Several college campus rabbis spoke out over the weekend, addressing the dramatic spike in brazen anti-semitic protests and demonstrations that have spread like wildfire since the October 7th terror attacks perpetrated by Hamas in Israel.
In New York City for Brooklyn’s annual Chabad event, several spoke to The New York Post about the fact that college campuses across the country are becoming more and more dangerous for Jewish students.
Rabbi Levi Haskelevich has served for more than two decades as the Chabad rabbi at the University of Pennsylvania, and he told the Post, “It’s been disturbing, unnerving — it’s been a shock to students to see that kind of immediate chutzpah, where the demonstrators came out even before the blood dried up, to shout with such audacity on the campus with no qualifications at all.”
Haskelevich was seen in a recent video helping a Jewish student to put on tefillin — “a pair of black leather boxes containing Hebrew parchment scrolls; a set includes two—one for the head and one for the arm” — while protesters march past, some just inches away, shouting “Free, free Palestine!”
No word. pic.twitter.com/R71PBQenwc
— Motti Seligson (@mottiseligson) October 17, 2023
“We have students who are into their PhDs who said from the moment of the attacks they could not find a safe place on campus,” Haskelevech added.
“Many, many students have close friends that suddenly don’t understand or don’t appreciate or don’t affirm what they’re going through in terms of their sense of mourning, in terms of their sense of pain,” Yale University Chabad Rabbi Meir Chaim Posner said of the Hamas attacks last month. “And then in the weeks after, they’ll find a close friend who is actively supporting Hamas.”
Anti-semitic demonstrations have risen dramatically since October 7th, when Hamas terrorists breached the border and slaughtered more than 1,400 Israelis — men, women, children, and even infants — many of them civilians. They injured thousands more and kidnapped another 200 or more, taking them into Gaza. Recent reporting suggests that the hostages — a few of whom are believed to be American citizens — are being held in Hamas’ vast spiderweb-like network of tunnels beneath Gaza.
College campuses have been the focal point for many such demonstrations, leaving Jewish students in some cases afraid to leave their rooms.