I'm a Jew at Harvard—I've never felt so alone (2024)

Sitting on my bed in my Harvard dorm room this week, loud chants of "intifada!" echoed in the room. I had been working on an essay, but the noise was not what distracted me. Type the words "intifada" and "Jew" into Google—the first image that comes up is of a man in a keffiyeh holding a knife. Yet, here were hundreds of students calling for an intifada, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, just a couple feet away from where I live and sleep.

Welcome to Harvard.

I stepped out of my room that night to see a mass of screaming students marching in my direction. Standing in the Yard, wearing my Star of David necklace—I'd never felt so alone. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Barring the ones participating in the rally, there was not another Jew in sight.

A friend of mine, an affable and progressive Jew from California, decided earlier that day to try and talk to the protestors. Surely, there was room to find common ground, to lower the temperature. But after just a few minutes of talking, a crowd of students surrounded him. "Shame, shame, shame," they chanted ad nauseam.

As the protestors cheered, I thought of the sign they had hoisted above the Harvard Yard encampment: "Antizionism ≠ Antisemitism."

I thought about that sign as I watched a video of Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, a prominent pro-Palestinian campus activist.

I thought about that sign when students at the encampment accused a "Zionist" counterprotestor, clad in an Israeli flag, of pushing the child of a pro-Palestinian activist. "Zionists are being violent to children," declared Harvard Graduate Students 4 Palestine. The Harvard Crimson reported the story as fact, asserting that "several" demonstrators had seen it happen.

The next day, the paper issued an editor's note, acknowledging there was no evidence to support the claim. The piece was taken down, but the damage had already been done. A week later, at least four different pro-Palestinian student organizations still have the story posted on their Instagram accounts, with the caption "disgusting."

Imagine, just for a moment, if a campus Jewish organization had falsely declared, "Arabs are being violent to children." Most would probably agree: that would be racist and repugnant.

I thought of that sign when, just before Shabbat, Jewish protestors for Palestine were singing "Oseh Shalom," a classic prayer for peace, in an effort to establish their Jewish bona fides. In English, the song reads, "May the one who creates peace on high bring peace to us and to all of Israel."

But the encampment's Jewish students could not bring themselves to ask for peace in Israel: their rendition of "Oseh Shalom" conspicuously leaves out the word "Israel."

Harvard's pro-Palestine organizations brag about their ties to Jews, but to fit their narrative, in which Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism, these groups shamelessly revise Jewish practice itself.

I thought of that sign when a campus rabbi informed me that his weekly dinner and learning sessions would no longer be taking place. The manager of the building in which he had hosted them received numerous complaints. Other organizations were "uncomfortable" with the presence of "Zionists."

The weekly dinners, to be clear, had nothing to do with Israel or Zionism. A group of Jews joining together, simply to eat kosher food and study religious texts, had made Harvard students uncomfortable.

I thought of that sign as I read through the Harvard "Liberated Zone" encampment's manifesto, which is published on Instagram. It reads: "There can be no equivocation: Palestine is occupied from Gaza to the Galilee."

The Galilee, located within Israel's internationally recognized borders, is home to numerous cities Jews have inhabited for millennia, including Tiberias and Safed. Indeed, it is not territory that the Palestinian Authority contests when it calls for statehood on the pre-1967 borders. But Harvard students' demands for the effective dissolution of Israel go further than those of many Palestinians themselves.

Those who wish to see the suffering of this brutal war end should be crying out for a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side, in safety and security. But an endless, futile push for a Palestinian state "from the river to the sea" or "from the Galilee to Gaza" means more war and suffering, and many more Israelis and Palestinians dead.

Explaining why all of Israel is occupied land will not free Palestine. Removing any mention of Israel from Jewish practice will not free Palestine. And most certainly, calling Zionists "Violent to Children" will not free Palestine.

It's a lonely time to be a Jew at Harvard.

Charlie Covit is a freshman at Harvard.

All views expressed in this article are the authors' own.

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