We need to talk

I’ve been Jewish my whole life. Coming from a very non-Jewish part of the United Kingdom, I have always been open and loud about my Jewish identity. I’ve experienced my fair share of anti-semitism. I remember, without fondness, the swastikas drawn by fingers on early morning bus window condensation on my way to school. I also remember when my freshman year neighbor joked that there was “sch-money” in our corner of Hepburn Hall after finding out there were several Jewish people living there. I remember how alienated I felt after that, but also how that alienation dissipated when I went to Middlebury Hillel that Friday. The British Jewish experience is radically different in many ways from its American counterpart, but at Hillel, those differences aren’t obstacles to community. If anything, our ability to be in community despite what pulls us apart is what makes us stronger.

Earlier this semester, a group of Jewish students received an email from President Laurie Patton inviting them to take part in a planning meeting for an “equity initiative” geared towards combating anti-semitism on campus. It’s unclear how the invited students were selected, but some were those who currently or have previously held positions on Hillel board, engaged in Jewish studies events or classes, or in other ways were known to the administration as having a stake in the Jewish experience. 

But I wasn’t invited. Despite being on the Hillel board for over a year, despite shaking hands with Patton at her home when she hosted a Chanukah candle lighting. Earlier this semester I did not receive an email inviting me to be a part of the anti-semitism equity initiative.

I did, however, receive an email inviting me to the anti-Islamophobia initiative. I received an invitation to a planning meeting for an “equity initiative that will provide Middlebury College with a better understanding of history, climate, and culture as it relates to anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab discrimination, and Islamophobia.” This felt like a bizarre email for me to receive because, notably, I am not Palestinian, Arab or Muslim, and therefore have never experienced any discrimination for being those identities.

I didn’t quite understand at first why I would have been invited to one and not the other. It wasn’t until I really sat with the bad taste it left in my mouth that I realized: It seems that I lost my right in the eyes of the administration to have a voice as a Jewish person when I started publicly expressing my condemnation of the sheer scale of military actions taken by the Israeli state since Oct. 7. The term “self-hating Jew” is an upsetting one often used when a Jewish person speaks out against the actions of Israel. 

I bring up this term because it speaks to an inability to reconcile that one can be proudly Jewish and against anti-semitism while simultaneously being proudly pro-Palestinian and against Islamophobic rhetoric. Despite constantly encouraging us to be nuanced and multifaceted human beings, Middlebury College could not accept one facet of my identity without minimizing the other. It was perfectly acceptable when I was just Jewish and I avoided speaking about Israel at all costs: That was palatable. But once I started expressing a dissenting opinion, that palatability quickly dissolved.

Here’s the thing: It has never been a more challenging task to facilitate a community that engages and welcomes you no matter what your relationship to Judaism or Israel might be. The worst thing that we could possibly do in response to these circumstances would be to stop talking altogether, stop trying to understand each other, and run away from the possibility of discomfort or disagreement. If we start adjudicating who does and does not have a right to speak on the Jewish experience as they have lived it, we will doom ourselves to be permanently and irrevocably divided and weak in the face of adversity when it comes. 

I know this because when the Gaza Solidarity Encampment was launched last spring, I had a friend who has Zionist values and greatly opposed its existence. All these months later, she is still my friend. Our friendship actually got stronger through it because of one vital thing we did: we kept talking. We kept listening. That lifeline is the only way through: We must keep doing these things — talking, listening. When all else fails: we need to talk.