College can be a time for Jewish students to further explore their Judaism — religiously, socially and politically. The following is a compilation of resources available to Jewish students and a summary of what these groups are doing on campus.
\”Be Quick — But Don\’t Hurry: Finding Success in the Teachings
Andrew Hill should be considered a very lucky man. The 50-year-old Los Angeles native played basketball at UCLA in the 1970s under the auspices of John Wooden, one of the school\’s greatest coaches. Hill won three championship rings with UCLA but left the university with a chip on his shoulder and a deep misunderstanding of the coach who would later become his greatest mentor.
\”King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel\” by Jonathan Kirsch (Ballantine Books, $28)
In his \”Reading the Book: Making the Bible a Timeless Text,\” Rabbi Burton Visotzky writes, \”To the extent that the Bible reveals the words of God to a community, it is essential that students get those words down right, so that they may become part of the community. In certain communities, students of the Bible are free to question, grapple, doubt and deny — so long as they first hear their community\’s reading of God\’s word.\”
On the surface, they may not seem to share much in common. Victoria Gendel is a charming, pixyish Russian woman. Elias Inbram is a tall, photogenic Ethiopian male. However, both are Jewish 20-something college students who grew up in small, isolated villages and are now living in Israel.
Back in October, 60 UCLA students learned that over winter break they would be going on the trip of a lifetime. They had been chosen from among hundreds of applicants to take part, virtually for free, in UCLA Hillel\’s Birthright Israel contingent. The Birthright program brings thousands of Jewish students to Israel for 10-day tours that encourage them to discover their own Jewish identity. The 1999 trip had received glowing reviews. But in December 2000, one-third of the UCLA slots were suddenly up for grabs.
I recently participated in two dialogues about the crisis in the Middle East. One was with Palestinian Arabs at a local university. The second was with Jews who have been longtime supporters of the Oslo accords. The dialogue with the Arabs took place in a large college gym. Some 2,000 students filled the stands expecting some kind of vicious spectator sport. Instead of two sides coming out fighting, they witnessed a strange conversation.
Twenty thousand mourners, seething with anger, followed the bodies of Binyamin and Talia Kahane through downtown Jerusalem to the Givat Shaul cemetery last Sunday night. Most of them were Orthodox yeshiva students, admirers of Meir Kahane, the assassinated founder of the Jewish Defense League and of the outlawed Kach party. The rabbi\’s son and daughter-in-law, aged 34 and 31 respectively, had been shot by Palestinian gunmen as they drove home from a Jerusalem Shabbat to the West Bank settlement of Kfar Tapuach. Five of their six children were injured.
The day before a report came out confirming allegations that the Orthodox Union (OU) for years ignored signs that a top rabbi at the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) was abusing teens in his charge, Ayelet Fischer and 300 other teens were at the Marriott in Woodland Hills attending NCSY\’s West Coast regional conclave. And nobody was talking about Rabbi Baruch Lanner.
The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust: The Activities of Vaad-Ha-Hatzala Rescue Committee, 1933-1945, Efraim Zuroff, Yeshiva University Press, 316 pages, $39.50
Noam Zissman, 21, a convoy commander from Ra\’anana, and Moran Kalinsky, 20, a deputy company commander from Holon, sit in their Israeli officers\’ uniforms at Johnny Rockets on Melrose. They have just arrived in Los Angeles after more than a week of nonstop travel across the U.S., and they won\’t even have time to order a plate of fries before they have to rush across town.
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