5 Ways to Make Jewish Life Less ‘Clichéd’ from an Actual Millennial

Amram Altzman for newvoices.com

I am a Millennial. I say this proudly. I dance around Jewish tradition, modernity, and practice in a way that Millennials do. I whole-heartedly enjoy my status as a Generation Y’er. At the same time, however, I really don’t like how much of the conversation about how to engage my peers is fundamentally had by people who don’t seem to understand how our system works. And, as a self-confessed Millennial, I would like to share, in response to Rabbi Daniel Korobkin’s “Clichéd Judaism,” based on an article about how Christian Millennials are also facing problems engaging with religious institutions, five ways the establishment generations can make our Judaism less clichéd:

Understand that the world we live in is infinitely more connected than it was before: Our world is connected by the technology we grew up around, and that we have fully integrated into our lives. It connects us to people thousands of miles away, which we cherish. Our connectedness also means that we are more aware of the changing world around us, and are scrambling to find answers to questions about how we should treat the injustices we see in the world. We get to see, through photographs, blog posts, and tweets, a world that is far more complex than you told us it would be, and we need to digest that. Sometimes we come out with answers that you don’t like. We don’t want to take things at face value because in a world where everything can—and should—be thoroughly researched and fact-checked, we can’t just accept what you tell us as reality and move on. Our narratives about everything — history, Israel, identity — have all changed drastically because of the fact that we don’t want to take things for what they are.

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We’re Young, But We Get It

By Amna Farooqi for Baltimore Jewish Times

Two weeks ago, thousands of American Jewish leaders from across the country gathered outside Washington, D.C., for the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly to discuss issues pertaining to Israel, Jewish continuity and campus life.

One of the more engaging programs at the GA was a plenary panel featuring journalists I admire: Jeffrey Goldberg, Aluf Benn, Steven Linde and Linda Scherzer. As the conversation drifted from the media’s coverage of the war this summer to support for Israel, Benn pointed out that American liberals, especially young people, still traditionally support Israel but are growing more critical of the occupation.

Scherzer responded with: “Do you think young people just don’t get it?” With its deep condescension toward me and my peers, that moment revealed a major flaw in the American Jewish community’s approach to young people. The JFNA, like the rest of the community, knows that it has a problem engaging with us. It was frequently discussed at the GA. But the nature of those conversations actually epitomized the problems they purported to solve.

The panel “Doing Jewish in College and Beyond: Effective Ways to Engage Young Jews” had not a single student or young person on the panel. In fact, several of the students who asked questions were told that their views were “parochial” and only representative of a tiny, insignificant minority.

The program “Generation #Hashtag” highlighted statistics about the rise of anti-Semitism on campuses, even as the students on the panel itself insisted that they didn’t feel unsafe or insecure as Jews.

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The Fierce Battle for Israel on Western College Campuses

From The Algeneiner

The Jewish State is fighting wars for its very survival against barbarous, genocidal foes like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. But far outside the Middle East, ferocious battles are being fought on the campuses of the world’s great universities – this time for Israel’s reputation and good name. The consequences of failure are too horrible to contemplate, including the destruction of Israel’s economic lifeline through economic boycotts that germinate on campus and pass into the mainstream.

I became an Israel campus warrior in 1988 when the Lubavitcher Rebbe first sent me as Rabbi to Oxford University. A steady stream of attacks on Israel were launched by the likes of Hanan Ashrawi, Saeb Erekat, and Yasser Arafat himself. Many of these speeches took place at the world-famous Oxford Union. Our Oxford University L’Chaim Society responded with five Israeli Prime Ministers, including Benjamin Netanyahu, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Shamir, and Ehud Olmert. We partnered with the Union for most of the speeches including mesmerizing defenses of the Jewish state delivered by a young and hyper-charismatic Bibi Netanyahu.

Since those days the battles have become ever more ferocious with the much more timid pro-Israel groups at America and Europe’s leading universities being clobbered by Students for Justice in Palestine, Israel Apartheid Week, and BDS.

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Wellesley Fires Hillel Leaders Even as Anti-Israel Activism Rises

Hillary Clinton Alma Mater Cites 'Restructuring' for Moves

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen, The Jewish Daily Forward

(Haaretz) — Soon after the new school year got underway at Wellesley College, posters bearing the images of Palestinian children who were killed or wounded during the Gaza war appeared on dining hall walls.

A large poster, likewise sponsored by the new campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, went up in the student center asking, “What does Zionism mean to you?” with lots of space for people to fill in answers. Within a week people had written “genocide,” “apartheid” and “murder” on the poster at the Boston-area college.

Upset, Wellesley women turned to Patti Scheinman, Wellesley Hillel’s director, and David Bernat, the Jewish chaplain, along with student leaders of the Jewish community, for support. They jointly pushed for a meeting with Wellesley’s SJP leaders.

