UCLA Jewish Faculty Resilience Group Holds ‘Back to School’ Event

The Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFrg) at UCLA held an event at Stephen Wise Temple on Sept. 15 explaining how they are preparing for the beginning of the academic year.

The event was titled “Back to School Amid the Israel-Hamas War” and around 200-300 people attended. Kira Stein, founder and chair of the JFrg at UCLA, explained that the group was formed in Nov. 2023 to “create a support network for Jewish faculty and staff at UCLA” and figure how to combat antisemitism campus head-on. The JFrg at UCLAnow has 300 members.

“The rise of anti-Jewish encampments on campuses didn’t just happen overnight,” Stein said, attributing it to “university leaders tolerating antisemitic indoctrination” and the “teaching [of] false libelous narratives about Israel Israelis and American Jews who simply support Israel’s existence.” Stein said that there needs to be “more than just a playbook and a plan” to combat antisemitism and that the JFrg has developed a rapid response team to counter campus antisemitism; it hopes to expand this initiative across the greater Los Angeles area.

Molly Fox, an associate professor of anthropology at UCLA, said that the anti-Israel movement “took over my department and UCLA more generally” and she felt “isolated and scared,” but that changed when she met JFrg; Fox is now the co-chair of the JFrg’s Anti-Jewish Incident Report (AIR) Committee. Fox explained that the committee follows up on reports of antisemitic incidents, meets with victims, access support resources they need and demands accountability and make sure Jews and Israelis are protected at UCLA. The committee needs to hire data managers, analysts and support staff. She pointed out that while politicians and pundits have been talking about the issue of antisemitism, “we’ve been left to deal with it on our own.”

Throughout the night, students and faculty members shared their experiences of antisemitism at UCLA. Student Eli Tsives told attendees that when he was walking near the encampment, the encampment’s security team members surrounded him, and pushed and pulled him away from the encampment “while actual campus security” simply watched; he claimed that the campus security said they were instructed to stand down. Tsives also claimed that there were people wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags while chanting “f— the Jews” in a campus parking lot.

Tsives, who was featured in a viral video that showed encampment members blocking him from using the main entrance on campus, told attendees that his experience wasn’t “unique” and that “when we needed support … many deans chancellors and presidents stayed silent.” He added that “many Jewish students lost faith in their institutions” and are afraid to show their identity. But there have been Jewish students who have “walked through the flames of anti-Israel protests” proudly displaying their Magen Davids, calling out their anti-Israel teachers and providing support to one another. “These brave students… remind us that true strength is that when the world punches you in the face you look back and smile,” Tsives said.

“When we needed support … many deans chancellors and presidents stayed silent.” – Eli Tsives

He encouraged Jewish faculty to attend events put on Jewish students, and told Jewish students that “we don’t speak up because we want to, we speak up because we have to,” and to “be the voice in our community.”

Yitzy Frankel, a UCLA law student who is suing the university over its handling of the encampment, told attendees that UCLA “failed us all of us” and “aided and abetted” the encampment. Frankel explained that because he’s a law student, he decided to fight UCLA “in the courts.” He recounted how a federal judge blocked UCLA from allowing and assisting antisemitic activity on campus in an Aug. 13 injunction, “calling UCLA’s actions ‘unimaginable and abhorrent.’” UCLA announced they were appealing the matter because it would “hamstring its ability to manage its campus,” Frankel said. A week later, the university dropped their appeal.

Toward the end of his speech, Frankel pointed out that the Philistines, ancient Egyptians and Nazis have all perished after trying to kill the Jews; Hamas is “a work in progress.”

Nir Hoftman, an anesthesiologist at UCLA, told attendees that Jews are vastly underrepresented at the university’s medical school to the point where “we are almost an extinct species as far as the students are concerned.” Hoftman pointed to a systemic racism course referring to Jews as white oppressors as an example as to why there are so few Jews at the medical school.

