, it’s one, maybe two percent talent, and then you just have to try over and over again. And I also tell people my only real talent is that I’m persistent and I just don’t let go. I just persist and persist and persist until I find something I feel works. “It’s very much the same for me as well, when I create work for my own company, and my dancers know that we will create so much material and then maybe five percent of what we do ends up on stage. We are making tons of material and I only keep what I feel is really like the jewel, the very pure stuff. For me, that’s the way. That’s how it works. I just accept it and work hard.” Shechter adds that Sher trusted him and gave him the freedom to do what he wanted. “There was something very organic about the whole process,” Shechter says. “Working with Bart was such a pleasure. It’s really a beautiful and lifeaffirming production.” He says he was able to negotiate additional time to the length of the show for his dance creations, working with the music director and Sher. A happy coincidence was when Shechter learned that Israeli actor and dancer Yehezkiel Lazarov would play the lead role of Tevye in this North American tour of Sher’s revival. “When I was in Israel, when I was 18, I joined the junior company of the Batsheva Dance Company,” Shechter says. “And Yehezkiel, the Tevye, was with me, there together. We were dancing in that company for two years together and moved into the main company, Batsheva Dance Company, together. And so I actually know him very well. I didn’t know that he speaks English and had become an actor.” — Marshall Weiss
Nine movies in June for JCC Film Fest
Menemsha Films
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2021 Film Critics Jury Prize winner Neighbors is on the 2022 Dayton JCC Film Fest schedule
The JCC’s 22nd Film Fest returns to its pre-Covid format of screening films in person, with the post-Covid addition of making each film available for viewing at home.
Festival organizers have also returned to presenting the series over the course of a month, nine films from June 2 to 26.
San Francisco-based movie reviewer Michael Fox, who has written about Jewish and Israeli films in The Observer for two decades (including in this issue), says he’s impressed with this year’s lineup.
“I’ve seen four of the nine films — Plan A, Neighbors, Wet Dog, and 200 Meters — and they are all solid dramas,” he says.
Three other films on the schedule for Dayton — One More Story, Berenshtein, and Cinema Sabaya — were featured selections of the 35th Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles in May.
The JCC Film Fest, in person and online, June 2-26. Opening night tickets $18, rest of series $12 each. $75 for in-person or online film pass. Go to jewishdayton.org. Dayton’s JCC Film Fest opens at 7 p.m., Thursday, June 2 at the Dayton Art Institute with the 2021 Israeli documentary That Orchestra with the Broken Instruments, a pre-movie program with Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra Artistic Director Neal Gittleman, and a dessert reception following the screening. The cost, $18, includes dessert. All other films are $12 in person or online. Guest speakers for other films will be Elliot Ratzman, chair in Jewish studies at Earlham College, following Neighbors, 7 p.m., Thursday, June 9 at The Neon; novelist Martha Moody Jacobs before Cinema Sabaya, 9:30 a.m., Thursday, June 16 in partnership with Dayton Hadassah at The Neon; and Holocaust Education Committee Chair Renate Frydman after I Am Here, 7 p.m., Thursday, June 23 at The Neon. The Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs will screen Berenshtein at 7 p.m., Wednesday, June 15, the evening before it’s shown at The Neon. Festival passes for in-person or online films are available for $75. — Marshall Weiss
2022 LINEUP
Thursday, June 2 @ 7:00 p.m.
The Dayton Art Institute 456 Belmonte Park N Dayton, Ohio 45405
$18.00 per person Includes dessert
2021 • 1hr 19min • Documentary, Musical Film • Hebrew/English/Arabic (with subtitles)
A broken string, fractured echo chamber, rusting valves. One brilliant conductor, three gifted composers, and 100 musicians meet for four days of rehearsals. They speak different languages. Their instruments are broken. An orchestra of professional and amateur musicians, young and old, prepare, against all odds, for a one-time-only concert for the Mekudeshet festival. A poetic, engaging take on broken and whole presents an eclectic array of Jerusalemites and their determined attempt, even if it’s just for one night, to create harmony out of a discordant city.
