The Continuing Remediation

The past week has been filled with scenes of joy, as Jewish communities around the world marked the return of those hostages still alive from their captivity in Gaza.  It’s nearly impossible to watch the reunions with family and friends and not get caught up in the emotion of the moment. Given the homecomings’ timing, it’s also to some extent a reclaiming of Simchat Torah as a holiday of celebration after it, along with so much else, was taken from us on October 7.

Much remains uncertain. But with this new reality setting in, those of us who work in Jewish life in higher education wonder and speculate what this means for campus, which has been the epicenter of Diaspora antisemitism. The past two years have been incredibly difficult, not just in the impact of side comments, verbal assaults, and physical damage, but through more mundane yet important indicators. As just one example, students have become less inclined to report incidents, both because they have doubts about whether perpetrators will actually be held accountable and because they’ve become inured to the Jew hatred that pervades their daily lives.  

I want to be hopeful and say that all will be well on campus from here on out, or at least go back to the way they were before October 7. But in truth, I’m skeptical.  

Campus has been flooded with antisemitism over the past two years, and it’s overwhelmed everything. Administration accountability and containment systems have been tested – and often failed – and campus culture has been soaking in Jew hatred, making it commonplace in classrooms, social circles, WhatsApp groups, and Instagram.

To expand on the environmental metaphor, we can clean up the chemical spill aboveground and re-sod the field, but the poison has leached into the groundwater, rendering the entire ecosystem toxic and leaving lingering sentiments that Israel, Israelis, and Jews are suspicious and can’t be trusted.

This conflict between Israel and Hamas might be over, but it doesn’t mean that the conflict on campus has concluded. Indeed, the continued dumping of antisemitic contamination might be over, but the cleanup and remediation effort has just begun.