H eadlines
ADL, Hillel Documenting Campus Antisemitism
NATIONAL BEN SALES | JTA.ORG
OVER THE LAST YEAR,
Jewish college students took
it upon themselves to combat
antisemitism at their schools.

Now, two major Jewish organi-
zations are working together to
play a stronger role in fighting
antisemitism on campus.

Some of the student activ-
ists documented incidences
of antisemitism at colleges
nationwide, often submitted
anonymously, while others have
taken a confrontational tone
on social media. With some
portraying themselves as the
ideological successors to early
Zionist activists, the students
often argue that anti-Zionism
and antisemitism overlap.

In a new partnership,
Hillel International and the
Anti-Defamation League are
aiming to take a more traditional
approach to the same issues
— one that they say will not
always treat anti-Israel activity as
antisemitism. Hillel and the ADL will
together create a college-level
curriculum on antisemitism
and jointly document antise-
mitic incidents on campuses in
the United States. But not every
student government resolu-
tion endorsing the movement to
boycott, divest from and sanction
Israel, known as BDS, will wind
up in the groups’ database.

“Anti-Israel activism in and
of itself is not antisemitism,”
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an ADL spokesperson said.

“Situations vary widely with
BDS. We will carefully evaluate
each one and make a determi-
nation based on our criteria for
antisemitism.” For example, the ADL
spokesperson said, a BDS resolu-
tion alone would not count as
antisemitism, “but if a student
was excluded from the debate
because he or she was Jewish,
then it might be counted.”
The Hillel-ADL partnership,
which will begin in the coming
academic year, follows a spike in
reported antisemitic incidents on
campus. In the school year that
ended in 2021, the ADL tallied
244 antisemitic incidents on
campuses nationwide, an increase
from 181 the previous school year.

Hillel has a presence on more than
550 campuses and says it serves
more than 400,000 students.

Accusations of antisemitism
on campus have received signifi-
cant attention from large Jewish
organizations for years. Some
Jewish leaders have long said
anti-Zionist activity on campus
constitutes antisemitism,
especially as a string of student
governments endorsed BDS.

Hillel International prohibits
partnerships with, and the
hosting of, campus groups
that support BDS. Anti-Zionist
groups have at times targeted
Hillel; last week, Students for
Justice in Palestine at Rutgers
University criticized the school’s
Hillel in a statement endorsed by
other campus groups.

In addition, the ADL has
documented white suprema-
cist propaganda campaigns on
campuses nationwide.

Multiple national groups
have filed complaints with the
Department of Education’s
Office of Civil Rights based on
campus antisemitism allega-
tions. In 2019, President Donald
Trump signed an executive order
mandating “robust” enforcement
of civil rights protections for
Jews on campus and including
some anti-Israel activity in
the definition of antisemitism.

Pro-Palestinian activists said the
order would have a chilling effect
on free speech on campus.

The ADL and Hillel
International plan to develop a
curriculum about the history
of antisemitism and how it
manifests currently. They will
also survey schools nationwide
to provide a better picture of the
state of antisemitism on campus,
and will create a dedicated
system to tally incidents of
antisemitism at colleges and
universities, including a portal
for students to report incidents
confidentially. The ADL did not detail how it
would verify whether confiden-
tially submitted incidents actually
occurred, beyond saying they
would be judged by the method-
ology the group uses in its annual
audit of antisemitic incidents. The
methodology states that “ADL
carefully examines the credi-
bility of all incidents, including
obtaining independent verifica-
tion when possible.”
In recent months, the student
activists have formed their
own organizations to further
their online activism, called
the New Zionist Congress and
Jewish on Campus. The New
Zionist Congress hosts an online
book club and discussions
about Zionism, while Jewish
on Campus records stories
of college antisemitism on its
Instagram account, which has
32,000 followers.

The ADL said its partnership
with Hillel would “complement”
student activism and that the
group “will firmly support
well-meaning student-led efforts
to push back against antisemi-
tism on campus.”
The effort with Hillel is also
the third partnership with an
external organization that ADL
has announced in the past two
weeks. It recently launched a
partnership to combat antisemi-
tism with the Union for Reform
Judaism, and last week began an
initiative with PayPal to research
how extremists use online finan-
cial platforms. l
7/29/21 4:01 PM
JEWISH EXPONENT
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H eadlines
Makom to Hold Second Annual Conference
L OCA L
SASHA ROGELBERG | JE STAFF
MAKOM COMMUNITY, a
Jewish enrichment center for
children, will host its second
annual conference from Aug.

8-10 to lead training in their
pedagogy of Jewish placemaking.

Fifty to 70 attendees from
more than 20 educational and
religious organizations will
attend the virtual conference,
funded in part by two grants
from the Jewish Federation of
Greater Philadelphia, in hopes
of finding ways to apply Jewish
placemaking to their religious
and after-school programs.

Makom Community
provides after-school programs,
b’nai mitzvah training and
summer camps to children
from pre-kindergarten through
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Beverly Socher-Lerner (center) is Makom Community’s founding
director and conference co-organizer.
Courtesy of Makom Community
seventh grade in Center City
Philadelphia through the
lens of this pedagogy, which
emphasizes the application of
Jewish texts to how children
move through their lives and
interact with others.

“It brings our engagement
with Jewish wisdom and with
Jewish texts into our physical
space,” said Beverly Socher-
Lerner, Makom’s founding
JEWISH EXPONENT
director and conference
co-organizer. “It gives kids
and families lots of agency
to be interpreters of Jewish
tradition.” Among the conference
attendees is Beth Tikvah-
B’nai Jeshurun in Erdenheim.

According to synagogue Rabbi
Roni Handler, the confer-
ence will help inform how
the synagogue’s after-school
religious school program
can instill even more joyful
engagement in Jewish learning.

The religious school transitions
from an online to an in-person
format next year.

“We all needed to take a step
back over the last 18 months or
so and really look at what we’re
doing and why we’re doing it,”
Handler said. “As we start to
put the pieces back together, I
don’t want to just go back to
what was because that’s what
we’ve always done.”
The conference, which will
take place three hours per day
over three days, differs from its
first iteration last summer.

Though both confer-
ences are remote over Zoom,
last year, Jewish educational
organizations shared how they
were navigating programming
over the pandemic year, and
the conference wasn’t centered
around Jewish placemaking
consistently. This year, Makom will
provide the conference’s entire
curriculum and program,
focusing on applying the
pedagogy to
in-person teaching and learning. Makom
Community also hopes to learn
from this year’s conference
See Makom, Page 11
AUGUST 5, 2021
9