Elisa Abes
So one of the things that I’ve also come to realize is that as a profession, we went from very little conversation about anti semitism, about Jewish college students, so we and then all of the sudden we’re have we’re seeing it dominating the news. We’re seeing it dominating, you know, different college campuses. We’ve gone from zero ish to 100 ish very quickly, right, right? Conversations, you know, have been emotionally charged. You know, politically charged. We’ve been venturing into really thorny issues around free speech, legal issues, and, you know, temp, the temperature’s high, right? And so what I would hope for us to be able to talk about is just really understanding who are Jewish college students, right? What is the identity of Jewish college students?

Raechele Pope
Welcome to Student Affairs NOW the online learning community for Student Affairs educators. I’m your host. Raechele Pope, my pronouns are she and her. I’m a professor in the higher education and student affairs program at the University of Buffalo, and I serve as a Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Student Affairs and the Chief Diversity Officer for the Graduate School of Education. I’m recording today near the University of Buffalo’s campus on the unceded Land of the Haudenosaunee people. Student Affairs now is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find details about this episode or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com Today, we’re discussing the identities and experiences of Jewish students on campus. Many Jewish students have reported feeling unsafe and traumatized amidst the rise of anti semitism on campus in our nations and across the globe. In a moment, I’ll introduce our Go guest. I’ll introduce our guest, the deeply thoughtful Elisa Abes joining me today to talk about the identities and experience of Jewish students and the findings from a study she recently conducted. But before I do that, I need to give thanks to those who make these free webcasts possible. Today’s episode is sponsored by Huron, a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice. We’re also sponsored today by Routledge Taylor and Francis. View our complete catalog of authoritative education titles at routledge.com forward slash education. Stay tuned to the end of the podcast for more information about each sponsor. Now let’s get to today’s episode. Elisa. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today and for us to be able to have this important conversation. And welcome to the podcast. Can you begin by telling us just a little bit about you, your current role on campus and a bit about your pathway?

Elisa Abes
Sure, absolutely first I want to thank you, Raechele, for being so inviting and open to having this conversation. I really appreciate it. So again, I’m Elisa Abes. I use she and her pronouns. I am a professor in the Student Affairs and higher education program at Miami University, where I also serve as the Graduate Studies director. Miami is located in Oxford, Ohio, which is the traditional homelands of the Miami and Shawnee people. So I come to this work today, because for now over 20 years, almost 25 years, I have been studying and teaching student development theory. And the way that I come to this work is by using critical perspectives, so rather than situating the students right as the problems, if they’re not developed enough, I think about how the context are the problems that need to be fixed, because contexts are so shaped by different systems of oppression, such as racism, ableism, starting last year, you know, I wanted to, it became very important to me to also bring anti semitism into this conversation, because at that point, we really weren’t talking about as a profession, anti semitism as a system of oppression that was shaping the development the identity of college students. So I started a research project that I actually proposed back in the summer, so prior to October 7 to study College, the identity of Jewish college students in the context of anti semitism, and I should also say that so I identify as Jewish. Being Jewish is a central part of who I am as a person, religiously, culturally, ethnically, and so I feel like I really have a moral imperative to do this work, to talk about this work in Yeah, to talk about this work in our profession. And I’m at a point in my career where I have the privilege to be able to have these really difficult conversations. So I’m really grateful to be able to do this with you today. You

Raechele Pope
know that’s a that’s an interesting point, that antiSemitism has probably been rising on campus. I we could probably go back to 2016 it, it was, there was probably some stuff going on before that, but since 2016 and yet we just that. You just started thinking, I want to do this study last year. So talk to me about what brought you to this last year, or what could have brought you to this sooner and and why you didn’t. Right? Yeah,

Elisa Abes
that’s a really good question. I think part, part of what brought me to it last year was exactly what you said was that anti semitism really has been brewing well for centuries, but you know very much since around 2016 2017 what we are seeing is that white nationalism has just been become emboldened, right? We saw that in, you know, 2017 with the unite the right rally in Charlottesville, where people were chanting, you know, Jews will not replace us the Tree of Life shooting the next year where 11 people were killed in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, we saw that many other examples we can fast forward to January 6, the attack on the Capitol that was also full of anti semitic rhetoric imagery, and to a point where, really, in 2022 we were seeing an unprecedented number of anti semitic incidents being reported. And so, you know, for me, I was, you know, I’ve been, you know, I’ve been watching this. I think I felt some, you know, it just it became. It continued to grow. It was each year we were seeing something new happen. Each year we were seeing college students more of an uptick on college campuses. So I think for me, I just reached a point where, for personally, I didn’t feel like I could be silent anymore. And so, yeah, it really did. That’s why I really feel like it became just a moral obligation on my part. I was at a point in my career, I was at a that really was coinciding with this, in with this uptake and or uptick, and so that’s what just really, you know, that’s what really was the impetus behind it. Now, timing is everything right. So I proposed this study in the summer of 2023 got IRB, you know, the ethics approval to do it on October 9 of 23 so two days after the October 7, you know, attacked by Hamas on Israel. And so that then really caused me to really, you know, think about how to do this in the most ethical way, maybe even slow down a drop. You know, students are really struggling, but, yeah, but it was just that combination of the rise of anti semitism and my realization that I was in a position to start doing this research.