JOIN US FOR A SPECIAL PROGRAM WITH NEAL GITTLEMAN, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE DAYTON PHILHARMONIC, BEFORE THE FILM, AND A DESSERT RECEPTION AFTER IN THE DAI LOBBY.
PLAN A Tuesday, June 7 @ 7:00 p.m. at The Neon Available online June 7, 7:00 p.m. to June 9 7:00 p.m. BERENSHTEIN Wednesday, June 15 @ 7:00 p.m. at The Little Art Theater in Yellow Springs June 16 @ 7:00 p.m. at The Neon Available online June 15, 7:00 p.m. to June 18, 7:00 p.m.
NEIGHBORS Thursday, June 9 @ 7:00 p.m. at The Neon Available online June 9, 7:00 p.m. to June 11, 7:00 p.m. Guest speaker: Elliot Ratzman ONE MORE STORY Monday, June 13 @ 7:00 p.m. at The Neon Available online June 13, 7:00 p.m. to June 15, 7:00 p.m. CINEMA SABAYA Thursday, June 16 @ 9:30 a.m. at The Neon Available online June 16, 10:00 a.m. to June 18, 10:00 a.m. In partnership with Hadassah, featuring a pre-movie program with Martha Moody Jacobs and a coffee reception. 200 METERS Tuesday, June 21 @ 7:00 p.m. at The Neon Available online June 21, 7:00 p.m. to June 23, 7:00 p.m.
I AM HERE Thursday, June 23 @ 7:00 p.m. at The Neon Available online June 23, 7:00 p.m. to June 25, 7:00 p.m. Guest Speaker: Renate Frydman WET DOG (CLOSING NIGHT) Sunday, June 26 @ 7:00 p.m. at The Neon Available online June 26, 7:00 p.m. to June 28, 7:00 p.m.
ALL FILMS ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE AND ONLY IN OHIO ON EVENTIVE, A SECURE VIDEO ON-DEMAND WEBSITE.
TICKETS
$18.00 Opening Night – both in person and online $12.00 All other nights - both in person and online $75.00 For festival pass – includes Opening Night and can be used for either in-person or online films
To purchase tickets or a festival pass, visit jewishdayton.org. All ticket and festival pass purchases will be online through Eventive. For more information or assistance, contact Helen Jones at hjones@jfgd.net or 937-610-5513 Limited tickets available day of the event at the venue.
Jewish Community Center
OF GREATER DAYTON
Thank you to our festival sponsors!
Arts&Culture Plan A dramatizes real plot to kill millions of Germans as payback for Holocaust
By Rich Tenorio Times of Israel
Max, a German Jew who lost his wife and child in the Holocaust, has gotten a job with the Nuremberg water supply department in the aftermath of World War II. While rebuilding the war-ravaged facilities, he comes across a blueprint of the entire system. Using his artistic skills, he quickly copies it on paper and brings it back to a secret Jewish group that’s plotting a massive act of revenge for the Shoah.
It may sound like a largerthan-life thriller, but this story is actually true — and it’s the subject of a new film, Plan A, by Israeli fraternal directors Yoav and Doron Paz. While Max is a fictional character created for the film, he’s based on Abba Kovner, leader of the underground group Nakam.
The group — whose name means revenge or vengeance in Hebrew — aimed to poison the water supply in several German cities, including Nuremberg, and kill millions of Germans in retribution for the dead of the Holocaust.
The plan ultimately failed, and Kovner became more famous for his Israel Prize-winning poetry than his plotting. Now, the Paz brothers retell the grim narrative of these “avengers” in Plan A, which will be shown as part of Dayton’s JCC Film Festival.
“Of course, in today’s (perspective) it was a horrible plan… killing innocent civilians, women and children,” Yoav Paz said in a joint Zoom conversation with his brother. “For so many years, they kept it a secret. They know how it sounds today, how horrible it sounds.”
According to Yoav Paz, the members of Nakam “wanted revenge on a biblical scale.”
