‘Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.” That’s not my interpretation of what happened. It’s from the order of Judge Mark C. Scarsi, who added, “This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.” It was unimaginable precisely because it happened at a public institution supposedly devoted to education and the pursuit of truth and freedom. A university tends to pride itself on academic freedom, but there’s something foundational about religious freedom, since it’s rooted in man’s very existence and endowed by the Creator. But are these still our values? Or do we side with those who put up encampments on campus to prohibit Jewish students from attending class? The question is mandatory for American citizens in the wake of the murders of two young Israeli Embassy employees at an American Jewish Committee dinner at a Jewish museum in D.C. Do we recoil not only at the barbaric murder on the streets of our nation’s capital but also at the fact that they were killed only because they were assumed to be Jewish (one was Jewish, one was Christian).
A night later in Manhattan, leaving a dinner dedicated to religious liberty that began in prayer for the souls of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim and for the impossible consolation of their families, a Catholic man asked me, rhetorically but reflectively, in disbelief and righteous anger: “How, in 2025, is there antisemitism? How is it that people are being killed simply for being Jewish?” I asked a similar question years ago, hearing a Hasidic mother talk about routine life on the streets of Brooklyn — getting yelled at and shoved, even with children in tow. Simply for being Jewish.
Comments