Raechele Pope
Well, there’s so much that’s going on, you know, like what the students are experiencing, what’s happening around us, and everything. And so I’m wondering if you could help, help our conversation by talking about, what do you what do we need to discuss today and why, so that we can have a better understanding of Jewish students and their identity on campus today,

Elisa Abes
yeah, yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I’ve also come to realize is that as a profession, we went from very little conversation about anti semitism, about Jewish college students, so we and then all of the sudden we’re have we’re seeing it dominating the news. We’re seeing it dominating, you know, different college campuses. We’ve gone from zero ish to 100 ish very quickly, right, right? Conversations, you know, have been emotionally charged. You know, politically charged. We’ve been venturing into really thorny issues around free speech, legal issues, and, you know, temp, the temperature’s high, right? And so what I would hope for us to be able to talk about is just really understanding who are Jewish college students, right? What is the identity of Jewish college students? Because I what I’m noticing is that in these very emotionally charged, politically driven conversations, we’re losing some focus just on who the students are, right? And as we know, you know, both know well that you know college is this time of self discovery, and so Jewish students are figuring out who they are in the midst of all of this emotionally charged times. And so I just so what I feel like we really need to talk about is, just as student affairs professionals, what do we need to understand about Jewish identity, Jewish experiences and how to provide support, you know, but having said that, we also need some background knowledge, right about what is anti semitism? You know, it’s, how does that connect with, or to possibly connect, you know, around with anti Zionism. So there are some concepts we also need to talk about in order to ground our conversation around Jewish identity.

Raechele Pope
Right? Like when we’re talking about student development in any form, it’s not in a vacuum. It’s going on with what’s happening around us. So you mentioned that maybe a place to begin, one place to begin, was to sort of stop and look at anti semitism, because that’s what the students are experiencing, or many of the students have expressed experiencing. So what does anti semitism look like on campus? Or why is it so important to understand anti semitism? And you also talked about some relationship between anti semitism and anti Zionism. So why don’t we just start there? Sure, small question, right?

Elisa Abes
I know, right. So, so I think to even understand what’s happening on college campuses, we do need to have a little bit a broader understanding of anti semitism. And you’re right, we’re going to do this. We’re going to have to do this pretty fast, and hopefully it opens up more curiosity for folks to learn more, but starting just with initially, what you said, what’s happening on college campuses? You know, our Jewish college students have been experiencing, you know, just an exponential rise, as you had mentioned, in anti semitic incidents. In fact, since October 7, there’s been a report of almost a 300% increase in terms of anti semitic incidents the United States. And you know, and of course, corresponding, you know, exponential increase on campuses. What’s

Raechele Pope
interesting about that, if you said a 300% increase since October 7, and I have seen figures that in the year before that there was a 300% increase. So this is really going quickly.

Elisa Abes
It is. It really is because it was in 2022, that it was the highest, one of the highest numbers of anti semitic incidents being reported. This is by the anti Defamation League since they started tracking in ninth in the 1970s Wow. So it was really, yeah, really high rise, and then continuing to grow. And Jewish students are experiencing anti semitism in a number of different ways. They’re experiencing it, you know, through they’re seeing a lot of physical, you know, assaults, verbal assaults, vandalism, graffiti, people, you know, students in residence halls not wanting to be roommates, you know, with Jewish college students, just flyers around campus. And that’s even just before we talk about, right? What’s happened about this more, some of these more contemporary iterations as well, that you know, are connecting anti semitism with, you know, with, with what’s happening in Israel and Gaza. But I think to even put that into context, if it’s okay, I’d like to even take one step backwards and talk a little bit about even what anti semitism is. So because anti semitism is one of the really oldest hates around and it there’s a lot of different definitions on anti semitism. You know, broadly speaking, we say it is a hatred towards Jews. It’s the marginalization, oppression, discrimination toward Jewish people, Jewish community. I think about anti semitism. Other folks think about anti semitism as kind of falling into three different categories that can help us make some sense of it. One is different anti semitic tropes or conspiracy theories. One the second one being more of the some of these incidents I was just mentioning that fall into more categories that are more hate crime, and then this third category of being this considered like this new anti semitism, contemporary that does connect anti semitism with what’s happening in Israel. So just real again, briefly, some of these anti semitic tropes. You know, we often hear Jews described as being wealthy, greedy, cheap as a trope, Jews as controlling everything. Jews controlling the media, government, the economy, Jews as these powerful white oppressors, lots of conspiracy theories. Typically, when something’s going wrong in the United States, in the world, it’s easy to blame the Jews. You know, Jewish people have been blamed for 911 for covid, for covid vaccines as being a tool to make money. Jewish people, when they were wildflower, wildflowers, wildfires in California, Jewish people were blamed by a politician for having, you know, Jewish space lasers, you know. And there’s this one. Full book called We need to talk about anti semitism, by Rabbi Diana first CO which came out earlier, 2023 and she talks about it very much as you know, a virus. You know, Jewish people aren’t to blame for covid, but it’s like a virus that just keeps reemerging when something, you know, yeah, when something wrong is bad is happening in society. This virus comes to life of anti semitism, Holocaust denial, right? The replace, great replacement theory. That’s what was driving, you know, some of the rioters in the in the United right rally, which is this conspiracy theory that Jewish people are plotting to overtake, to overtake white people with minorities, right? So it’s this replacement theory, Holocaust inversion, when something is considered, you know, when something is troubling to to compare it to a death march when, or you know, went to different acts that a person is like a Nazi, right, which really minimizes the realities of the Holocaust. So these are some of the tropes of the conspiracy theories that I think many people have just been socialized into, you know, believing right? Then we have the category of what’s more hate crime like, you know, when we have different kinds of assaults and vandalism, you know, swastikas, graffiti, there is a there is a group. I follow them on Instagram called Jewish on campus, and it is younger college age. Jewish students are really serving as a watchdog, right for different incidents happening, happening, you know, they just reported just yesterday, Mezuzah is being a mezuzah, which is a really important Jewish symbol on a lot of Jewish homes, on their doorposts, you know, being ripped off of the doorpost, right of a Jewish student. So we’re seeing these kinds of incidents. So we’ve got that category that is more physical, verbal attack like, and then we and then there’s this more, you know, what a lot of students are experiencing now, which is this more, more new antiSemitism, contemporary antiSemitism, which connects, conflates, you know, Jewish people, with what’s happening in Israel. And that’s, of course, you know what a lot of students are struggling with right now,