“Revenge is a subject that is still relevant, unfortunately, today,” Doron Paz said. “And
The JCC Film Fest presents Plan A at 7 p.m., Tuesday, June 7 at The Neon, 130 E. 5th St., Dayton and online from 7 p.m., June 7 to 7 p.m., June 9. Tickets are $12 and are available at jewishdayton.org.
Menemsha Films
not just in Israel. You can see revenge…reading the news around the world — a vicious cycle of violence, endless violence going on. We want to raise the question about this subject.”
“Our goal in the movie was trying to portray the human side of the revenge,” he said. “A perspective that was not too much the (Quentin) Tarantino kind of revenge, shallow. There’s a lot of depth in revenge. It’s what you were feeling, what the people were feeling, living among Germans killing everyone around them, suffering, all the pain having gone through. This interested us.”
The Paz brothers first came across the subject of revenge in the Holocaust many years ago through the personal account of a friend’s grandfather, who had lost his family in World War II after a man betrayed them to the Nazis. After the war, the grandfather tracked down the man and killed him. Having never previously heard a story of people taking revenge during or after the war, the brothers looked for other such accounts.
They learned about Nakam through a book by Prof. Dina Porat, the Alfred P. Slaner Chair for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, as well as the chief historian at Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, Yad Vashem.
The brothers interviewed surviving members of Nakam, although many of them have since died during the years it took to make the film — which Yoav Paz describes as a historical thriller and not a documentary.
Plan A tells its story in large part through Max — portrayed by August Diehl, whose credits include the Tarantino Holocaust revenge film Inglourious Basterds. Initially, Max just wants to find his missing wife and son. He uses his talent for drawing to create an evocative portrait of them that he posts publicly in the hope that someone will recognize them.
Max’s character was inspired by Kovner’s background as a former art student. His sensitive artistic skills, Yoav Paz explains, indicate that he is anything but a natural born killer.
However, Max learns that his wife and son have perished. He’s already reeling from finding out that his home is now occupied by a German family, who violently turn him away when he tries to return. Homeless and alone, Max falls in with a friend, and they serendipitously stumble upon the encampment of a unique British army unit — the Jewish Brigade.
The soldiers take in the wanderers and encourage them to go to what was then British Mandate Palestine. Yet Max becomes intrigued by their secret project of taking revenge on Nazi war criminals. He starts helping them with the bloody reprisals, but during one such undertaking, he encounters another group with revenge in mind — Nakam.
“For us, we were really lucky to find in our research that the two groups met on one special night,” Yoav Paz said. “Abba Kovner went to see the Jewish
August Diehl as Max in Plan A Brigade. He asked them to help with his plan. They refused. They knew his plan was much bigger and darker than their revenge.”
Menemsha Films Doron Paz (L) Yoav Paz, directors of Plan A Thankfully thwarted
In the film, one member of the Jewish Brigade, Moshe Mishali (Michael Aloni), is particularly horrified by Nakam’s goal and entrusts Max with infiltrating the group and spying on its plans.
As Max moves into their safehouse in Nuremberg, his allegiance shifts and he gets to know a member of the group named Anna (Sylvia Hoeks, whose credits include Blade Runner 2049 and whose character is based on Kovner’s wife Vitka Kempner).
Max bonds with Anna after learning that both lost a child to the Holocaust and they develop a romance. With a project to rebuild the bombed-out city underway and the Nuremberg Trials approaching, Anna and Max both land jobs working for the water supply company.
According to the film, Nakam plotted to poison the water supply in five German cities — Nuremberg, Munich, Weimar, Cologne, and Hamburg.
“(Nuremberg) had the most advanced cell,” Yoav Paz said. “That’s why we concentrated our film on Nuremberg. There’s the importance of Nuremberg — everything started there, the Nazis, the trials of course. It’s a very symbolic city. It’s why we decided to focus on the Nuremberg cell, people working undercover in the cell, waiting for the poison to arrive.”
Kovner had gone to pre-state Israel to acquire the poison with which to carry out the plan, but was forced to jettison half of it from the ship he was sailing on back to Europe when British authorities called his name over the public address system. He gave the rest to a co-conspirator, who successfully conveyed it to Nuremberg where Nakam implemented its “Plan B” — the poisoning of thousands of loaves of bread served to German prisoners of war in the Langwasser internment camp.
