It is a tense time to be a Jew in college. Since the shattering, brutal events of October 7, progressive students have staged near-weekly protests across North America. These protests have too often subjected Jewish, and especially Zionist, students to hate and vitriol, directed at their very identities. And it is impossible to avoid this clash’s corrosive effects, even if one stays away from the hotspots. Many students have reported hostile environments in classrooms, open bigotry from professors, and even just a general feeling that they as Jews are not welcome, that campus is no longer – maybe never was – their home. It is no wonder that a study commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League found that, post-October 7, nearly 40% of Jewish college students feel uncomfortable with others knowing they are Jewish.
How has Jewish day school prepared students to confront these tensions? Or has it? While I am no longer a student, I am, as a research fellow at Harvard Law School, spending a lot of time on one of these flashpoint campuses. I have had countless conversations with students whom I have taught in reading groups and seen around Hillel. I have reflected on my own experiences as a pre-K through 12th grade graduate of a Jewish day school. And my conclusion is that, though results are of course mixed, attending a Jewish day school, regardless of denomination, has positive correlations with the way students experience and live their Judaism on campus. Something they are doing is working.
I would say, in fact, that at least two big things are working. The first is related to the realities of being a Jew on campus more generally. At every school in America – with the exception of Yeshiva University, Touro College, and perhaps an outlier like Brandeis – Jewish life is peripheral to the college experience. In the best of times, one who does not seek out Judaism will find no more than the weekly emails from the campus Hillel or Chabad, or the presence of a sukkah or a public menorah lighting on their respective holidays. If it comes up in a class, Jewish texts or culture are typically treated as a quaint relic or, if about Israel, denigrated as the paradigmatic sin in the settler-colonial framework. All of this can feel isolating, and it creates a temptation for Jewish students to loosen the binds of their identity and disappear.
What Jewish day schools bestow, even more than specific knowledge, is a broader sense of Jewish literacy. They give their graduates, in essence, a shared cultural language to work with, one that allows them to find and integrate into the broader Jewish community on campus. That community then reinforces the language of Jewishness within these students, which strengthens their identity and keeps Judaism central throughout college and beyond. Since October 7, this community has also been a source of support and protection, as Jews have sought each other out in the face of rising antisemitism. Having a shared language makes all of this much easier to bear.
The second broad thing that Jewish day schools seem to be succeeding at is providing an understanding of, and love for, Israel. To be a Jew today is to confront the reality of Israel as both a concrete fact and, especially but not only on campuses, as a flashpoint for controversy. As one recent book (with the unsurprising title To Be a Jew Today) puts it, Israel has become “a defining factor within Jewishness.” In Jewish day schools, this defining factor has translated into robust curricular offerings about Israel, focused on the history of Zionism, Hebrew as a living language (“Ivrit b’Ivrit”), and connecting the stories of Tanakh to the modern State. Some schools go even further: During my ninth-grade year, my high school took the entire student body on a ten-day trip to Israel to experience the land and its people firsthand.
For many students, these classes and extracurricular opportunities feed a wellspring of love for Israel that they have been able to draw on during the last academic year. And in this case, the specific knowledge is as valuable as the general values, as it gives Jewish young adults the tools to engage with more earnest peers who, while harboring anti-Israel sentiments, may be doing so out of ignorance or a training that biased them. Last, the specific Israel curriculum gives the students another cultural reference point to connect with one another on.
A classic midrash has it that the Israelites did not assimilate while in Egypt because their “clothing, food, and language were different than that of the Egyptians;” another midrash adds that because of their distinct language (and names) they were redeemed. Our ancestors’ specific culture kept their identity strong and helped them down the path to geula, redemption. On college campuses today, that distinctive language, instilled largely by Jewish day schools, can help redeem the student experience. With intervention from Above, it may eventually help redeem our people from war and captivity as well.