Raechele Pope
So so these students, you said, you know, there’s this group of students that are also identified and cataloging it, and they’re, they are, they are experiencing it. And so this whole understanding of what does it mean to be Jewish? I’m just trying to move us to Jewish identity, because I’m sure there are students who are Jewish, who are at different places in their own development when they think about when they experience these events, these aggressions and microaggressions on campus and so on. So what is this? What what are you learning? What are you finding from the students that you talk to in your study about how they see themselves as Jewish and their Jewish identity? Yeah,

Elisa Abes
and would it be okay, Rochelle, if I even just preface that a little bit with just an overview of Jewish identity, a little bit, just absolutely demographically. Because, again, I think, I think a lot of folks just don’t understand, right, what it means to be Jewish. You know, it’s a Jewish people are, it’s like 2% of the population, so it’s a small group, and there’s just not, I think, yeah, just not a lot of knowledge. I just so even outside of my study, I think also just important to point out that, you know, Judaism is, it’s a religion, and as I mentioned in my introduction, it’s also a culture. It’s, you know, it’s an ethnicity, and different Jewish students are going to. Understand or are going to identify differently along, you know, whether they see it as a for themselves, a religion, a culture, ethnicity, you know, as a religion. I think it’s also just important to recognize, too, that there’s a whole lot of diversity. You know, across what it means to be Jewish as a religion. You know, we hear, we talk about those different, not really denominations, but kind of strands. But, you know, like Reform Jewish people, conservative Jewish which is not a political identity, it’s just strand, conservative Judaism, you know, Orthodox Judaism and those all have to do with, really the extent to which people adhere to very traditional Jewish law traditions. And so that’s it’s important to recognize that, because our students on campus are not all going to look the same exactly, and yeah, in terms of how they are practicing their need for kosher food, or the way they observe the Sabbath, how long they celebrate different holidays. We have Rosh Hashanah coming up the Jewish new year. Some students will celebrate that for one day. Some students celebrate that for two days. And again, it has to do with these different strands and beliefs. And then some students don’t even identify that religiously, but they identify more culturally, ethnically. And some both, right, all three. You know, as a culture, it’s like any culture, right? We’ve got shared custom, shared food, music, dress, language, and, yeah, celebrations, and there’s just just common connections that bring us together. And for a lot of Jewish students, that is how they’re identifying as Jewish. There was a the Pew Research Center did a big study in 2020 of Jewish identity, and found that the overwhelming majority of Jewish, Jewish folks really do identify more culturally and ethnically English than religiously Jewish. I should also say that matches

Raechele Pope
with the society as a whole, right? We are becoming less in the United States, becoming less and less religious, yeah. And so it would make sense that that in this group as well.

Elisa Abes
It does, it does. And then, you know, we’ve got Jews by birth, Jews by choice, you know, folks who’ve converted in terms of race. We have Jews who are white. We had, we do have Jews, Jews of color. I think this, the Pew Research Center was saying about 8% of the Jewish population in the United States are Jews of color, but among college age folks, by 15% so again, there is a lot of diversity, which matters for again, who our students are what they need, to extent to which they’re affiliated with Jewish student organizations or not, and the different kinds of support they need. So I just wanted to provide that background before jumping into what I was learning through the research. No,

Raechele Pope
I think that’s really important to set that that as a foundation to help us understand what it is that you were finding, yeah,