Roughly 2,000 German POWs were reportedly sickened, but none were said to have died as a result of the poisoning. In the end, it’s not clear if Kovner was even questioned by the British in relation to Nakam, and he was released after two months. He did not resume his vengeful activities.
“The leadership in Israel, David Ben-Gurion…disagreed with (Kovner’s) approach,” said Yoav Paz. “It would be a big mistake if successful, even partially (successful)…Some historians say Ben-Gurion snitched and told the British authorities about Abba Kovner and that’s why he was caught.”
“The majority of Holocaust survivors took their revenge through positive situations,” even former members of Nakam, he said. “For them, the real revenge was starting a new family, having careers, seeing the State of Israel moving forward. That was the real revenge.”
Palestinian father takes long way home in 200 Meters
Ali Suliman in 200 Meters By Michael Fox Special To The Observer
It boggles the mind that fiction films that humanize Palestinians are still controversial in some circles.
Or perhaps not, because those who see and define them solely and simply as enemies of Israel are rattled by any depiction of Palestinians as human beings.
Still, it’s difficult to imagine Ameen Nayfeh’s heartfelt debut feature riling even the most ardent American Jewish supporters of Israel. The neo-realist tale of a dedicated West Bank father and husband determined to circumvent the labyrinth of checkpoints and permits to visit his son in a Jerusalem hospital, 200 Meters devotes more attention to Palestinian family life than to the occupation.
Of course, by virtue of its setting, 200 Meters is inevitably a political film. But its core concerns are personal, not polemical. 200 Meters, which was Jordan’s official entry for the 2021 Academy Award for Best International Film and received the Human Rights Jury Prize at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, screens with Dayton’s JCC Film Festival June 21.
Mustafa (Ali Suliman) and Salwa (Lana Zreik) are happily married with three children, but have separate homes in their respective West Bank villages. Salwa was born and lives on the Israeli side of the wall, but Mustafa — a go along/get along kind of guy who never evinces a political identity otherwise — won’t apply for Israeli citizenship.
He sees his family in person after each day’s labor at an Israeli construction site, and every night from his roof. In an absurdist bedtime ritual, they all flick their respective lights on and off while saying good night via cellphone.
The first half-hour of 200 Meters presents Salwa and Mustafa’s warm-hearted domestic drama as a love story that’s complicated, like many marriages, by long working hours, child-raising
The JCC Film Fest presents 200 Meters at 7 p.m., Tuesday, June 21 at The Neon, 130 E. 5th St., Dayton and online from 7 p.m., June 21 to 7 p.m., June 23. Tickets are $12 and are available at jewishdayton.org. concerns, and scarce opportunities for intimacy.
Mustafa is a preternaturally patient man, even when he’s denied entry at a checkpoint because his ID is expired and stands to lose a day’s work and pay. But his conformist adherence to rules goes out the window when he learns that his son has been hit by a car. Desperate to reach the hospital, he decides to pay a smuggler to get him into Israel.
While this situation readily lends itself to an indictment of Israeli policies and practices, and the demonization of uncaring, unfeeling soldiers, Nayfeh is refreshingly disinterested in clichés and villains. He keeps his editorializing to a minimum: a blink-and-you-missit declaration of antipathy for settlers, the petty and foolish theft of an Israeli flag, a glimpse of a roadside billboard of Trump and Netanyahu shaking hands.
The filmmaker devotes much more time to the opportunism and greed of the gouging smuggler and his unhurried indifference to Mustafa’s urgency. If you relish movie shorthand, just the way the smuggler slips off his sunglasses tells us he isn’t a card-carrying member of a human-rights NGO.
It’s harder to discern the motivations of the couple who show up and ante up for a van ride to the other side. The woman speaks English and says she’s a German filmmaker; her Palestinian escort defends her continual filming with a caustic “Let her show the world our ‘happy life.’”