Both Hillel employees were abruptly fired last week by Wellesley College, with administration officials offering “restructuring” as the reason.

Jewish students dealing with what some say is ratcheted-up anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment on campus are dismayed by the precipitous firing. “It makes me and other students feel like we just lost our support system and are on our own,” said Tali Marcus, a senior psychology major who is co-president of Wellesley Friends of Israel. “It’s really disconcerting.”

Wellesley is one of the prestigious Seven Sisters network of women’s colleges and counts potential presidential candidate Hillary Clinton among its alumnae. Roughly 10 percent of the current student body of 2,100 is Jewish. It has now joined the growing number of college campuses where often-intense anti-Israel sentiment at times bleeds into anti-Semitism, in the view of some there, in the process discomfiting large numbers of Jewish and pro-Israel students.

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‘Open Hillel’ Is a Much Bigger Problem Than You Think

by Aiden Pink, Assistant Editor of The Tower Magazine and

A new movement started by college students seeks to dramatically disrupt Jewish activities on campuses. How the community responds will have a large impact on the future of American Jewish life.

There’s a story about the Dalai Lama, who was looking for advice on how to keep his community united after being exiled from Tibet. Knowing that the Jews have had centuries of experience living as a minority in diaspora, he asked for a meeting with the two Chief Rabbis of Israel. One chief rabbi said, “Before we begin, your Holiness, you should know that we Jews never agree on anything.” Immediately, the other chief rabbi yelled, “That’s not true!”
I thought of this joke a lot when I attended the first ever “Open Hillel” conference, which took place October 11-13 at Harvard University. The Open Hillel phenomenon is a largely student-led effort devoted to eliminating the standards that guide Israel-related programs at Hillel houses, seeking to legitimize and include groups that advance anti-Israel (and sometimes anti-Semitic) agendas in mainstream Jewish campus life. Hillel houses, which host religious, political, and cultural events, and provide resources for many Jewish- and Israel-related campus student organizations, are the most important (and sometimes only) centers of Jewish life on college campuses, providing Jewish students with a safe environment at a time when hostility and violence is being directed at them with disturbing frequency—aggression that in some cases is being perpetrated and encouraged by the very groups Open Hillel says Hillel itself should now legitimize.

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Embracing Uncertainty: Why You Don’t Need To Have Everything Figured Out

by Amber Ikeman for newvoices.com

Do you ever get so overwhelmed about your future that you want to just stop what you’re doing, run out into a field and scream,

“WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE?!?”

Yeah. That’s about where I am right now.

I left Yellowstone National Park three weeks ago, where I was working seasonally. Since then, I’ve resumed my nomadic lifestyle and have been traveling the southwest. I have to admit that it’s been a bit difficult for me.

Really? You’re about to complain about getting to travel all over the country completely on your own schedule with no obligations or deadlines?! Wow. That sounds rough.

No, I’m not being sarcastic; it’s not always as fun as it sounds. Leaving Yellowstone with no concrete plans was terrifying, to say the least. I’ve pretty much always had a plan; after high school, I knew I was going to go to college; after college, I felt that I needed to spend some time in Israel learning more about my heritage; after Israel, it felt like time to get a “real” job. And even when I decided to pack up and start a new life, I had Yellowstone as my destination following a two-week road trip. But when the season ended, I set out on the road again with no anchor and no specific plan.

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Why Hillel Matters More Than Ever

by DANIEL SMOKLER for Mosaic

85% of young American Jews attend college. They need tending.

In their noble attempt to arouse communal action in response to the Pew Center’s now notorious Portrait of Jewish Americans, Jack Wertheimer and Steven Cohen declare the college campus “an opportunity waiting to be seized.” What, we might ask, is that opportunity, and how can it best be seized?

College is the single most common experience shared by Jews in the United States. The proportion of young American Jews on university campuses—a full 85 percent—exceeds the number who light Hanukkah candles, attend a Passover seder, or, certainly, marry other Jews. By some estimates, moreover, these young Jews are mainly concentrated on just 75 campuses. The opportunity is therefore clear: to ensure the continuity and cultural vitality of Jews in America, here is one place where Jewish organizations and philanthropies are well advised to invest.

As Wertheimer and Cohen show, the Orthodox community has taken this message to heart, funding a booming presence on campus. But “the message conveyed by [Orthodox] programs,” they write, “does not always appeal to non-Orthodox Jews.” They are right, and the point can be sharpened. Most Orthodox outreach, no matter how pleasantly delivered, is rooted in the hope of turning Jews toward traditional religious observance. Some organizations, like Aish HaTorah, are explicit about this. Some, like Chabad, communicate it quietly and, as it were, incrementally (just one mitzvah at a time!).

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