Elisa Abes
so in terms of my research itself, so just, you know, a little background, so I’ve, it’s a qualitative research study, and with there’s 13, well, I mean, we’re gonna step back. Well, no, I’m not gonna step back. I have a tendency to keep stepping back and wanting to give more context. But so there are, I interviewed 13 Jewish college students at two different campuses over the course of a year. So I and I interviewed each of them three times, and so a lot of data. The interviews started in November of 2023, so I paused a little bit right after getting IRB approval, talked to some different stakeholders. Is this the right time, ethically, you know, to come in as a researcher. But so so did one. So started late fall. Did another interview after winter break. Folks have had some time to step back some after some of the trauma and whatnot of the fall, and then again over the summer, to just do some wrap up conversations after the school year had ended. The group that I talked to, they are one thing also say in terms of identity wise, of the 13, five of them identify somewhere are queer identified would be gender non conforming, you know, gay, lesbian. So some diversity in that way, in turn, as well as who I was talking to, and both of the campuses, I should say, are in the Midwest as well. Context really matters in all of this, and that’s one thing I want to you know. I’ll talk about some more. One of the things I should even say, though, with context, is that one thing we know is that the way anti semit. Is playing out on different college campuses. Does Matter, depending on the particular school, where the school located, the population of the school and one more context, so also there. So my studies are a small qualitative study there has been, there was a large study done by a large quantitative study done by Brandeis University Center for modern Jewish studies that really that looked across the United States, and another report that just came out in the last couple of weeks by Professor Eitan Hirsch, who also did more of a national study, both quantitative and some focus groups. And even though my study is it was very interesting, because even though my study was a smaller, more pilot study in the Midwest, it was so consistent with larger patterns of what we were seeing across the country, even though, again, the way folks experienced anti semitism was different, depending on what was happening on their campuses. But one of the things, neither of the campuses where I was doing this research would be considered political activist hot beds. That’s the language came out of the Brandeis study too. Where are our hot spots of anti semitism? However, all of the students, the participants in the study, whether they personally experienced antiSemitism, and the sake of whether it be, you know, an assault, vandalism, you know what now hype, what they’re seeing on social media, which I’d like to talk about a little bit more, they all still felt very much that they were, they are living in a context of anti semitism, because they are so aware of what is happening nationally. So whether it be they have friends, you know, at other campuses, or just what they’re seeing in the news, but really what they’re seeing on social media, in particular, where they’re just being bombarded, you know, by anti anti semitism on social media. And so, in fact, I, one of my participants, kept saying, you know, there’s always the but the what if I feel okay today here at this campus, but, you know, so there was always, it was always still within this context of anti semitism. What my what this? What I’m learning so far is that what Jewish college students are experiencing, I’m terming as they’re really living in this tension between the joy of being Jewish the oil of being Jew. I think, right, right, Oi and now the OI being, you know this coming, if you have this Yiddish word you hear a lot of Jewish folks say, the woes, the struggles, the hardship. And I thought I was clever coming up with that myself, until I realized that Dr Deborah Lipstadt, the US Special Envoy to monitor antiSemitism the United States, has written beautifully about the joy and the OI of being Jewish, and that Jewish people often have to live with this duality and these tensions of, what does it mean to be Jewish? But this was exactly what our what the students were really wrestling with. They were in such an in between space when I talked to Jewish students and just asked what it meant to them to be Jewish. I mean, they really taught. I mean, it was the joy, it was community, it was connection, it was food and holidays and celebrations. It was it was this Hebrew word, Tikkun, Olam, which is repairing the world. Dim laka sadeem, another word, acts of loving kindness, meets vote doing good deeds and commandments. I mean, these were values that a lot of these participants had been raised in, and it was learning, studying, questioning, because typically, you say, when you ask a Jewish person a question, you get a question back, right, which I’m sure is what’s informed all my teaching and right and this, and even though students had different experiences, right, even among this 13, not a monolith by any stretch, lots of, lots of different experiences. And even not all of them even felt connection on, you know, on campus. But they longed for this connection because that’s what it meant to them, right, to be Jewish. Most of the students felt a connection toward Israel, whether they’d, you know, been there, they’ve spent time there, or they just learned about it, you know, through Hebrew school, religious school. So there was that was also part of the joy of being Jewish. Very much community centered, yeah, community centered connection. But the oil of being Jewish, the you know, the the trouble, the you know, the hardship, really is what was dominating so much of their what how they were making, how they were experiencing being Jewish. Since October 7, and I’d like we had to break down some of what that boy looked like for them. One of the ways that they were struggling was that Jewish identity was becoming a political identity. It was politicized for them. So to identify, what students were explaining was that just to identify as Jewish, felt like they were making a political statement. And the the reason for this was oftentimes because what, because of anti semitism, there became such an binary, unnuanced way of thinking about what it meant to be Jewish. It’s tied in with the Israel Hamas war and and so therefore, when they would Yeah, when they would just say, I’m Jewish, there were assumptions made about them, about their positions regarding the war, about what their political affiliations were, because we’re seeing a lot of that. You know what? What these students were talking about, too, was a feeling that Jewish students were often were being you or, yeah, Jewish students were being used, even in pawn, as pawns in political conversations. And we saw the all the congressional hearings never happening. And, you know, the which were, you know, there was a lot of political motivation, as they were taught, you know, the students talking about there being political motivation behind that. And so what they were reporting again was that they were felt like they were, felt like they were being lumped into particular political beliefs that they didn’t necessarily subscribe to. Because that’s another thing I, you know, didn’t mention just around Jewish identity, was just giving some of that context was, you know, there’s a political spectrum right among Jewish identity. There is a larger majority who typically does identify more with liberal beliefs. But again, there’s, there’s a spectrum, but these students felt like they were being lumped in,

Raechele Pope
you know, yeah, Elisa, let me ask you a question about this, because when you first said this, that they were, they were making a political statement. The way I have heard you, as you explained it, is that people were making, taking their identity and making a statement from it. You know, if they were using it to either support their assumptions about how you feel because you’ve said you were Jewish or but it was always, it was external. I’m not making a political statement by saying who I am. You are making my statement of who I am into a political statement. Is that accurate that?