The movie does contain a brief, blunt critique of Israelis, specifically those well-intentioned people — guilt-ridden bleeding hearts, to apply an American pejorative—whose opposition to the occupation is more cosmetic than confrontational. 200 Meters is at its best when it relegates politics to the back seat, and lets Ali Suliman’s unwaveringly decent Mustafa carry the film. In addition to being the rock-solid moral center, he anchors this unexpectedly generous film in the everyday problem-solving dilemmas of ordinary people.
Mustafa is the furthest thing from a sandwich board for idealistic slogans, yet he emerges at the end of his ordeal as an archetype of coexistence. Tip your cap to Ameen Nayfeh, for keeping hope alive.
I Am Here: Lessons from a Holocaust survivor
By Marcia G. Yerman, Times of Israel
As the last Holocaust survivors die, despite documentation and recorded oral histories, the connection to lived experience disappears with them.
In I’m Still Here, the story of Ella Blumenthal is recounted against the backdrop of her 98th birthday. (She is currently 100 years old.) Surrounded by her children, grandchildren, and friends, for the first time she fully reveals the details of her five-year ordeal during World War II. She has previously withheld them from those closest to her.
The cheerful demeanor of an older woman in a green running suit may be the image she presents to the world, but her personal history is always with her: like the 24 relatives she lost in the Holocaust.
The story of each person who lived through Nazi horrors has similarities and differences. What they have in common is that moment when a person or circumstance interceded, saving them from death.
Director Jordy Sank interweaves Ella’s monologues of revelation with personal photos, archival material, and animated sequences in earth tones, greys, and black. The latter serves to move the narrative forward, conveying the gruesome aspects without feeling exploitative.
Bella’s story begins with her birth in 1921 into a Warsaw household where she was the youngest of seven children. Her days included singing, dancing, kayaking, and a happy Jewish home life. Despite warnings from her brother that it was time to leave Poland, there was a belief that nothing could happen to them. That ended in 1939.
A year later, the Nazis pushed the Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto, where they faced malnutrition and starvation. Deportations to Treblinka, from which people didn’t return, accounted for the loss of most of her relations.
After the Warsaw uprising was crushed, buildings were set on fire, making hiding impossible. Bella explains that the sights, sounds, and smells are always in front of her. “I can never erase it from my mind.”
Along with her father and niece Roma, she was shipped to Majdanek in 1943, when she was 21. She and Roma were chosen to live. Her father was not. It was the last time Ella saw him.
Public hangings established the fate of prisoners who tried to escape. A brush with the gas chamber ended only at the last second. Bella describes “German orderliness” as what saved her. There were instructions to exterminate 500 women, not 700. She was part of the 200 that received a reprieve.
Bella relates, “I never lost hope. Never. Not even in the darkest times of my life.” Her emotional fortitude prevented Roma from killing herself on electrified barbed wire. That strength kept them both going during the final two years of captivity, which began with a transfer to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943.
After having her head shaved, Bella was tattooed with the number 48632 and a triangle beneath, signifying that she was Jewish. A Christian Polish childhood friend, serving as a nurse in the camp, prolonged her chances of survival.
Outdoor conditions were brutal. Bella tried to get work indoors and was offered the opportunity to be the “head of a block.” Responsibilities included hitting other inmates and turning over the sick and weak girls for the gas chamber.
She refused.
Finding a loose page from a Haggadah gave her renewed resolve. She still has the piece of paper today. “Someone up there is looking after me…I don’t think it was just luck.”
In 1945, she and Roma were transferred to Bergen-Belsen. While working in the kitchen, a Russian prisoner saved
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Blue Fox Entertainment
Animated scene from the documentary I Am Here
The JCC Film Fest presents I Am Here at 7 p.m., Thursday, June 23 at The Neon, 130 E. 5th St., Dayton and online from 7 p.m., June 23 to 7 p.m., June 25. Tickets are $12 and are available at jewishdayton.org.
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her from punishment after she stole potatoes. Her obsession that “no food must be wasted” never ceased.
When Bella witnessed the gradual disappearance of German guards at the towers and the systematic destruction of records and papers by camp personnel, she realized that a shift was coming. In April 1945, American soldiers liberated the camp.
