Last week the Ledger wrote of the superb communal response to the tragedy at Wesleyan University which included the murder of a young Jewish girl, Johanna Justin-Jinich, and an ominous general threat against the Jewish community to create a “Jewish Columbine” on campus. Looking at how the situation developed, it is clear that there were a number of appropriate responses by the university administration, state and local law enforcement professionals, as well as the Jewish community organizations noted in our story.

In an opinion piece in the Hartford Courant a gifted recent graduate, Marissa Bostoff, reminds us that aside from this response, there is a need on the Wesleyan campus that remains unfulfilled.

Wesleyan, with a large Jewish population, is a university that tends to treat its student body as an organic whole and does not have a place that Jewish students can turn to nurture and grow their Jewish heritage and identity. Instead they provide a ‘Bayit’ or living space that does Jewish programming under the tutelage of a rabbi who is hired by the university as the Jewish chaplain.

Bostoff defines the irony of the Jewish community at Wesleyan through her own experience: “The Wesleyan Jewish community…is a mass of contradictions that questions the boundaries of the terms ‘Jewish’ and ‘community’… There is a safety in this for Wesleyan students. If no one is precisely in or out of the fold, everyone has the freedom to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct their cultural and religious identities at will. Jewishness is everywhere and nowhere, an inside joke for those who care about such things, barely perceptible to those who don’t.”

Several years ago there was a situation at Wesleyan that spoke to the same problem, but without the grave consequences of this one. A coalition of Palestinian groups was given facilities on campus for a weekend of training and an indoctrination session. Included in that weekend’s program were the ritual anti-Israel diatribes that, fortunately, did not radiate to the rest of the campus. It was enough of a threat however, for a group of Jewish students and faculty to coalesce and confront the administration over their decision to allow this kind of activity on the Wesleyan campus. In so doing, over 30 students and faculty came together and asked for help from many of the same community figures who were there to lend support and advice in this current crisis. But an ad hoc group is difficult to convene and suffers from the lack of permanence that an existing organization would create. Little was resolved and the basic problem remains: a lack of an identifiable Jewish space on campus.

First and foremost, Jewish kids need a Jewish place on campus that is permanent; someplace where they can pursue their Jewishness with ritual and tradition as well as be able to explore their Judaism intellectually. Exploring their Jewish heritage can be a significant part of their college experience as it is on so many other campuses like Wesleyan.

On most campuses Hillel is the solution. Wesleyan has a loose and informal relationship that, though useful, is not quite Hillel. Wesleyan relies mostly on its mostly university sponsored and administrated ‘Bayit’ living space and rabbinical chaplaincy. Ms. Bostoff echoes many of the views about ‘Bayit’ that we heard around the time of the Palestinian incident on campus. It is an inadequate imitation of a Jewish organization and doesn’t provide any real engagement with things Jewish.

We feel that there is a need on campus for Hillel or something very much like it. Chabad does have a presence on campus at the moment, and we hope that presence will soon expand.

In the words of Ms. Bostoff, “Instead of Hillel, which provides students with a space on campus where they can safely be Jews, Wesleyan has the Bayit, which provides students with a stage on which to perform queer re-enactments of the Purim story and seders drenched in liberation theology.”

The broader Jewish community can rush in to help on campus when they feel it is necessary, but a permanent presence is the task that is best left to faculty, students and dedicated alumni. We are sure the Jewish community of Middletown and the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford would be supportive of an increased Jewish presence on campus. Connecticut’s Federations play a key role in their area Hillels and provide vital support with funds and communal involvement. They join in to help UConn’s Hillel, which caters to students from all over the state. But it all comes back to the faculty, students and Wesleyan alumni. We hope that a move towards a more involved Hillel develops so that from this sad tragedy there comes at least some permanent good.

nrg

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