Elisa Abes
Yes, thank you for for clarifying that. Because when I think about you, the joy that’s more of what’s coming internally, the hardship, what they were experiencing was all was external. It’s about what’s being imposed on them, exactly. And so, because even one of the participants said, if I just say I’m going to Shabbat or Sabbath dinner, I feel like I need a degree in political science because of what other people are assuming that I am making a political statement by saying I’m Jewish and affiliate with other Jewish students. So, yeah, so that’s a really important clarification, and Jewish students felt like something, they had to be an expert again on the war if they said they were Jewish. Because not only did other people assume they had a particular position, which typically was going to mean very pro Israel, and, you know, anti Palestinian, which, again, is this binary, right? Talk about because that’s not how a lot of these students were experiencing their positions. But there’s some number of them were saying, I don’t even understand what’s going on. I’m 18 years old. I just started in school. And so again, it’s being politicized by other people, and assuming, yeah, assuming this very firm pro Israel stance, you know, and that they’re experts in it. And also some folks who served in different kinds of leadership roles in different Jewish organizations as well, were feeling that the reason they took on these roles was because of the community and wanting to be part of leading this community. And they got thrust into really, you know, needing to be more, feeling a pressure from other folks to be active, you know, to take more activist stands. And some of them, you didn’t feel comfortable with that. They didn’t feel safe, you know, physically safe publicly speaking on behalf of Jewish organizations. And one of the things I really noticed over the course of the year the three interviews was the fatigue. I mean, by summer, some of these these students, were exhausted. And again, it was a very difficult year to be in a leadership capacity because of the way other folks were. For, you know, turning turning their Jewish identities into this assumption of a political statement,

Raechele Pope
Right? And you talk about that fatigue, I know that early on, when we were considering doing this, this conversation together, doing this episode, we had the idea of, maybe we can get a couple of Jewish students who are expect to talk, and it’s like they’re so fatigued. We don’t need them doing more work, exactly for us, right? And so, you know, we experience that throughout Student Affairs. We always think, oh, let’s get and we have to remember that these students are struggling, you know, like I know all during 2020, and beyond. The same thing with black students. I know that when there were, continue to be things going on with LGBTQ students, but we want to get them in and talk to us, to teach us. And it’s like, no, we gotta do our own work. So absolutely. So I can imagine the fatigue, yeah.

Elisa Abes
Yeah. And then, you know, in that, you know, later, as we talk, think about more. How do we support the students? It is, it’s you know. Part of it is, you know, very much on our student affairs professionals to educate, to do the work. Exactly. Another way that students were experiencing their identities over this past year is, you know, well, as much as the inter their internal understandings where this community, anti semitism, was doing its best to fracture community and to cause isolation. And that plays out in a few ways. So one of the ways was what I’m calling this, you know, really intersectional division. And so, as I had mentioned, you know, had several students, you know, who identified in some way as queer. And what some of these students were finding, too, was there was no place where they could bring their whole self, right? And so, so often, what it one of the things that, you know, I was hearing and that these larger, you know, larger national studies are finding, is that a lot of queer identified spaces on campuses have been, you know, I’m going to say this, and then I’m going to qualify it too, you know, but have been, not only very pro Palestinian but but also having some what was perceived as explicitly anti semitic statements as part of, you know, that was connected to that. And talk a little bit more, too, if you want, like, some of that relationship here, because that’s, you know, that’s a big topic, and we can talk some there. But so what these students were finding was that, because of what they were seeing and hearing, that they didn’t feel comfortable, even again, in those spaces, saying they were Jewish and did getting pushback from students. And again, it ties back into that that, you know, the first finding, really, that the other people were considering their identity to be a political statement. And one of the students who shared this, again, was a student who said, I don’t, you know, I’m still learning. I’m still trying to make sense of all of this. And, you know, I have some questions about, you know, my own critiques, right? The students saying of what’s of Israeli politics, and so they didn’t feel comfortable that they could be in these spaces. But then, even if coming into Jewish spaces, some of which talks about being more inclusive of all identities, there was even a sense of not though, fully understanding just how difficult it was for them in some of the queer identified spaces, and so even not feeling like they were able to bring their whole self there as well. And so again, there’s this just kind of this intersectional division. Yeah, happening also connected. Some of the students were feeling a division because as a marginalized group, a number of the students already felt connected in different like they were associating their friends or other students with different minoritized, marginalized identities, and there was a real feeling of silence from folks who they had, who you know, have been friends, who they consider themselves to be allies toward. Now, of course, you know allyship is, you know, can be performative. Allyship is something we’re all learning. But there was a sense of, I was there for you. You’re not, you know, I’m not. That’s not being reciprocated, just silence, so much silence right around what is, you know? What it. Must be like for them as a Jewish student, and so again, this was causing, you know, this fracturing, this division in people, not only in being able to bring their whole self into any space, but in terms of also just feel, you know, friendship groups. And a lot of this was fueled by social media. And so there was, yeah, they were. A number of folks talked about how surprised they were to see what some folks were posting on social media. And, yeah, and also just, you know, silence. And so that’s one, you know, one of the ways, but, or a few of the ways that they’re feeling this division, but also, you know, connected isolation. Some Jewish students just didn’t feel safe going into Jewish faces. They were scared of violence, you know, assaults, vandalism. They just didn’t feel safe. And some students felt safe, but some of this, but some of the students who are really quest, even questioning Israel’s politics, critical of Israel’s politics, didn’t feel like they really had a home in some Jewish spaces, because, you Know, anti semitism had really ramped up, you know, the conversations that were being had, and they didn’t know that that would even be an okay space for them, whether that was perception or reality. That was how the students were feeling. And you know, it was really telling when I had, you know, heartbreaking, I should say when, you know, one of the participants said to me that, you know, it was the first year that they didn’t celebrate Passover. It was just a significant Jewish holiday because they didn’t feel like they had a space to do it, because they didn’t feel either physically safe or they didn’t want their holiday dominated, you know, by political conversations. And this was a student who really was questioning, you know, critiquing them, you know, Israel’s politics and and so again, that didn’t feel like the way they wanted a holiday to look for them. And so they were isolated, you know, they were alone. And so, you know, there’s these so they were living in this real, you know, place of tension between what they wanted their Jewish identity to be internally, what they were experiencing externally. But student, but some of them still. They brought hope. They brought critical hope. They were still looking for that joy, right? And a number of them really were. Some of them really were affiliating more with other, you know, Jewish students, because that did give them the hope and the strength, you know, and but they always had the but, you know, as I said, the what ifs that was always lingering for them. And so, yeah, so Jewish identity was this has been this, yeah, very externally imposed sense from others of what it means to be Jewish that was causing some Jewish students not to be able to, yeah, bring their whole selves into spaces, you know, celebrate they want to celebrate, be who they want to be. And for me, I step back from all of this right as an educator, and you know, realized again, that, you know, college is a time of self discovery, and so when you’ve got such competing forces coming at you of who you want to be, how others are defining you, right? It’s this is, we talk about this a lot in student development theory, right? But in this, you know, in this political in this context, it was so politicized and and it felt so, you know, physically threatening for some. And, yeah, that it just, it’s been a exhausting place for many to be. And I’ll say the one thing I really again, I feel like I would be really remiss if we don’t talk about some is just how complicated labels have become and categories. Because, you know, as I said, initially, Jewish identity externally, was being seen as a political statement, right? And that was rooted in these binary ways of thinking that as students were trying to make sense of this experience, right? Some did say, you know. Now I have a connection to Israel, right? Yes, I said a number of them. Did I believe in a Jewish right to a homeland in Israel? I may or may not use the language the label of Zionism, right? Often, when things get politically charged, we it’s easy just put labels on all and assume they have certain meanings. But the reality is, they’re saying, but I still, you know, and even if I do identify as a Zionist, as a Zionist, they could still critique Israel policies, you know, they could still,