A trip to her home in Poland confirmed that no one had come back. After going to Paris with Roma, Bella traveled to Palestine by boat. There, she met the South African man who would become her husband, Issac Blumenthal. Ella Blumenthal in I Am HereThey married after a 13-day whirlwind courtship. “It was like a terms of antipathy toward “the other.” dream,” Bella recounts. Ella notes, “There is more that unites
Her new in-laws in Johannesburg us than divides us. I want to undersuggested that she have her tattoo stand human nature…What difference surgically removed and forget the past. does survival make if you didn’t learn a She didn’t discuss her experiences or lesson about humanity?” the truth behind the scar on her arm, It was hard not to think of parallel but her sons and daughter innately conditions when she spoke of Jewish understood that something about their land requisitioned in Poland. mother was different. Her screams in Bella’s experiences are connected to the middle of the night confirmed their her Jewish heritage; however, it doesn’t intuitions. (She finally explained that prevent her from seeing beyond the they were the product of dreams where tragedy that impacted the Jews. She Nazis took her children.) repeats her top insights in various itera-
Several of the film’s scenes were shot tions and expresses them most succincton site at the Capetown Holocaust & ly in the following thoughts: Genocide Centre. The setting creates a “The hatred is not only for Jews. The connective tissue between the lessons of hatred. That’s what’s causing all the the Holocaust and injustice in all forms. problems in the world. So we must love The museum’s mission is to serve as a people around us. Not find fault with platform for dialogue about additional the color of skin or different beliefs. genocides, the history of apartheid in Love everybody. Be kind to everySouth Africa, and issues of morality in body.”
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was packed to the brim — and I was then subjected to intense questioning, a period that was extended three times past the limit.
DSG claimed that SSI had been vetoed based on social-media misconduct, but the hearing had nothing to do with that. Classmates and students I thought were my friends started bashing Zionists and Israel, accusing Israel of “apartheid” practices and “human-rights violations,” among other falsehoods.
One student gave a terrifying speech, arguing that SSI did not deserve a place on Duke’s campus because we perpetuate “the Zionist strategy: a cycle of perpetual victimhood and refusal to see complexity, tied to a narrative that safety can only be achieved through constant violence.” Arguably even more frightening than the speech itself was the fact that the student delivering it was Jewish.
I then sat through three grueling hours of speeches by students and senators vehemently making the case against SSI’s existence at Duke. The worst part was that I wasn’t allowed to respond. I was targeted and harassed in front of the 200-person hearing as every value I stood for was delegitimized. SSI lost the vote by a landslide, receiving support from just the three Jewish senators on DSG. The hostility in that room was traumatizing. No student of any religion, political standing or belief system should ever have to experience something like this for merely standing up for what is right.
After months of fighting what truly felt like an uphill battle, I was excited when our SSI chapter was reinstated at the end of February. Furthermore, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s resolution that passed through our student government and the mandatory antisemitism training that senators attended provided me with a sense of hope that DSG was finally moving in the right direction.
Yet actions that have occurred since then, such as DSG approving $16,000 to fund Students for Justice in Palestine’s “Israel-Apartheid Week” events, including a $5,000 honorarium for a notorious antisemite, Mohammed El-Kurd, have made me and other Jewish students feel betrayed and endangered.
The university has justified these actions as free speech, claiming that any other speaker would have been treated the same. Discussion and civil discourse are wonderful things; hateful rhetoric filled with untruths is not.
According to FBI statistics, Jews make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, yet are victims of 58 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes. Free speech is important; the exchange of ideas is important. So is my safety.
As I wrap up my freshman year, I come away knowing that Duke is an incredible institution with a vibrant community of Jewish and Zionist students. However, given the experiences I have had with antisemitism, anti-Israel rhetoric, and polarization on campus, I also come away knowing that these sentiments are omnipresent and very ugly.
Most importantly, it’s bolstered my conviction to fight this scourge more than ever. As a proud Jewish and Zionist, I call upon others to help me. We need to advocate for our people and for those who don’t know how to advocate for themselves. We need to teach our own people to have strong voices and convictions and to wear their religious identity with pride.
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