Three medical students then spoke. Stuart Fine told attendees that the first time he ever felt unsafe over his Jewish identity was when in his class group chat someone endorsed the violence on Oct. 7, and when he told the school about it, the reply was nothing could be done out of fear of a lawsuit. Fine claimed to have received several intimidating phone calls and was told he couldn’t determine what antisemitism is. Additionally, he had to walk by a “from the river to the sea” poster every day. Such hateful rhetoric is “unbecoming of future physicians,” Fine contended, asking “how will future doctors” hide their biases against Israelis, Zionists and Jews.

Eliana Jolkovsky, who goes by “@ThatKoreanJew” on social media, recalled receiving an email calling on the Jewish Medical Student Association to retract their statement saying that Hamas took hostages and engaged in rape on Oct. 7; the statement was not retracted. She also recalled a classmate insisting that there was “no proof” to such allegations that any video evidence was simply Israeli propaganda through the use of artificial intelligence; other classmates excused the Oct. 7 massacre. “These are your future doctors,” Jolkovsky said.

She declared that the “culture of antisemitism is systemic at the UCLA School of Medicine,” one example she mentioned as a professor giving a PowerPoint presentation stating that Jews are white; Jolkovsky noted the irony of being told that she, a Korean Jew, is white. Jolkovsky further pointed to attendees that six million Jews didn’t benefit from being white, they were murdered for not being white enough. She also claimed that when she attempted to start a medical students against antisemitism club, the school denied her, saying it wasn’t necessary.

She urged Jewish students to “use your voice organize call out the double standards” and called for the school to be hold hateful students accountable.

Addee Lerner, an Israel Defense Force veteran who served in the Gaza Strip in 2014, told attendees that before Oct. 7, a Palestinian classmate said during an icebreaker session that Lerner is “his biggest enemy right here.” Lerner tried to play it off, but the Palestinian classmate said “no,” causing another classmate’s jaw to drop. He also tried to run for student president, but students told others not to vote for him simply because he’s Israeli. After Oct. 7, Lerner said that no one in his class showed “any remorse or sorrow” over what happened.

Lerner also recounted seeing a classmate express admiration in a social media post for Leila Khaled, who was among the terrorists who hijacked commercial jetliners in 1969 and ’70, as well as a Palestinian woman who planted a bomb in an Israeli movie theater in 1967. “We know people think like this but what’s shocking is that people feel comfortable enough to post this on their social media,” Lerner said.

He also said he was assigned a senior lecturer who glorified self-immolation and pointed to Aaron Bushnell, who lit himself on fire after accusing the United States of being complicit of genocide in Gaza, as an example. This occurred in a psychiatry lecture. In another class, a Jew was called a “dog” in Arabic. And at a JFrg gathering for Hanukkah, many Jewish students didn’t want to be a part of a group photograph out of fear of backlash.

“You can’t unhear all the things that you’ve heard,” Lerner said, adding that he expects people to “speak up,” otherwise “we’re going through what we’re going through for no reason.”

Dr. Vivien Burt, professor emeritus of psychiatry at UCLA, also attended the lecture in which Bushnell’s self-immolation was glorified, where Israel was referred to as “Occupied Palestine.” The lecture, Burt contended, violated a UC resolution barring political indoctrination. Those that spoke out against it and other instances of antisemitism at faculty meeting “were vilified mocked labeled as racists by students who shouldn’t have been there,” Burt said. She added that “faculty leaders fail to hold residents and students and participating faculty accountable for these actions” and that such leaders who are silent are also complicit in the spreading of antisemitism.

“This isn’t new,” Burt said, pointing out how silence 80 years is what “spawned the Holocaust.”

But Burt said that she “won’t stop speaking” and “we are strong, we are resilient, we are determined.”

Stein concluded the evening by saying that the JFrg fulfills a “unique need” and that unlike various national Jewish organizations, “we’re on the ground … we’re in the trenches.” She stressed the importance of standing by faculty so that “Jewish students can learn.” But the JFrg is “being stretched to the limit” since they’re “fighting an avalanche with a shovel.” Stein urged attendees to donate to directly the organization or indirectly via Hillel. “Your support is the oxygen that keeps this movement alive,” she said, encouraging attendees to “stand tall and proud for Zionism.”