Elisa Abes
they could still feel very sympathetic right, toward innocent Palestinians who’ve been losing their, you know, who’ve been killed. They could still want hope, right? Hope. It was a hope for peaceful, two state solution, right? Where Palestinians also have a homeland is, you know, just as they want Jewish people to have a homeland. And so there was this sense of, I want to be able to have an i to have an identity that is nuanced, right? And when other when, like, when the word Zionism was being used, when they were hearing it, when they were seeing it on social media, again, especially really on social media so much, there was this sense that it had one fixed meaning, right, and that it was a meaning that was, you know, really vilified Jewish people and the and so that, again, became very difficult for students to even know what you know, how to express their Jewish identity. Again, that’s what contributed to some of this intersectional division. It’s when they go to other places and hear these words being used in really troubling ways. And that’s when I mean couple points like again, I come at this as an educator, I come at this thing that it’s not only Jewish college students who are coming to understand what their identities are. It’s also, you know, it’s others. It’s all of our students, right? It’s all of our students who are, you know, part of, again, a very politic, you know, very politically charged, emotionally fraught time, who are learning. And oftentimes we do rely on labels right as we’re learning, and that’s part of the reason I think it’s just so important to educate, right? Educate folks have conversation. What do you really mean when you use particular words? And that’s our students were saying, like, in terms of some of the support they’re asking for is we want they want more education. They want more conversation. What does it mean when you use a label? And, you know, again, I always think, with any system of oppression, right? We’ve, we’ve all we’re socialized in the certain understandings, you know, it’s, you know, as Beverly Daniel Tatum says, right, it’s in the it’s racism. Is the air in which we breathe, right? And it’s the same thing with anti semitism. So part of the reason I think it’s so important even think about these anti semitic tropes is because we’re socialized, you know, to believe some of them without even recognizing the way we are, because they’re so pervasive, right? And so, you know, I think it’s worth, you know, asking that, when you use the language of Zionism, are you using that as a substitute for Jewish not because that you know your intent is to be hateful, but because we bring implicit bias based on what we’ve been socialized. You know, told we’ve been socialized and so again, it’s a place of education and reflection and looking at who we are and our the students I’ve been talking with are longing for more nuance. They’re just there so that their identities aren’t being put, their Jewish identities not being put, you know, into this one just, you know, hole that with labels that mean, you know, yeah, that with, you know, labels that come with one definition.

