UJ Students SupportIsrael, Mixed on Iraq

“President Bush has the best interests of the United Statesand the world at heart … if push comes to shove, I would fight with theAmerican Army,” said Jacob Proud, a 20-year old freshman in bioethics at theUniversity of Judaism (UJ).

“I question the real motives for this war… I want mycountry and Israel to be as just and righteous as possible,” observed MarkGoodman, 26, a second-year student in the UJ’s Ziegler School of RabbinicStudies. The opinions, expressed in separate interviews during the first weekof the war in Iraq, illustrate an obvious and a more subtle point.

For one, not all students think alike, not even in auniversity whose students are, by self-selection, dedicated to Judaism.Secondly, even within the UJ, undergraduates and rabbinical students sitlargely on opposite sides of the fence.

It’s risky to jump to big conclusions from a very smallsample of interviews, and the perspectives might have been different amongstudents at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion or anOrthodox yeshiva, and most certainly at a secular institution like UCLA.

But thanks to the diversity of backgrounds in the UJundergraduate college, which is nondenominational, the viewpoints of itsstudents seem to represent sizable Jewish constituencies.

The Jewish Journal held a roundtable discussion with fourundergraduates. Besides Proud, they were Michael B. Salonius, 29, a senior inJewish philosophy; Samuel Sternberg, 19, a freshman in international business;and Rachel N. Tobin, 21, a senior in political science.

The students’ support for the war, though varying in fervorand rationale, was striking and reflected, they said, the overwhelmingattitudes among UJ’s 124 undergraduates.

Salonius, the oldest, most bearded and most reflective ofthe group, would have liked “a more complex and nuanced explanation [of Bush’sdecision]. But at the core,” he added, “this is a clash of civilizations and Ihope our values will win.”

Sternberg, whose backpack sports a “Anti-Zionism Is Anti-Jewishness”sticker felt that “the situation would fester” if action had been delayed.While acknowledging that his generation had no clear picture what it meant tobe in combat, he would be ready to serve in the armed forces, if drafted.

Rachel Tobin perceived no gender gap in war support betweenmen and women. She said that she would be willing to join a demonstration toback the troops, but worried about “the many unknowns” and admitted to acertain “hypocrisy” in counseling her brother against Army enlistment, if itcame to that.

All four concurred as to their strong personal and emotionalattachment to Israel and expressed deep concern for the fate of the JewishState. On balance, they hoped that the American action would ultimately benefitIsrael. The anti-war peace movement generally earned the undergraduates’contempt.

“The peace movement has been hijacked,” Salonius said.”There is no place for a Jew who supports Israel.”

Rabbinical student Goodman and his first-year schoolmateDanya Ruttenberg, 28, represented a sharp difference in tone and attitude.

“I’m afraid this war will do a lot of damage and might leavethe Middle East in worse shape than before,” Ruttenberg said. “We must hold ourgovernment accountable for its actions and make certain that it sets up aviable structure for life in the area after the war.”

Goodman felt that, “It is easier to be a ‘patriot’ and justback the government … but this war is not necessarily justified and manyother countries are questioning our real motives.”

Both students estimated some two-thirds of the 67 rabbinicalstudents shared their general reservations about the war. The differencesbetween undergraduates and rabbinical students seem to run deeper than justtheir perspectives on the war.

“There’s a lack of support for Israel in the rabbinicalschool,” charged Sternberg, and his viewpoint was seconded in even strongerlanguage by a graduate student in management, whom we encountered at theuniversity library.

Indeed, much of the campus apparently looks at therabbinical students as both leftist and elitist, a perception seen assimplistic by Ruttenberg and Goodman.

“I am strongly pro-Israel, but being critical of itsgovernment is not being anti-Israeli,” Ruttenberg said. “It is not black and white,the world works in shades of gray.”

However, she added with a smile, “This is the left coast andpeople who come to study here tend to be unconventional.”

Goodman, who will leave in the summer for the required yearof study in Israel, emphasized that, “I have a deep love for Israel. I havemany close friends there and I am terribly concerned for their safety.”

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the rabbinical school,questioned both the extent and validity of the impressions of his studentscited by others.

“This has been a pro-Zionist school from the beginning,” hesaid.

“Our rabbinical students took the lead in putting up anIsraeli flag on campus. We currently have 13 students in Israel, they’re theones who are putting their bodies on the line.”

As for the perception that the rabbinical students are”elitist,” Artson recalled, “When I was studying at Harvard, the graduatestudents didn’t mingle with the undergraduates.

 It’s not a matter of looking down at anyone, but there is abig differences in age here and you hang out with the people in your ownprogram.”