I am a proud alumnus of Tufts University (LA’93) and an even prouder alumnus of the Daily, serving as executive business director and a sports columnist during my years on campus. I am also a member of the Tufts Daily Alumni Council.
I am also a proud American Jew, with friends and family who live in Israel, who can point to branches of my extended family that were extinguished by the genocidal horrors of the Holocaust.
Since my graduation from Tufts 32 years ago, these two identities have usually not been in conflict. However, since the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, it has become increasingly difficult for them to coexist.
Before discussing more recent events of the past 18 months, I first want to share two antisemitic incidents that involved the Daily over 30 years ago to show that the current tensions are hardly new.
My first experience with antisemitism in the Daily occurred during my junior year in 1992, when the Daily was one of many college publications around the country to receive ad requests from Bradley Smith, director of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. Smith sent the Daily a paid advertisement titled “Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus: The ‘Human Soap’ Holocaust Myth.” After a lengthy and somewhat contentious internal debate, the Daily rejected the copy as a paid advertisement, choosing instead to cover the topic in a news article while running the text of the ad alongside the article.
My second encounter with antisemitism on campus occurred at the very end of my senior year in 1993, following back-and-forth dialogue in the Daily regarding Israel. In the last week of the semester, a student wanted to purchase an ad that simply read: “One Less Page Paid for by a Pro-Israeli Propagandist.” I told him we would not allow it to be printed in this format, and he instead responded with a “Viewpoints” article titled “Preemptive strike” published in the Daily the following September (after I had actually graduated and after we had allowed the ad to run in a longer form), which included the following passage:
“I approached the executive business manager and asked if the ad could be printed. I expected a yes or no and I was prepared to be satisfied with either answer and make my way back home. … About five minutes into the conversation, due to his movements and his perspiration, a conglomerate of Hebrew lettering slid across his body to the unbuttoned section of his shirt and it was then that I understood that I was actually speaking to the gleam on his chest. I smiled.”
The “conglomerate of Hebrew lettering” was a “Chai,” the Hebrew word for life, a necklace my late grandparents gave me as a bar mitzvah gift that I still wear to this day. By “speaking to the gleam on [my] chest,” he reduced me from a person to a literal object, dehumanizing me in an instant — one of the first steps of antisemitism.
That moment from 32 years ago has stayed with me — not just because it was personal but because it was emblematic of a deeper undercurrent that has long existed on Tufts’ campus. What was once subtle or isolated has, in recent years, become louder, more organized and harder to ignore.
Since the initial terrorist attack by Hamas and the first reaction on the Tufts campus mere days later, I have wanted to put my thoughts in writing about the whole situation. Finally, 18 months and two academic years later, I am doing so. The timing is no coincidence.
Jews around the world just finished celebrating the holiday of Passover, commemorating the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. The Haggadah, the text that sets forth the order of the Passover seder, contains a song called “Dayenu,” which approximately translates to “it would have been enough.”
“Dayenu” is meant to express gratitude to God for all of the gifts given to the Jewish people, such as taking us out of slavery and giving us the Torah and Shabbat. Had God only given one of these gifts, it would have still been enough.
As previously stated, many prior attempts to write this piece were unsuccessful, usually because another antisemitic incident would happen. In my timeline, each ensuing event was another instance of “enough,” an anti-Dayenu, if you will. Each incident on its own was bad, but being compounded on top of each other made them almost unbearable.
When the terrorist organization Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers and kidnapping about 250 others in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, that would have been enough.
When Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine responded to the attacks by lauding the “creativity” of the “liberation fighters from Gaza,” comments widely condemned by the university and the Anti-Defamation League, that would have been enough.
When the newly formed Coalition for Palestinian Liberation organized a walkout and sit-in at the Mayer Campus Center in November 2023, chanting “intifada revolution” and blocking exits, according to a Tufts Friends of Israel representative, that would have been enough.
When the Tufts Community Union Senate passed three of four resolutions in March 2024 formally calling on University President Sunil Kumar to recognize genocide in Gaza, for the university to divest from Israeli companies and for it to cease selling Sabra products in dining halls, during a meeting where Jewish students were allegedly spat on and told to “go back to Israel,” that would have been enough.
When students set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the Academic Quad in the spring of 2024, chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Apartheid kills, Tufts pays the bills,” as well as defying no-trespassing orders and vandalizing campus property, that would have been enough.
When Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine was finally suspended by the university in fall 2024 after numerous policy violations, including putting images of assault rifles on flyers; urging students to “escalate” and “Join the Student Intifada”; and multiple violations of the gatherings, demonstrations and protests policy, that would have been enough.
When the Editorial Board of the Daily referred to Israeli actions in Gaza as “scholasticide” in a editorial in November 2024, called for a boycott of McDonald’s because its former Israeli franchise provided free meals to Israeli soldiers and encouraged students to not take jobs with companies such as Hewlett-Packard, RTX and Boeing — so-called “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” actions reminiscent of those against South Africa when I was a student myself — that would have been enough.
When the Department of Education sent warnings to some 60 universities, including Tufts, in March for “violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination,” after Tufts received a failing and then subpar grade in the Anti-Defamation League’s “Campus Antisemitism Report Card,” that would have been enough.
The next major holiday on the Jewish calendar is Shavuot, which celebrates when the people of Israel were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God. As we approach Shavuot, a time of receiving and reflection as well as a time of pride for the Jewish people, it is my hope that we begin to see an end to the many “Dayenu” events of antisemitism. It has been enough for far too long.