Raechele Pope
Well and beyond that, that I think that there has to be some degree of you mentioned social media several, several times reposting a statement post that you found, and there’s parts of it you agree with, but I haven’t really stopped to think about what all the words mean. I’m not so sure that’s the way I would say it, except that, you know, we’re so used to reposting and. And what effect does that repost have on someone? And because we don’t have a lot of education, you know, we could look at the United States Social Studies in history, we don’t even teach history anymore. In K 12, we teach social studies, right? I know that we haven’t spent a whole lot of time educating folks on what is going on in Israel and Gaza, and to talk about that requires an understanding historical context. No, we can all look at something and saying, anybody that’s being killed, any, you know, I don’t know what innocent means anymore, but anyone that’s being bombed and murdered indiscriminately is just wrong. We can say that across the board with no hesitancy. But the issue is, how do we talk about it in real terms, you know, like what’s happening? And I’m not so sure that unless you’ve studied it, unless you’ve really listened, that you have enough information to discuss it, that’s and so reposting, you know, that’s never been a criteria that we study before we repost, right? And the effect that that action has on others. And so it’s not only about the nuance, it’s nuanced. And let’s make sure you’re saying what you even want to say, because do you know enough about that

Elisa Abes
absolutely.

Raechele Pope
So I’m hearing a lot about, you know, the harm, you know, the the the, as well as the joy that they’re experiencing. And I really want to, like, put it in the context now for Student Affairs educators, how can we respond in a way that can support Jewish students. What do they need from us and what resources are available to learn more? What are the kinds of programs and projects and other things that we can offer for students?

Elisa Abes
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s one of the was the last question, of course, asked my the research the participants, right, is, how can we support you? You know, again, without you having to have all the answers. But what would you know? What would you like to see consistently? It was student affairs. Folks need to educate themselves, right? That was the first one. Is educate they really, you know, again, yeah, I just a lot of folks just don’t yet understand who Jewish students are, and don’t yet understand some of these really loaded terms, you know, that are being used and just fueling some fire, intentionally or unintentionally, right? So, educate ourselves. Students talked about, right? Just listening and showing up up was showing up at the joyful Jewish events, right? That’s part of education, right? Folks, students want to see, want student affairs professionals to understand, yeah, that a lot the culture and the, you know, the cultural part, the joy that the Judaism isn’t defined through anti semitism, right? That there’s, there’s another really good book by Dara horn called people love dead Jews to create provocative title, right? But it isn’t. It’s a great title. It’s but it is that oftentimes people get more intrigued by anti semitism, by the Holocaust. You know, you she asked this really provocative question too, would people be as interested in Anne Frank, had she survived, right? Or is there something really compelling about this young girl who died, right? And so it’s just understanding that we see that people can study the trauma that has occurred, but we want people to be just as interested in the living, joyous side of what it means to be Jewish. And that’s what these students were saying, is show up, come to, you know, come to Sabbath dinner. Come show up at different, you know, for different holidays. And just see this, what, what it also means to be Jewish. They were also, you know, it’s also talking about, reckon, being proactive, not just reactive, relationships with Jewish students, not just, you know, when something difficult is happening on campus, you know, form these, you know, and then that connects, right with show up, talk, educate, right? But that was also something I think all of us need to do. I think all you know, I also think the more we can advocate for Jewish identity being part of dei initiatives to the extent dei initiatives are, yeah, right, that’s a whole allowed to exist, exactly another ball of wax. Um. And but again, this comes to Jewish identity. Again, I think, I think it’s connected with it being more of a culture and an ethnicity. And you know, what would that look like if Jewish identity were represented more in different multicultural spaces? Again, it comes down to a feeling of support and recognition that, again, that anti semitism is one of the systems of oppression that is shaping college students. You know, there are a number of resources you know out there. Again, you know different you know books we can read, right that, but we don’t always have time to read full book. There are. There’s a number of different just, even just websites like the American Jewish Committee puts out a toolkit in terms of, here’s some things administrators can be doing. I mean, there’s a mean because of the extent of antiSemitism over the past year, there’s a lot of different organizations that have been putting out a lot of have been putting out a lot of suggestions, ideas and against educating ourselves and tapping into some of these different resources to help us do that. Yeah, and I think, and you know, a lot of this comes down again to also just what we talked about earlier, recognizing that Jewish students are not a monolith, right? And the way to support students is going to look very differently. It’s going to look different depending, again, on, yeah, even how they what their religious practice looks like, you know, the extent to which they identify. And I should also say, you know, in just in terms of what folks relationships are, perspectives are, in terms of the Israel Hamas war, that’s right, because even among the 13 students I talked to, right, there was a lot of diversity there, right? Whether folks were very, very supportive of Israel, maybe in some uncritical ways, because Jewish students can do that too, right? It’s not just non Jewish students who are falling into different binaries, but, but then, you know, folks who are, you know, pro Israel for, you know, very, because of very, you know, thoughtful, deep, reflective ways they’ve done this, students who are questioning, you know, students who are critiquing. And, you know, I talked to, you know, one particular student who would identify as anti Zionist, right? That is not the larger majority of Jewish college students, but again, that is part of the Jewish college student experience. And again, that’s what that looks different at different campuses, the extent to which you have students who are organizing, you know, around that particular perspective. And so again, just understanding the diversity among Jewish college students by spending time with them in proactive ways. And there’s lots of different professional development out there, and take some time to doing some of this learning.

Raechele Pope
Well, you know, I’m thinking about that too, because I think the thing that I heard earlier is you said something about the silence and how, essentially, my words, but the silence was definitely it was so loud, the silence was that it that it’s in a place. And so the question that I always ask myself in those situations, what, who is a student who feel automatically comfortable coming to me, who are those students? And I find them. And then when I think about the groups where I don’t think these students would automatically come to me if they wanted to share their concern, I’ve got to figure out ways of making myself open to them. So the question, I guess, for Student Affairs practitioners might be, would Jewish students who are struggling on campus feel that your office, your space, is a place that they could come to talk about that, and if it’s not, what are the steps we need to make sure that they can and so I think that that was just one more to add to your list.

