All Jewish Tulane University organizations, including Tulane Hillel and the Rohr Chabad Jewish Student Center, congregated on Nov. 2 to host the campus’ first Israel Unity Event.
Spearheaded by students, the event on the Lavin-Bernick Center quad offered an opportunity for Israel-supporting community members to show their pride, engage in discussions about current events and feel a sense of unity after nearly a month of the Israel-Hamas war.
Reports of antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed across the country and on campus over the last month. For junior Bali Lavine, the Oct. 26 protest on Freret Street was a rude awakening for her sense of safety on campus.
“In my first address to the community on Brown Field a couple of weeks ago I was calling on Tulane to support its Jewish students,” Lavine said. “I think at this point, even if you don’t support us, we need your protection.”
Hillel hosts an annual Israel Fest every spring semester, but Rabbi Leibel Lipskier said this was the first time all Jewish campus organizations came together to program an event. Typically, Chabad and Hillel work on their programming individually.
“We’re collaborating so closely, which is unprecedented,” Lipskier said.
Lipskier also said he has seen an influx in attendance at Chabad events.
“Attendance has exploded,” Lipskier said. “We’re doing events basically every single day, in one form or another, and we’ve never been so active. We have increased our student programming in the past three weeks to levels that we’ve never had before. We’re literally swamped 24/7.”
Jewish student leaders like senior Jacob Starr wanted to find ways to move forward after the brief violence that erupted on Freret. The day after, Starr organized a productive brainstorm with 30 other Jewish leaders on campus and the idea for the Israel Unity Event was born.
After five days of nonstop scheduling, Starr said the event was created to mitigate the potential negative effects of another pro-Palestine protest that was rumored to occur at the same time.
“We had what I think was a pretty unorganized counter protest [on Oct. 26] where a lot of people gathered and were doing their pro-Israel, pro-Jewish thing, but it gave the pro-Palestinian side oxygen and let things get out of hand,” Starr said. “We had an entire plan in place to redirect people from whatever potential protests they were going to do, but it ended up falling through.”
One week after the rally on Freret, the village of tables was in action, handing out chicken shawarma from Rimon and demonstrating how to wrap tefillin, a Jewish Orthodox prayer ritual.
Jewish studies adjunct professor David Goldstein said he usually does not attend outdoor rallies or meetings, but wanted to be a part of the support for Jewish students supporting Israel.
“My students are very much involved and very interested in what’s going on and they need to talk, so we talk,” Goldstein said. “Sometimes they’ll talk for half the class, but that stopped. Now I give them 10 minutes and we get back to the subject. Not every kid in my class is Jewish, but they’re all terrific and I’m proud of them.”
Goldstein began teaching at Tulane in 1978 and said Jewish life on campus was much more muted than it is today.
“It’s hard to describe what the mood and structure of Tulane Jewish students is, but it’s better,” Goldstein said.
Junior Eden Roth helped organize the event and said she believes people need to engage in debate with proper rhetoric and respectful dialogue.
“I just think that this is something that the world should take as an example on how to come back from negative and violent events where people disagree with one another and come back with peace,” Roth said.
Roth was one of over 200 Tulane students who spent the summer in Israel this summer and said she left 60 days before the war broke out.
“I could have easily been at the music festival,” Roth said. “These are people that I became friends with in Israel. Peers that live parallel lives to us and their lives will never be the same.”
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