Temple Sinai Stirred by Columbia Univ. Student Leader
Program at Sandy Springs synagogue discussed year of antisemitic violence on nation’s college campuses.
In a program timed to coincide with the beginning of another school year, Temple Sinai in Sandy Springs hosted a visit by Columbia University student Noa Fay. The recent college graduate has become a symbol of resistance by Jewish students at the school to the attacks and intimidation they have encountered over the past year.
The violence began shortly after the invasion of Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7 and culminated in the arrest of more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators in April after they occupied the university’s campus in Manhattan. Commencement ceremonies were cancelled this past spring.
But for Fay, the message she delivered to her audience at the Atlanta synagogue is that the issue is far from over. The battle, at Columbia, she believes, is more than with a small number of radical students. It’s about, as she told her Temple Sinai audience, rethinking how Columbia University is run.
“There has to be a serious purge of the faculty, and there has to be also a serious reconsideration and restructuring of how our admission system works, because this is not how Ivy League students behave, I can tell you that. And then the other piece to it is that we also have to have a very serious restructuring of our core curriculum, because the fact that Jewish history, and antisemitism in particular, is not included.”
The issue of antisemitism on the Columbia campus was addressed in a report by the university that was released Aug. 31. The report, based in large part on interviews and listening sessions with 500 students, describes how Jewish students were harassed on campus and in their dorms, ostracized by many of their peers and insulted by faculty members. Last month, two weeks before the report’s release, the president of the university, Nemat Shafik, an internationally known economist who was born in Egypt, resigned only a year after she took the job.
Her decision came shortly after the three deans at Columbia also resigned after it was disclosed that they had exchanged text messages that “touched on antisemitic tropes” at a school sponsored event about Jewish life on campus.
Fay’s appearance at Temple Sinai comes after a year in which her words have stirred audiences at a number of important appearances. The student leader who grew up as the daughter of Black and Native American Jewish parents spoke at the massive March for Israel in Washington, D.C. last November. The event attracted nearly 300,000 attendees.
She also testified before the U.S. Senate’s Bipartisan Task Force for Combatting Antisemitism and at the United Nations. This summer, Fay received an award at the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum in Washington, D.C. for her efforts on campus. In accepting the award, she reassured the AJC delegates, which include 150 from the Southeast, that the Jewish students at Columbia “did not yield one inch to the fear we faced this year. And we will continue to stand strong in the face of hatred in all forms.”
Joining Fay for the discussion in Sandy Springs was Rabbi Larry Sernovitz, CEO of the statewide Hillels of Georgia organization. He noted that on the three university campuses in Georgia where pro pro-Palestinian protesters sought to replicate what happened at Columbia, action was swift and firm.
At the University of Georgia, for instance, the organization of Students for Justice in Palestine has been banned and six of the top leaders of the protest have been suspended for the rest of the fall term. Sernovitz warned that, going forward, without such concerted efforts to quell campus violence, American higher education could suffer irreparable harm.
“On the surface this may be about antisemitism and anti-Zionism,” Rabbi Sernovitz noted, “but underneath this is about the destabilization of the university system in America, and even more so, it is an anti-democratic, anti-American movement. It’s going to take chutzpah and it’s going to take a backbone to shut this stuff down.”
Rabbi Sernovitz went on to point out that the chancellor the University of Georgia system, Sonny Perdue, sent a letter to the presidents of every university in Georgia, public and private, that they have a legal obligation to protect Jewish students. They have an obligation under the recently passed state legislation as well as existing federal law.
The program was moderated by Temple Sinai’s Director of Adult Learning, Rabbi Natan Trief, who emphasized the need for students and the community to remain strong in the coming year.
“We have the power to take control of our destiny, to help craft the reality on the ground. If tonight did anything, I hope that it left us all feeling more empowered. If we have learned one thing from Oct. 7, it is that we must wear our Judaism and our Zionism with pride, with purpose and with perseverance.”
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