Elisa Abes
Yeah, that’s so important because, you know, because I can even say, as a 50 something year old, you know, Professor, the silence, even for me, was really hard. It was, it was really hard. And there were times when, you know, I wasn’t sure who to, you know, who where I felt comfortable. Now I, you know, again, but you know, with, you know, age and experience, I could navigate that fine, you know. And I had enough folks in my life, right? Who were I, you know, who were right there as a support, but for a college student, they Yeah, that silence Just who are, you know, who are college students in this can process itself to, you know, understanding themselves, that silence was frightening for some of them, and, and so what your point is? So important, so important. And, you know, first year college students. I came to college and within still just trying to find any community a month or so later, just basically, yeah, in the middle of this really difficult time, and knowing that there’s someone they can go to, really important, and not just in affiliate with particular Jewish student organizations, but campus wide. Is this a home for me? Do I belong here?

Raechele Pope
Right? Because all of our students are asking that question, and all of our students who feel marginalized in some way are going to experience that. And right now, in the midst of this, they’re certainly asking those questions. You know, we could keep talking about this for days. Actually, I could just sit here and listen to you for days, because I’m just, I’m thinking, God, her students must just really sit there and soak it all up so, but we’re running out of time. Yeah, ask you, is there a question that you wish we could have covered, but we didn’t get to I’m not saying we can get to it now, but the other questions that need to be asked,

Elisa Abes
I don’t know that there’s a particular question, but there is, you know, something that I’ve been thinking about a lot is Just the the time right now. What you know this is we’re heading into the high holiday time in Jewish religion of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur. These are most significant reflective times, and this year, because of when the Jewish holidays fall, because they’re on the different calendar, lunar calendars. They fall different times each year. They’re falling right within the week of October 7, right? And so this, I think it’s just really important for us to think about, for some students, many Jewish students, what a difficult time this is, it’s both. But again, it’s, it’s, it’s a difficult time, and Jewish students, again, are used to living in with multiple truths. And it’s both a joyous time, right? It’s a celebration. It’s a joyous time. It’s a time to come together, and it’s a time that’s going to that spurs a lot of deep reflection, and it’s deep reflection on what’s been a really challenging year. And so I think just, I think it’s important to note what’s, yeah, what this period of time could be like for many Jewish students, and how do we show support? And that reminds me when I had mentioned, like, when we was talking about support, you know, showing up can also can be pretty simple. You know, one of my participants just talked about a professor who would just send a quick email saying, you know, Happy New Year, or, yeah, happy Passover. And how, what an impact that had on this student. It’s like, I didn’t he said, like, surprise. He really cared, you know, and it was just this simple. And so even just, how can we as student affairs professionals, just show we’re aware, Mm, hmm, fear that this is a hard time and and a joyous time, and, yeah. And so I think that’s also just something I want to make sure that I’m noting What’s this time period is also like.

Raechele Pope
Doesn’t have to be big, big interventions. It can be something as simple as recognizing what, what day it is, what point in the year it is exactly,

Elisa Abes
exactly

Raechele Pope
Elisa, I am so so grateful for all of your time today, I have to tell you, I love this opportunity to sit and talk with you. And you know, as we prepared for this, I find you so deeply thoughtful, and I love all of your backing up to to context all the time. You know, my students tell me, I do that all the time. So I spend 40 minutes on context and 10 minutes on the

Elisa Abes
Exactly. This is really

Raechele Pope
a gift for me, personally, um, and our listeners so well,

Elisa Abes
it’s mutual. I have, like I said the beginning, I am so grateful for you being a conversation partner and so inviting. And yeah, it’s your support and your your own curiosity and insights and for keeping me on track are just really, I’m really grateful. So thank you very much.

Raechele Pope
You’re welcome. We can continue this love fest, but let me say, I think a couple things for our sponsors. So I want to again thank Elisa. I also want to give a shout out to the great work of our producer, Nat Ambrosey. She’s going to help us make us look and sound so good, and that’s going to be a real task for her. Day since I keep stumbling over every other word, hey, if you’re listening today and you’re not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at studentaffairs now.com and scroll to the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our MailChimp list while you’re there, check out our archives. Thanks to our sponsors of today’s episode, Routledge Taylor and Francis is the leading academic publisher in education, publishing a wide range of books, journals and other resources for practitioners, faculty, administrators and researchers. They have welcomed Stylus publishing to their publishing program, and are thrilled to enrich their offerings in higher education, student affairs, professional development, assessment and more. Routledge is proud to support Student Affairs NOW view their complete catalog of authoritative education titles@rutledge.com forward/education. Huron is our other sponsor today. Huron is a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice by creating sound strategies, optimizing operations, accelerating digital transformation and empowering businesses and their people to their own future, by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo, Huron creates sustainable results for The organizations they serve. Please take a moment to visit the Student Affairs NOW website and click on the sponsors link to learn more. Again. I’m Raechele Pope, thanks again to Elisa Abes got it today, and to everyone who is watching or listening, friends, let’s be kind and spread some joy.

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