Letters, Fall 2024

Statement on Anti-Israelism and Academic Jewish Studies

As scholars of Jewish studies, we are alarmed at the increasing openness to extreme anti-Israel animus in our field and in the larger university community. We are particularly disturbed that students on our diverse campuses have been shamed and shunned by peers and faculty for defending Israel’s existence and have, to a large degree, been left unsupported by faculty.

Israel is a major center of contemporary Jewish life. Home to seven million Jews, alongside two million Palestinian and Arab and other minority citizens, Israel cannot but be an object of critical concern in Jewish studies. While our commitment to academic freedom is ironclad, we believe that Jewish studies, as an academic field today, cannot be agnostic on the question of Israel’s existence as a legitimate expression of Jewish national self-determination. Nor can we be indifferent to the question of Palestinian national rights. We support the principles of both self-determination and mutual recognition.

The increasing power of anti-Israelism on college campuses fosters blanket discrimination against Jews and, in particular, Israeli students and colleagues. We reject as anti-intellectual and antidemocratic the calls to boycott Israeli universities, students, and faculty and to sever cooperative agreements in our universities. We reject the discriminatory imposition of anti-Israel litmus tests that exclude Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff from participating in campus life. We likewise condemn antinormalization campaigns against Hillel and other Jewish organizations on campus and discrimination against students, staff, and faculty who identify as Jewish and/or express support for Israel.

While our views on Israeli politics and specific policies differ, we are united in aspiring to an Israel that exists peacefully within just and secure borders and remains open and democratic, consistent with the principles enshrined in the country’s 1948 Declaration on the Establishment of the State of Israel guaranteeing full equality “to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”

As scholars, we are committed to free speech, comity, and constructive debate and dialogue across ideological divides. Yet we oppose efforts to collapse the categories of state, society, and peoplehood that have led to the hostile anti-Israelism on our campuses today. For these reasons, we urge our colleagues in Jewish studies and in all fields to stand against the demonizing of Israel and its people that has become so prevalent in the academy.

Jonathan Karp, Binghamton University
Rachel Greenblatt, Dartmouth College
Daniel B. Schwartz, George Washington University
Nancy Sinkoff, Rutgers University
Zachary Braiterman, Syracuse University

Invisible Truth

A comment on Eli Rubin’s review of Zimzum by Christoph Schulte (“Diminished Light?,” Summer 2024). Regarding “Christian appropriation of zimzum to reconceptualize . . . the trinity,” Rubin might have mentioned the pre-Lurianic employment of metaphysical “contraction” introduced and employed to that end by Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464). A profoundly searching example of how he employs “contraction” as a metaphysical notion appears in De visione Dei: “I see the invisible truth of your face, represented in this contracted shadow here . . . with the eyes of the mind and the intellect.”

Phillip Stambovsky
New Haven, CT

Union Seders

Joseph Joel (whose story was told in “Jews in Blue,” Summer 2024) is still inspiring Jews today. His account of the Union Army seder helped me cope when I was one of forty Jews living in Blacksburg, Virginia. We had to do everything to make a Jewish life. We told the IGA when to order Passover groceries, books we ordered from Philadelphia, and the few families who kept kosher ordered from a butcher in Richmond, Virginia. When I made a seder, I quoted from Joseph Joel’s account. May his memory be for a blessing.

Nancy Wallack
via jewishreviewofbooks.com

Notes on Camp

Cole S. Aronson’s piece about Camp Massad (“Operation Hebrew Camp,” Summer 2024) brought me back to my youth as a Massadnik. Starting in 1959 at the age of eight, I spent most of the next fifteen summers at Camp Massad.

My father, Max Mermelstein, a”h, a Holocaust survivor, worked for the Jewish Agency and the Histadrut. He made sure I received a Jewish education at the Brooklyn yeshivas near where we lived. The curriculum mostly focused on Talmud, in which I excelled. Unfortunately, Hebrew language, Jewish history, and Zionism were poorly taught, if at all. He therefore sent me to Camp Massad. As a nature counselor, I spent part of a summer making plaques in Hebrew for the trees in the camp. I even received a letter from my yeshiva rebbe, warning me about the religious hazards of coed camp.

Steve Mermelstein, MD
Woodmere, NY

I was a madricha with Ray Artz and the rest of the gang: first in Massad Aleph and then in Massad Bet. I met my late husband, George, and we became a Massad Zug and were married for sixty-three years until 2017. Those were indeed the glory years, as the author well describes. How many of us still remain? So many indelible memories.

Froma Zeitlin
Princeton University

The bravado exhibited by the 1950 aerial assault on Camp Ramah fascinated this reader who actually attended the alleged aggressor Camp Massad.

I was quite familiar with the culture of Massad as a camper, counselor, head counselor, and ultimately camp doctor. We lived and breathed in Hebrew; sabras were even “imported” for the summer to lead theater, art, and music, activities that required a higher level of spoken Hebrew than possessed by the Americans. It wasn’t close to the “police state” described by Hillel Halkin, as we were quite compliant during our escape from the asphalt jungle of city life. The immersive learning idea came from Shlomo Shulsinger, z”l, and he was right on target, unlike the aerial bombardiers. The proof of his prescient pedagogy was that many campers were sent to Camp Massad so that they could transfer from public school to Hebrew day school. Those children came to camp with only a few scattered Hebrew words learned in Sunday school and by the end of the summer were speaking full sentences and paragraphs.

The article, however, needs some corrections and additions. First, the Massad day began at 6:30 a.m., not at the luxurious time of 7 a.m. Second, Massad had its own dictionary. There was no baseball played in Israel, so the word for “double play” had to be invented: du-siluk, literally “two are removed.” Apparently, there was also no ketchup in Israel during the early years of Massad; imagine how I felt on my first trip to Israel when I asked for “rotev agvaniyot” for my chips, and the waitress replied, “ketchup?” Third, while Massad Aleph may have had “mixed dancing,” Massad Bet is where Rabbi Bernstein resided. As he was a rabbi of a Young Israel shul and a staff member of Yeshiva University, mixed dancing was limited to horas.

Finally, Massad’s demise was probably due to Shulsinger retiring and making aliyah as well as the fact that many camping experiences opened in Israel itself, the ultimate immersive experience.

Ian Schorr
Englewood, NJ

As probably the last surviving president of Camp Massad, I was delighted to see Cole S. Aronson’s essay about the camps. The article captured much of the educational value they served for the thousands of campers and counselors who attended. Massad may have been one of the twentieth century’s most successful Jewish educational institutions in terms of Hebrew facility, love for Israel, and commitment to the Jewish community.

If Massad was so successful in all these ways, why did it collapse? Aronson attempts a short answer, but a more detailed analysis may be found in The Jews of Summer (Stanford University Press) by Sandra Fox: Massad couldn’t “keep up with the evolution of American Orthodoxy as the Orthodox center became . . . more closed off to other kinds of Jews.”

Beyond Hebrew immersion, the camps were notable for the pluralism that they projected. Campers or counselors from Orthodox homes might not otherwise have known secular or Reform youngsters. In addition, Massad pioneered engaging Israeli counselors of different backgrounds. But, as pluralism fell out of favor, Massad lost its constituency to camps such as Morasha, Ramah, Federation camps, and the Reform network.

Perhaps at a time when we worry so much about divisiveness in the Jewish community, this aspect of the Massad experience may provide something to ponder.

Lawrence Kobrin
via email