My name is Henna Krauss and I am an Orthodox Jew. I am a freshman at Barnard just finishing my first month of college, transitioning to a new environment and learning how to navigate all the new aspects it introduces. On Saturday morning, a new, serious obstacle was introduced to that transition. The rabbi in our synagogue stood at the podium to tell us that Israel was at war, many people had already been killed and others taken hostage. The shock and heartbreak was instant, and it was clear that for the time being, much of our focus would be elsewhere.
We, the Jewish people, celebrate with each other in times of joy, and in times of suffering we feel others suffering deeply. With every loss of innocent life anywhere in the world, we are pained. And when more than 150 Israelis are being held hostage and tortured in Gaza in a way I hope to never understand, we are all paralyzed.
When friends reach out to ask if I’m OK, I reassure them that I am, because thank God I am safe and my immediate family in Israel are OK too at the moment, although not safe. But the reality is that of course I am not “OK.” None of us are OK. Because yes, these 1,300 losses are other people’s losses much more than mine, but my heart physically aches thinking about so many people in so much pain right now. I know personally three girls my age who are sitting shiva for their brothers, either killed in battle or murdered in the music festival massacre. As I sit in class, my mind is distracted from the academic material while I am receiving notifications of the news of 40 Jewish babies found beheaded and burned. In my 15-person writing class, I moved between the assignment opened in one tab and the live broadcast of Yosef Geudallia’s, z”l, funeral, who lost his life in battle, in the other. I then run out of class to text and call friends and family in Israel, sometimes for the fifth time in one day, terrified that I won’t hear from them again.
My day, like most of the Jewish world’s right now, revolves around reading the news, checking on loved ones and crying for every Jewish loss. And then I try to spend the last ounce of energy I have left completing my assignments so that on top of all of this, I don’t lose my dream of becoming a doctor one day. And that is the experience of Jewish students across every campus, who are seriously grieving and struggling right now to be in a place where not everyone around them is feeling their pain. But that is a decision we each made when we chose to come to a college with a unique and diverse student body and a decision that until now I have stood by.
Today, Palestinian students across campuses are calling for a national day of resistance, and they will be holding a protest in the middle of campus later in the afternoon. I was shocked to see that the statements put about by the “Palestinian resistance” relayed the same story about the events from this past Saturday morning that I knew. The only difference is that in their version it was OK. In their version it is justified and glorified to massacre and kidnap women and children and elderly and soldiers. The administration’s silence, your ignorance of our reports to remove “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” posters, your protection and respect of an individual’s rights to protest—they do not make you neutral or peacemakers. They make you a part of a group who supports the murder, rape and kidnapping of our brothers and sisters from their own homes.
Our requests are modest. Let us channel our energy into supporting our people in any way we can—raising money, writing cards or sending off fellow students who are part of the reserves, returning to defend our families. Let us focus on sending messages of condolence to fathers who grieve alone for their sons lost in battle. At the very least, let us mourn for the 1,300 lives lost so far and the new deaths reported every few minutes. Let us mourn for the families who have no one left to mourn them, as parents and children have all been murdered by Hamas. Not a single ounce of energy should be wasted on counter-protesting fellow students and faculty who openly support and rally for Hamas, an established terrorist organization responsible for the suffering of our friends and family.
This is not a political issue. The students here call Hamas a group of “Palestinian resistance,” and the students protesting here consider themselves a part of that group. People often say to choose your battles, and it is shocking and disheartening that at Columbia/Barnard, countering students who glorify the murder of our people is a battle we have to fight, and one we have to fight alone.
I am ashamed of Columbia/Barnard for not creating a safe space for all of us. I am horrified that an Israeli student was targeted and attacked last night outside of Butler Library. So we are left with no choice but to invest our energy into exhaustive rallies and debates with fellow students and faculty who openly support the annihilation of our family, and support those who will even harm us, instead of channeling our energy into our own people. We are now contemplating whether to attend class today, because Hamas has instituted a national Islamic Jihad Day, and we have no faith that this university will protect us. You cannot take away anyone’s freedom of speech, but the administration can and must use their freedom to sympathize with the innocent loss of life and to publicly break from all students who don’t share that basic human sympathy.
The Mishna teaches, “Anyone who destroys a life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world.” This message is deeply ingrained in each of us. Just a few months ago, when a terrorist took the lives of a mother and her two daughters from the Dee family, the entire Jewish world, both in Israel and the Diaspora, was in mourning. Because in line with the Mishna’s teaching, that terrorist had, in a single act, shattered three entire worlds.
The magnitude of the tragedy happening in Israel right now, the death toll only being updated in hundreds, is one no one was ever meant to comprehend. I don’t know of a Jewish source or system to turn to for guidance, because what does it even mean for Hamas to have destroyed more than 1,300 entire worlds?”
Please protect and support us. Please don’t condone your students who support terror, so that we can focus on supporting our family and homeland while mourning and rebuilding more than 1,300 worlds.
